Are you looking for more ways to generate income for yourself or your business this year?

High-ticket affiliate marketing programs make money by recommending your favorite products or services to those who need them.

Affiliate marketers promote products through emails, blog posts, social media updates, YouTube videos, podcasts, and other forms of content with proper disclosure.

While not all affiliate marketers make enough to get out of their 9-to-5 business, any additional income can come in handy for individuals and businesses in the current economic climate.

How to get started with affiliate marketing

Here’s a simple summary of how to get started with affiliate marketing.

• Build an audience. You need a website with traffic, an email list with subscribers, or a social media account with followers to promote a product — or ideally, a combination of all three.
• Find products and services that you’re passionate about promoting to the audience you’re building. The more you love something and believe in its effectiveness, the easier it becomes to convince someone to buy it.
• Sign up for affiliate and referral programs. These are offered directly through the company selling the product or service or through a third-party affiliate platform.
• Complete your application and partner profile. Include your niche, monthly website traffic, number of email subscribers, and social media audience size. Companies will use this information to approve or deny your application.
• Get your custom affiliate or referral link and share it with your audienceor the segment of your target audience that would benefit most from the advertised product.
• Look for ways to recommend products to new people. You can be helpful, make a new acquaintance and earn a commission.
• Monitor your affiliate dashboard and website analytics for insights into your clicks and commissions.
• Adjust your affiliate marketing tactics based on the promotions that generate the most revenue.

Now read on about the best high-ticket affiliate programs to sign up for in 2023. They offer a high one-time payout, recurring commissions, or both.

The Best High Ticket Affiliate Marketing Programs

What makes them the “best” affiliate marketing programs is subjective, but I chose these programs based on their payout amounts, number of customers, and average customer ratings. Customer ratings help determine whether a product is worth recommending. You may also use customer reviews to help market the product or service by highlighting impressive results customers are getting from using the product or service and the features customers love most.

1. Smart Proxy

Smartproxy enables customers worldwide access to business data for competitor research, search engine results page (SERP) scraping, price aggregation and ad verification.

836 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.7 stars out of five.

Earn up to $2,000 per customer you refer to Smartproxy with its affiliate program.

2. Thoughtful

Thinkific is an online course creation platform used by over 50,000 instructors in over 100 million courses.

669 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.6 stars out of five.

Earn up to $1,700 per referral per year through the Thinkific Affiliate Program.

3. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is an eCommerce provider with open SaaS, headless integrations, omnichannel, B2B, and offline-to-online solutions.

648 reviewers gave it an average rating of 8.1 out of ten stars.

Earn up to $1,500 for new enterprise customers or 200% of the customer’s first payment by signing up for the BigCommerce Affiliate Program.

4. Teamwork

Teamwork, project management software focused on maximizing billable hours, helps everyone in your organization become more efficient – from the founder to the project manager.

1,022 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.4 stars out of five.

Earn up to $1,000 per referral with Teamwork’s Affiliate Program.

5. Flywheel

Flywheel offers managed WordPress hosting geared toward agencies, ecommerce, and high-traffic websites.

36 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.4 out of five stars.

Earn up to $500 per new referral from the Flywheel Affiliate Program.

6. Teachable

Teachable is an online course platform used by over 100,000 entrepreneurs, developers and businesses of all sizes to create engaging online courses and coach companies.

150 reviewers give it 4.4 out of five stars.

Earn up to $450 (average affiliate earnings) per month by joining the Teachable affiliate program.

7.Shutterstock

Shutterstock is a global marketplace for sourcing stock photos, vectors, illustrations, videos, and music.

507 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.4 stars out of five.

Earn up to $300 for new customers by signing up for the Shutterstock Affiliate Program.

8. HubSpot

HubSpot provides a CRM platform for managing your company’s marketing, sales, content management, and customer service.

3,616 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.5 stars out of five.

Earn an average payout of $264 per month (based on current affiliate earnings) or more as a solution partner with the HubSpot Affiliate Program.

9. Sukuri

Sucuri is a cloud-based security platform with expert security analysts providing malware scanning and removal, protection against hacks and attacks, and better website performance.

251 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.6 out of five stars.

Earn up to $210 per new sale by joining Sucuri referral programs for the Platform, Firewall and Agency products.

10.ADT

ADT is a provider of home and business security systems.

588 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.5 stars out of five.

Earn up to $200 per new customer you refer through the ADT rewards program.

11. DreamHost

DreamHost web hosting supports WordPress and WooCommerce websites with basic, managed and VPS solutions.

3,748 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.7 stars out of five.

Earn up to $200 per referral and recurring monthly commissions with the DreamHost Affiliate Program.

12. Shopify

Shopify, a leading provider of e-commerce solutions, encourages educators, influencers, review sites, and content creators to join its affiliate program. Affiliates can teach others about entrepreneurship and earn a commission for referring Shopify.

Earn up to $150 per referral and grow your brand as part of the Shopify Affiliate Program.

13. Kinsta

Kinsta is a web hosting provider that offers managed WordPress, application, and database hosting.

529 reviewers gave it 4.3 out of five stars.

Earn $50-$100 per new customer, plus recurring revenue through the Kinsta affiliate program.

Even more affiliate marketing programs

In addition to the high-ticket affiliate programs listed above, you can find other programs you can join with a little research.

• Look for affiliate or referral programs for any product or service You have a positive experience with, personally or professionally.
• Look for affiliate or referral programs for all places where you shop online.
• Look for affiliate programs for products and services Your organization uses or recommends to others.
• Look for products and services that meet the needs of your target audience on affiliate platforms like Shareasale, Awin and CJ.
• Follow influencers in your niche to see what products and services they recommend. They may also have affiliate or referral programs.

A key to success in affiliate marketing is to diversify the affiliate marketing programs that you join.

It ensures that you continue to generate affiliate income regardless of whether a company changes or closes their program.

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Featured Image: Shutterstock/fatmawati ahmad zaenuri