Best Free Affiliate Programs - My 3 favorites

If you are new to affiliate marketing or even if you have much experience, it is best to know the best free affiliate programs.

Warning: In fact, you should not have to pay to be an affiliate of any program. You are selling for them, after all. If you have to pay to sell for them, it's probably a scam.

Now that I have that warning out of the way,

What are the best free affiliate programs?

I will share my 3 favorites and tell you why they are my favorites. Then you can share which you have found to be the best free affiliate programs below.

My #1 of the best free affiliate programs is the page you are on right now, Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate pays $4 for each paid signup, then $11.25 each month from the new user's second month. Unless they pay yearly, in which case you are paid $87.50 each year that they stay a paid member.*

This program sells itself. People search to learn how to do affiliate marketing and are offered up to 20 lessons free in order to check the program out for themselves.

Anyone who is serious about making money online (which is who you will be targeting) would be crazy not to sign up for a paid membership once they see all that Wealthy Affiliate has to offer.

And Wealthy Affiliate creates a residual income, because you will be paid for as long as your referral stays a paid member.

*If you become a paid member of Wealthy Affiliate, which I highly recommend if you want ensure you are fully trained and up to date as an affiliate marketer, these payouts are doubled.

But as I said, you should not pay to be a part of an affiliate program, so the only good reason to become a paid member is to educate yourself. Again, you should become a free member first and take the first 20 lessons to ensure it is for you before you pay anything.

My #2 of the best free affiliate programs is Shopify.

Shopify is my second favorite affiliate program. It too creates a residual income if you want it too. You can choose a $358 one time payout when you refer a new shop, or you can take 20% of your referrals' bills for the life of their store.

If you are selling to the right people, I say go for the 20% as this extends your income out into the future.

My #3 of the best free affiliate programs is Amazon.

While Amazon's payout rates are much smaller than the two above and selling Amazon products alone will not likely make you rich, they have more products than any other affiliate program in the world, which makes them easy to promote.

No matter what your niche, you will likely find something on Amazon you could promote for almost any article you write.

One tip if you do use Amazon: Rather than send your users to product pages, have them add the items to their carts. How to do so is explained here.

This helps protect against the most regular complaint affiliate marketers have about Amazon: Their cookies only last 24 hours.

However, you are credited for anything your referral adds to their cart over the next 24 hours as long as they purchase it within 90 days.

So, there you have it. The 3 best free affiliate programs according to Jeremy.

Thanks for reading my blog. If you aren't already a member of Wealthy Affiliate, it's free to join! Just click the green "Create Free Account" button on the top right.

My Wealthy Affiliate profile can always be found by clicking my View Profile button to the right. Please follow me and I'll follow you back. My websites are also listed on the bottom right of my profile if you want to have a look.

Please leave any questions or comments about which you think are the best free affiliate programs below. I'd love to hear from you!

Happy affiliating!

--Jeremy