We have been working on compiling a
list of the
best Affiliate Programs available primarily from SAAS
companies. We then researched each program to find different details that would be helpful to freelancers
who are looking for such programs to make some money on the side like commission percentage, commission
type, duration and maximum amount. And I thought it would be a waste to not post this analysis after
researching so much. So here is a brief analysis of the best Affiliate Programs available from SAAS
Companies.
Commissions
Affiliate Programs offer rewards in two ways: by either paying a fixed commission amount per sale or a
commission percentage of the total amount they brought. Among the 425 affiliate programs we researched, an
overwhelming majority of programs (almost 4 times) prefer giving rewards as Commission percentage to
commission amount. And among them about 75% of the programs give commission percentages between 10 and 30
percent. A few number of programs (less than ten) also provide the option to either choose one model or the
other.
- Commission Percent: 331
- Less than or equal to 10% : 28
- Between 10 and 20% : 113
- Between 20 and 30% : 128
- More than 30% : 62
- Commission Amount: 92
- Both: 8
Commission Type
There are usually two types of commission offered by these Affiliate Programs: Recurring and One time. Recurring
Commission allows Affiliate Partners to have a steady source of income as they keep getting commissions every
month for as long as their referrals stay as customers. One time commission, as the name suggests only provides
a fixed amount once for each sale. Almost fifty percent of the Affiliate Programs have a recurring commission
model and about a third are One time commission models. This makes sense since we have compiled mostly SAAS
companies and almost all these have a subscription based revenue generation model.
- Recurring: 195
- One time: 132
- Recurring / One time: 3
- Not mentioned: 95
Duration
Commission duration is an important parameter as it allows companies to limit the duration for which they have
to keep paying Affiliate Partners in a recurring commission scheme. About two-third of the programs which offer
a recurring commission offer it for the lifetime of the customer i.e until the referral remains as their
customer. I also noticed that those who have a duration limit usually try to sneak in this detail inside long
Terms and Conditions page which nobody likes to read and not explain it on the front page.
- Lifetime: 119
- Less than 1 year: 6
- 1 year: 33
- More than 1 year: 8
The data used for this analysis is available on
Gumroad.