22 Successful Affiliate Website Examples Making $10M+ [2020]

What comes to mind when you think of affiliate sites?

Let me guess: 10-page sites with exact match domains, a generic design, and all the content centered around “reviewing” ClickBank or Amazon products that the reviewer has never touched.

That’s what most affiliate sites look like.

And that’s exactly why most affiliate sites fail.

The average web user is too smart for that these days. Most aren’t going to buy a product you recommend based on a “review” of a product you’ve never used.

But because of smarter affiliates, the industry is still growing faster than ever.

Experts predict that spending on affiliate marketing will reach over $6.8 billion in 2020 in the US alone.

If you want to get in on a piece of that pie, you must learn from affiliate sites that are already succeeding today.

That’s why, in this post, we’ll do a deep dive into 22 affiliate website examples that take home thousands of dollars every month in commissions. Inspire your own success by checking out the strategies and setup of affiliate websites that are already knocking it out of the park.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way for companies to incentivize word-of-mouth marketing or referrals.

Affiliate programs offer different money-based commissions for referring either leads or customers.

It’s a fairly simple process:

A blogger makes a recommendation.
The blog’s reader visits the link and purchases the product.
The retailer tracks the purchase back to the affiliate and pays a commission.

For example, Amazon Associates enables bloggers, unbox video-makers, and even large publishers to promote Amazon products online. Because of the massive product catalog, it’s one of the most popular affiliate platforms.

After signing up for the program, the affiliate marketer must use a special link when recommending a specific product online.

For example, CNET’s review of the latest Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2 earbuds includes a link like that.

It’s the perfect program for tech, gadget, and other product reviews as shown in the example above.

If you don’t quite understand yet and want to learn more about the basics, you can read our official “Affiliate Marketing For Beginners” guide. (Or, you can just keep on reading this post to learn from real examples.)

Affiliate Marketing Examples

There are a lot of different ways an affiliate can promote their unique product link to entice potential customers to visit the site.

Product Reviews and Comparisons

Creating product reviews and comparisons that feature products is one of the most common ways to promote an affiliate offer.

For example, The Verge reviews a wide range of laptops and other technology products, typically with an affiliate link included on every page.

The usual strategy to drive website traffic is SEO, or getting the review content to rank highly in search engines. Interested buyers will jump straight to your review, use your affiliate link, and hopefully make a purchase.

Unboxing Videos

Essentially a specific product review format, unboxing videos can also be a great way to promote products as an affiliate.

Just look at how YouTuber Soldier Knows Best promotes his affiliate link for the new Beats Solo Pro headphones in his unboxing video.

It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Blog Recommendations

You can also promote affiliate offers by making recommendations in related guides, recipes, and other content.

For example, Workout Mommy is one of many fitness bloggers and vloggers to include affiliate links in her recommendations for creating a home gym.

Because Amazon’s affiliate program includes almost every conceivable consumer product, it’s easy for bloggers and vloggers to simply “drop-in” links into guides and posts. Instead of mentioning a general product category like a knife sharpener, you can recommend certain products.

Top 22 Affiliate Marketing Website Examples

Here are some of the very top examples of affiliate marketing websites on the internet, focused on comprehensive product reviews and comparisons.

01 This Is Why I’m Broke

?TIWIB has created the ideal Amazon affiliate site by building an engaged audience of buyers.

Their witty product descriptions, unique product catalog, and easy to explore design entertain visitors, and gets them to come back time and time again.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

4.9M

273.7K

$39,000

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

301K

9.6K

Monetization Strategy

ThisIsWhyImBroke.com promotes products from the Amazon affiliate program and other programs.

They mostly share the affiliate product CTAs in product roundup recommendation posts, designed to be shareable.

For example, this post includes 35 Amazon affiliate products with an individual CTA button for each product.

It also has a wishlist feature for registered members.

Clicking the save button while hovering over a product (or the register link in the top right corner), will prompt a signup form.

Lessons You Can Learn

More than 60% of their traffic comes from direct sources. The first reason is their fun brand and entertainment value of the site — it keeps people coming back.

The second reason is their wishlist membership, people come back to see and update their list of fun products they want.

A multi-pronged marketing approach will help reduce your reliance on paid traffic sources or SEO algorithms and increase the longevity of your business.

02 BestReviews

BestReviews is an affiliate marketing giant. It’s one of the largest online product review sites on the web with a team of dozens of writers, dedicated product testers, and more.

Obviously, you can’t compete with them as a bedroom marketer.

But you can still learn from their approach.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

6.5m

343K

Unknown

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

26.3K

4.5K

Monetization Strategy

Best Reviews has a very SEO-focused strategy, with over 80% of traffic coming from search.

The site promotes affiliate links at the very top of their review posts with a cluster of CTAs.

It does have a newsletter, but email generates less than 1% of site traffic.)

Affiliate programs:

Lessons You Can Learn

You won’t be able to compete directly with BestReviews but you can learn from them and apply their content model to a more niche topic.

See how they create high-quality reviews, with unique visuals (HD video and pictures).

Use that same approach, but focus on a very specific niche, and you can dominate it.

03 SafeWise

SafeWise is another review site, but it’s 100% niched down and focuses only on home security systems and other safety products.

The site highlights top products in each post to increase the click-through rates of their affiliate links.

Key Stats

?

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

915k

2.22m

Unknown

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

14k

1.5k

Monetization Strategy

SafeWise is another affiliate site that relies almost solely on SEO and organic search, which drives over 84% of its traffic.

In addition to product reviews and roundups with affiliate links, they also include product recommendations and CTAs in blog posts about improving your home security.

Lessons You Can Learn

Make your affiliate links stand out with big buttons, star ratings, and colored boxes to increase clicks.

04 Skyscanner

?

Skyscanner is another bedroom affiliate marketer success story.

Founded by three university graduates in 2001, Skyscanner was just an affiliate site helping its users find the cheapest flights around the globe.

Their sole focus was to give value to their users and help them save money. James, our teammate here at Nichehacks, wrote how Skyscanner saved him more than $1,000 in ticket prices.

They kept on doing it for years, making a LOT of money, until acquired by Ctrip, the largest travel company in China, for $1.9 Billion.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

5.8m. (20-30m Pre COVID-19)

13.4M

?$26M+ (Pre COVID-19)

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

10m+

172k

Monetization Strategy

As one of the most popular flight search engines, Skyscanner gets most of its traffic from direct visits and branded searches.

It promotes cheap flight tickets from various airline partners for the locations and dates the user selects.

Once a user has decided on a flight, Skyscanner will highlight deals from its affiliate partners.

Visitors can also sign up to receive personalized deals, travel tips, and inspiration.

Or set up price alerts (locking in Skyscanner’s affiliate commission at a later date).

Lessons You Can Learn

Find the biggest problem of your audience and then solve it more effectively than any of your competitors. If you do that consistently, the money will follow.

This is exactly what Skyscanner has done so successfully.

They always show the best deal to the customer even if Skyscanner has no affiliate deal with the airline or company.

05 Wirecutter

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Wirecutter is an in-depth review site that helps consumers find the best products in a variety of categories.

Despite being one of the most popular review sites on the web, Wirecutter publishes only a handful of reviews every month.

The reason?

They test every product before reviewing it. Plus, almost every review they publish is a mammoth post of thousands of words.

For example, their review of the best microwave is over 10,000 words long.

The added depth and quality of the reviews has created a lively community, with many posts getting hundreds of comments.

The quality of their reviews and their huge audience ultimately resulted in their acquisition by The New York Times for more than $30 million.

?

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

11.59m

1.83m

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

94 (NYT)

123.1k

97.8k

Monetization Strategy

While Wirecutter is an established NYT source for tech reviews, it still gets more than 60% of its traffic from organic search.

Their bread and butter is affiliate links for Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Home Depot, etc., in their review posts.

They highlight the winners and runner-ups in eye-catching dialogue boxes, with red CTA-buttons to the relevant affiliate links.

They also have a daily deals newsletter, allowing them to promote affiliate products to deal-hungry online shoppers every single day.

They promote it in the header, with a further link to a simple MailChimp landing page.

They even have a dedicated Twitter account (with over 70,000 followers) for the same topic.

Lessons You Can Learn

The biggest takeaway for me is the amount of work Wirecutter put into each piece of content they publish.

They spend hours testing every product and write genuinely useful reviews that cover all the pros and cons of the product. They also work hard to keep everything up to date.

Over the years, this has made them a highly trustworthy source of product reviews with a loyal and dedicated audience.

If you’re planning to start a review site, Wirecutter is the perfect example to follow.

06 Gear Patrol

Gear Patrol is another affiliate site, but it brands itself more like a Men’s magazine than a straight-up review site.

Instead of general products, it focuses on outdoor and fitness, tech, fashion, cars, and home products for men with a taste for finer things.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

4.88m

425k

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

136k

50k

Monetization Strategy

Gear Patrol’s affiliate links are fairly discreet, with small black CTA boxes, and text-based links spread throughout review pages.

Gear Patrol started as purely an affiliate site but over the years it has evolved its monetization strategy.

It now includes sponsored content:

A branded eCommerce store featuring products from partner brands:

And a physical magazine subscription:

They drive subscriptions to their various newsletters with a sleek form at the end of every post:

As well as in-content signup forms in their longer review posts and articles.

Lessons You Can Learn

Affiliate programs aren’t the only way to monetize an engaged audience.

If you produce high-quality content, you can develop a fanbase that you can target with sponsored content, a magazine, or even original products.

07 Headphones Addict

?

Headphones Addict is a review and affiliate site that only focuses on headphones.

Because of its narrow focus, you might consider it a niche site rather than a review site, but more than 90% of the content is reviewed.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

353K

21.3K

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

164

–

Monetization Strategy

Their main and only source of income is affiliate commissions from Amazon Associates, and it shows.

Their SEO-first strategy drives the majority of the traffic straight to targeted review and comparison posts.

The product overview includes both links and CTA buttons.

And product breakdowns follow the same recipe:

Lessons You Can Learn

The main takeaway from this site is the niche focus. Look how they’ve dedicated a ton of content to such a narrow product category.

They dove deep into the headphone niche and created the ultimate resource for any prospective headphone buyers.

08 Everyday Carry

Everyday Carry is an affiliate site dedicated to portable survival tools you should bring with you every day.

It might sound like a weird topic, but it generates over 721,000 monthly visitors through organic channels like search and social media.

It started in 2010 as a Tumblr blog but soon grew into a hugely popular community with almost a cult-like following. (As shown by the majority of direct traffic.)

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

721K

83.6K

$50-60k

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

78.5k

125.5k

Monetization Strategy

EDC’s content falls into two separate categories, regular reviews and roundup posts, and user-submitted everyday carry setups.

The reviews include simple purchase CTA buttons, and the images also link to the Amazon product.

The user-generated EDC pictures include a sleek hover-product feature, which shows a buy link, and how many other EDC members already own it. It’s a great example of social proof in action.

Lessons You Can Learn

Devoting yourself to creating an active niche community can be a great way to reduce your dependence on SEO and paid traffic sources.

Also, having a social proof element with the dynamic user-generated content helps visitors trust your recommendations and take action.

09 Guitar Fella

While it also has some regular blog posts, reviews and comparison posts are really the backbone of Guitar Fella.

With its focus on a single niche, it’s beating out leading generic review sites and winning traffic from Google.

By putting out relevant, category-specific content on guitars, amps, pickups, and more, Guitar Fella earns over 92% of its 500,000+ monthly visits from search engines.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

536k

15.8K

N/A

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

2,186

468

Monetization Strategy

They earn affiliate commissions from Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and guitar lesson websites.

They include a linked product list with a CTA to Amazon at the top of all their reviews:

And a second “Check Price” CTA button in the section covering individual products.

Lessons You Can Learn

It’s usually not a good idea to rely too much on a single source of traffic, for the long term. But if you see no ROI from certain channels, you should focus your energy on the channels where you see results.

Guitar Fella has doubled down on content marketing and SEO and has almost completely stopped focusing on social media. The SEO focus is generating hundreds of thousands of visitors every month.

Affiliate Marketing Websites: Blogs and Authority Websites

Maybe the niche you want to target isn’t compatible with a mostly product review-focused approach.

In this section, we take a look at 10+ examples of blogs and authority sites that make a significant chunk of change from affiliate links.

10 NerdWallet

NerdWallet started as a simple credit card comparison blog but has grown into a giant personal finance site with over 20 million monthly visitors.

It publishes exceptional content, with great illustrations, and helps its readers choose the best credit cards, insurance programs, and investment opportunities.

But it’s still an affiliate site.

It makes all of its money through partnerships with different financial services companies. A lot of its content is reviews and comparisons.

?

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

20.39m

2.45m

$2-3m

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

167.3k

64.2k

Monetization Strategy

NerdWallet is much more than a personal finance blog. It offers a full-fledged free solution to tracking and reducing your spending.

NerdWallet promotes this app through an eye-catching CTA on their homepage:

As well as dynamic in-content CTAs that are relevant to the content around it:

In the membership area, NerdWallet offers a cashback rewards program (affiliate for a variety of stores).

And they also link to the most important affiliate products in the “browse” section of the sidebar.

For example, their recommended credit cards:

For users that link their spending account, NerdWallet will even the most suitable credit card for your spending habits. Of course, that’s another affiliate offer.

If you click through to a specific category, they promote individual cards with regular “Apply Now” CTAs, and a comparison tool.

Lessons You Can Learn

NerdWallet didn’t start with a huge investment or a lot of content. It started as a pretty simple comparison site, but with time and continued investment, it grew into an industry-leading authority site and even B2C financial SaaS.

To succeed in affiliate marketing, you need a long-term vision. Don’t just think of it as an easy way of making passive income.

11 MoneySavingExpert

We’ve written about MoneySavingExpert in the past, but it’s a must for this list as it’s a great example for affiliates in personal finance.

MSE started as a one-man project by Martin Lewis. He eventually grew it into a leading personal finance website, and sold it for 87 million pounds.

MSE primarily targets people in the UK and has a hugely credible brand image.

Why? MSE has a policy of only promoting or reviewing products that are genuinely useful to its audience.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

22.99m

2.99m

$2-3m

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

257k

370k

Monetization Strategy

Money Saving Expert makes money through a mix of affiliate partnerships with financial institutions (promoting credit cards, refinancing loans, utility companies, and more).

The sales process for financial services and utilities subscriptions is a bit longer than buying a fidget spinner on Amazon. So MSE takes a very hands-on approach to promoting the affiliate offers.

They offer several different “clubs,” where a user signs up providing their address and current spending information. Then, the team at MSE will alert them only when they’ve found a better deal.

MSE promotes these clubs actively throughout the content, and in their newsletter, which is promoted with a floating popup on every page until you subscribe.

Lessons You Can Learn

Provide value and the best deal to your visitors first even if it means having to work hard for every affiliate commission.
Develop free tools that your audience will use and find useful with upsells (MSE uses free calculators as a lead-in to affiliate offers).

12 PC Part Picker

?PC Part Picker is the perfect example of taking a review site to the next level and making it an authoritative resource instead.

As a result, it doesn’t look like an affiliate site.

Instead, it has designed all of its content around the very specific needs of its readers. It helps aspiring pc owners find the best builds for their budget.

Of course, they earn commissions for every recommendation, but they only recommend tried-and-true builds.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

9.4m

5.1m

$1-2m

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

34.7k

45.3k

Monetization Strategy

PC Part Picker is one of the leading desktop PC building guide sites on the internet. In their builds, they promote affiliate links to products from Amazon Associates, B&H, Best Buy, SuperBiiz, Newegg, and more sites.

They have three main forms of content. Their official build guides includes a “part list” which includes links to whichever site has the best price for the part.

User-generated “completed builds” doesn’t just create a community, it also serves as a platform to promote more affiliate links.

Finally, the “system builder” tool lets you choose each individual desktop part from a list of recommendations.

If you click on the CPU link, you’ll see a list of CPUs.

Finally, you can click through to an individual product page, complete with price history, user-generated reviews, and of course, affiliate links.

Lessons You Can Learn

PCPartPicker is a great example of putting your customers first and creating content around their needs. But for that to happen, you need to know your customers first.

13 Making Sense of Cents

Making Sense of Cents is a popular personal finance blog.

Michelle started this blog to share her personal story of how she managed to pay off her student loans with smart financial decisions.

Then, she started to write reviews and recommendations for different products that earn her commissions (and officially became an affiliate marketer).

Over the years, she expanded her focus and now covers many of the conventional MMO topics as well.

This one-woman blog has now become a million-dollar online business.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

322k

2.37m

$100,000

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

97.7k

19.8k

Monetization Strategy

Michelle makes money through a mix of affiliate commissions, digital course sales, and sponsored content.

She promotes a wide range of affiliate products (usually cheaper alternatives to save money) throughout her blog posts:

And also recommends affiliate links in her email courses that she promotes with CTAs throughout her content:

Lessons You Can Learn

Affiliate marketing doesn’t always have to be done directly with product reviews and comparison posts.

Like Michelle, you can weave affiliate marketing into your personal stories, blog posts, and courses in a way that doesn’t seem overly salesy.

14 WhatMomsLove

WhatMomsLove is an example of an affiliate site that doesn’t rely almost exclusively on SEO and Google. It generates a lot of its traffic from Pinterest, with over 6.4 million monthly views across all pins.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

181K

22.7k

$20K

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

316K

19.4k

Monetization Strategy

WML uses a mix of Amazon affiliate products and Google AdSense ads to monetize their blog.

Sometimes, it takes the format of mentioning a few products in passing in an unrelated post.

Other times, there’s a specifically designed Pinterest graphic for a roundup of different products.

Lessons You Can Learn

You can build a thriving affiliate site without worshipping Google Search, as long as you master another platform.

15 Website Setup

Web hosting is one of the most competitive niches on the web, with huge commissions of up to hundreds of dollars for a single sale.

But despite all this competition, Robert Mening has been able to make Website Setup one of the most popular sites in this niche.

It even ranks in the top three results for many important keywords.

The strength of this site lies in two things.

Exceptionally useful and detailed content on a variety of topics not only about web hosting but general blogging tips as well.
An extremely strong backlink profile with links from some of the most popular and authoritative blogs on the web.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

805K

107k

$500,000

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

24.6k

2.1k

Monetization Strategy

WebsiteSetup.org owes most of its income to affiliate commissions from BlueHost and other hosting companies.

It even uses signing up as a BlueHost customer as one of the first steps in its signature guide on “how to create a website”.

In addition, they promote different web hosts, site builders, and other tools in comparison posts.

They also include CTAs for each individual tool.

Lessons You Can Learn

Robert has dominated a very competitive niche because of his relentless focus on in-depth and high-quality content.

Publishing such great content has also allowed him to reach out to other websites to build backlinks.

16 Minimalist Baker

Minimalist Baker is your one-stop-shop for mouth-watering cuisines and recipes.

Dana and her husband John started this blog in 2012 as a fun hobby. But it has grown into a massive community with more than 4 million visitors per month.

They also have almost three million followers on different social media platforms.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

8.28m

370k

$300,000

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

1.9m

106k

Monetization Strategy

Minimalist Baker makes money through a mix of ads from Google & Vivaki, promoting Amazon affiliate links, and selling digital courses.

It does this with some discreet product plugs spread throughout their recipes.

The shop section of their site promotes their cookbook and a selection of kitchen essentials mostly with Amazon Associates links.

They use a 49-page recipe ebook (in a sleek slide-in popup form) to entice visitors into signing up for their email newsletter.

This lets them use email to get readers back for more recipes, product recommendations, or their cookbook.

Lessons You Can Learn

Minimalist Baker started out in the specific niche of vegan baking and was able to establish a core audience that way.

After a while, Dana started to branch out with other recipes and has become one of the leading food blogs on the internet.

It’s a great example of choosing a narrow niche to get started with affiliate marketing.

17 The Points Guy

The Points Guy used to be a one-man blog but has evolved into the authority on traveling using points and air miles.

Brian Kelly, CEO and Points Guy, started sharing advice and deals on his site and made commissions from credit card sales.

He found his perfect niche and kept on providing value to his readers month after month, year after year. Over time, it grew to become a multi-million dollar business

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

6.7M (Up to 12M pre COVID-19)

1.92m

$4-5m

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

391k

1.9m

Monetization Strategy

Once you visited the site, it’s pretty clear that their main source of income is commissions from credit card sales.

The partner offers are listed clearly on the homepage, and just about every blog post, article, and category page on the site.

There are also some affiliate links interspersed throughout the guides and posts.

As well as credit card reviews and recommendations mentioned throughout.

To send visitors credit card recommendations after they leave the site, TPG includes email newsletter CTAs and pop ups on all pages.

Lessons You Can Learn

The business model is almost like a coupon site, as the offers revolve around giving away free points and airline miles.

The focus on delivering value with guides and in-depth reviews, not just promoting offers with a simple comparison post, is what helped Brian establish “The Points Guy” as the industry leader.

18 The Military Wallet

The Military Wallet is a blog and affiliate site that helps military veterans and their families make better financial decisions after leaving the military.

It shares money-saving tips, ways veterans can generate income, tax-related info, and many other veteran-specific legal matters.

It makes most of its money by sharing different deals and discounts that veterans can claim using specific credit cards.

It targets a popular topic from a different angle and caters to a very specific audience of veterans.

It’s a great example of niching down.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

243.3k

2.3m

$300,000

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

14k

1.6k

Monetization Strategy

In addition to some Google Ads, the Military Wallet makes money by promoting military discount offers for various companies.

Lessons You Can Learn

The owner of this site is a military veteran himself and knows the problems his fellow military men face after returning to civilian life.

He used this knowledge to create a helpful resource that solves this very specific problem.

19 Mr. Money Moustache

Mr. Money Moustache is another example of a personal finance blog that doesn’t fit into the generic mold.

It’s focused on the very specific goal of early retirement (as early as in your 30s) and the specific financial steps you need to take.

As a result, he’s created a sizable “cult” following, eager to test new investments and financial products he might recommend.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

1.20m

1.2m

$30,000+

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

120.3K

118..7K

Monetization Strategy

Mr. Money Moustache doesn’t feature any ads, but makes affiliate commissions from recommending a few different loan refinancing and other financial products.

As well as for cheaper alternatives to utilities and cell phone services:

Lessons You Can Learn

Mr. Money Moustache has a thriving community with over 100,000 social media followers, and hundreds of comments on every new blog post.

By picking an unapologetic voice for his blog and a very specific niche, combined with an aggressive promotion of his email newsletter, Peter has been able to create a valuable community.

20 Breaking Muscle

Breaking Muscle isn’t a run-of-the-mill fitness blog focused on the average Joe who wants to lose his beer gut.

It’s focused on serious lifters and athletes and has managed to carve out a niche for itself online by doing so.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

807,000

2.4m

N/A

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

391.3k

17.9k

Monetization Strategy

Commissions from Amazon Associates through reviewing training equipment:

As well as Google ads (the big banner under the header in the image above).

They also have a membership site dedicated to helping coaches reach the next level:

Lessons You Can Learn

Breaking Muscle varies its monetization strategy from post to post. For how-to posts about bodyweight exercises with no obvious product plugs, they use Google AdSense ads or promote their own ebooks or courses.

For product reviews and guides about using specific equipment, they use affiliate links.

21 MyGolfSpy

MyGolfSpy is a golf niche website that focuses on news, guides, and of course product reviews (with affiliate links).

With its upscale design, HD photos, and quality content, it’s become one of the leading websites in the world of golf, with over 740,000 monthly visits.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

748.2k

599k

N/A

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

54.3k

66.6k

Monetization Strategy

They promote golf equipment manufacturers and brands’ affiliate programs through comparison posts:

And they also do sponsored posts about brand-new golf equipment:

Lessons You Can Learn

Targeting a highly profitable niche where single commissions are huge can be a great move. MyGolfSpy doesn’t even need to break a million monthly visits to comfortably support a staff of seven.

If you can target industries that sell premium products, you could make an impact and start earning significant money even with a small audience.

22 Epic Gardening

Epic Gardening is a leading gardening blog and authority site. It goes beyond guides and also puts a lot of focus on product roundups, comparisons, and reviews.

This makes it an extremely effective platform for affiliate marketing, with a large focus on Amazon Associates products.

Key Stats

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Approx. Monthly Revenue

957.4k

599k

N/A

Domain Authority

Facebook Fans

Twitter Followers

159k

20.4k

Monetization Strategy

Epic Gardening makes the brunt of its income by including a list of recommended Amazon products in the majority of its in-depth guides.

They also have their own store, featuring partner products:

Lessons You Can Learn

Epic Gardening is a great reminder that you can monetize almost any niche through marketing products as an affiliate.

Can I Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?

The answer is simple; yes I do.

But before an affiliate website can make any money, I need to successfully drive traffic and build an audience. (Use digital marketing to your advantage.)

Once you’ve started to establish an audience, affiliate marketing is a very effective way to monetize your website.

Can I Compete With Big Brands as an Affiliate?

When most of the websites on this list started out, their industry was already dominated by giant corporations and big budgets.

So how did they win an audience?

They targeted a small part of the industry’s target market, a niche.

Military wallet focuses on teaching personal finance only to current and ex-military personnel, unlike The Balance, the giant personal finance magazine that tries to appeal to everyone at once.

It’s easier for their target audience to relate to the advice from the perspective of a former service member, than some freelance finance writer who’s worked from home for the last 30 years.

Use your own unique situation to your advantage, and target a smaller piece of the pie first. (Once you’ve established yourself, you could work to expand to a bigger niche later.)

Anatomy of a Successful Affiliate Site: Skyscanner

Let’s take a closer look at what makes a power affiliate like Skyscanner so successful.

Don’t worry. Their core strategies are perfect for solopreneurs or small teams to take advantage of.

Target High-Value Google Keywords

The great benefit with traffic from Google is that you can target users who are ready to buy.

Keywords that attract these kinds of users are called searches with “commercial intent.”

In terms of travel, an informational phrase might be “What’s the best country to visit?” or “Best cheap destinations.”

When a searcher is indicating a specific product (in this case a destination), that’s a sure sign of commercial intent.

In this case, the phrase “Cheap flights to India” shows the searcher is almost ready to purchase a ticket.

User Experience First

It would be easier and cheaper for Skyscanner to just have a text-based list of flights to India sorted by date.

The problem is, it would be endless and wouldn’t help the user at all.

Instead, they highlight a couple of popular destinations, with the search engine on top.

Note: As a new affiliate, you don’t have to develop a search engine, but rather think easy-to-browse content. Like feature and price comparison tables, or side-by-side pictures.

More Than One Option

The most successful affiliates give more than one option for purchasing the product in question.

The same goes for Skyscanner.

They show the cheapest option, sure, but they know that everyone has their preferences.

Users can choose flexible tickets, specific airlines, non-stop routes, and more.

Skyscanner can appeal to a wide variety of different target markets with a single page and keyword. (For more narrow, product-specific keywords this isn’t necessary.)

Plan B: A Way to Convert Stragglers Later

Not all visitors are ready to purchase when they first visit a website.

The vast majority of them are not (only 2.29% of eCommerce visitors make a purchase).

That’s why a top-class affiliate uses a plan B to make sure they can convert as many of the initial visitors as possible.

If a user is not engaging with any of the search results, it’s probable that the prices are the issue.

So if the prices drop, chances are the user will be interested.

Skyscanner capitalizes on this by prompting inactive users to sign up for price alerts.

It’s a win-win situation. Users get a flight at a price they can afford, and Skyscanner makes sure that they land the commission for that flight. Even if it’s months removed from the first visit.

What’s stopping your visitors from clicking your affiliate links or buying?

Money: Can you find an affiliate option that offers a payment plan?
Seasonality: Is the product out of season? Offer a guide on how to prepare for the season, and send a promotional email again when the season gets closer.

There are many other issues that you can target with a plan B, like Skyscanner’s price alerts.

What Are You Waiting For? Start Your Affiliate Site Journey Today

From examining these examples, you’ve probably noticed that all the big successes started somewhere.

That there’s still room for more blogs, even today, as long as you choose the right niche and approach.

For even more in-depth information and guidance on starting your affiliate marketing journey, join our email list which is chock-full of higher-level resources, case studies, and step-by-step guides – and be the first to know about upcoming affiliate tutorials.

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What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing Examples

Product Reviews and Comparisons

Unboxing Videos

Blog Recommendations

Top 22 Affiliate Marketing Website Examples

01 This Is Why I’m Broke

Monetization Strategy

Lessons You Can Learn

02 BestReviews

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03 SafeWise

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04 Skyscanner

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05 Wirecutter

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06 Gear Patrol

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07 Headphones Addict

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08 Everyday Carry

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09 Guitar Fella

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Affiliate Marketing Websites: Blogs and Authority Websites

10 NerdWallet

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11 MoneySavingExpert

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12 PC Part Picker

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13 Making Sense of Cents

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14 WhatMomsLove

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15 Website Setup

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16 Minimalist Baker

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17 The Points Guy

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18 The Military Wallet

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