Aweber Affiliate Program Review
If you run a blog or website about digital marketing and you are looking to make the most of your content, becoming an affiliate for an email marketing program might be a good idea.
In today’s article, we’re looking at everything you should know about the Aweber affiliate program. Aweber is one of the largest services in this industry, so that’s one less thing to worry about. Read on to learn anything from how much you can earn with this opportunity to what rules you need to abide by.
Aweber Affiliate Program Review
What is Aweber?
Aweber is one of the most widely known email marketing services out there. There are literally hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individual creators that use Aweber if not on a daily basis, at least on a regular basis.
Some of the most attractive features of Aweber range from a vast prebuilt template library that allows any user to get started with designing the perfect emails off the bat to a very handy drag and drop editor, along with AMP for email and automation email series.
It’s not something you might not have heard of before, especially if you have a huge amount of experience when it comes to email marketing tools, but the quality of the software along with the fact that Aweber seems to have more than decent customer service should give you a clue as to whether this is something you might want to promote on your site.
What services can you recommend to your followers?
While some other email marketing tools have rather complicated pricing plans for everyone’s needs, Aweber makes things a lot simpler than you’d expect. First off, there is a free version that you should be aware of in the sense that your audience has the chance to first try out the product and only then decide if they want to commit to paying for it.
But there’s only one other type of plan available, the paid one, and it’s customizable depending on whatever users require.
Let’s look at some of the features of these options. The free plan allows users to manage up to 500 email subscribers. One landing page and just one email automation are included in this plan, but people do have access to the very handy drag and drop builder, along with sign-up forms and email templates.
The Pro varies both in terms of features and pricing, so you basically use the bar to pick whichever number of email subscribers you have and see what matches your needs. All of the prices that we will mention here are for the annual billing, not the monthly billing.
The most basic option allows users to have 0-500 subscribers. It’s priced at $16.15 per month and comes with anything from advanced email automation to split testing. The next choice is billed at $26.15 and allows marketers to manage lists of up to 2,500 subscribers along with some additional features such as detailed insights and analytics.
$46.15 per month will get you up to 5,000 email subscribers whereas the $66.15 per month pricing model allows one to communicate with up to 10,000 people.
The most generous package costs $146.15 per month and pretty much includes all of the features that anyone might require, both in terms of subscriber count (25,000 is the maximum) and in terms of features – including AWeber eCommerce features, web push notifications, 24/7 live support, and integrations with anything ranging from Shopify and WordPress to FaceBook and WooCommerce or PayPal.
Aweber affiliate sign-up
Joining this affiliate program is quite straightforward. Even though it is self-managed, which means that you are not going to find it on any separate affiliate network, signup is a breeze.
You will of course be asked for some basic information, such as your first and last name, your phone number, your email address, your company name if you have one, your website’s URL, and your address and the country you are based in. If you are a US resident, you will also be asked for some financial info, mainly your tax ID or SSN.
Then you create an ID and a password and you read the customer referral agreement and you are all set. Just make sure that you’re not doing any sort of weird marketing because it can get you booted out of the program, so read the fine print of the document.
So, while we would have appreciated seeing the Aweber affiliate program on a platform like Impact or Awin or something similar, it’s a good thing that they keep a very detailed and simple page on their so-called ‘Advocate’ program, so that eliminates the hassle and any unknown factors from the signup process.
How much can you make with Aweber affiliate marketing?
The answer to this question is that it actually depends. You start out with a particular commission rate, but depending on your performance, it can be increased up to 50% out of whatever your referrals are paying for Aweber services.
When you become an Aweber affiliate, the base rate that you can expect is a 30% recurring one. So this is one of those programs where you can have a source of income based off of what people pay for renewing their subscriptions, too.
The cookie lasts for 365 days, so it is, if not the longest, certainly one of the longest we have come across, and we have reviewed a lot of affiliate programs over the past few years.
The affiliate program is open to anyone, but if you’re not getting a decent amount of traffic or have a good amount of social following, you might not achieve the same degree of success. In any case, it’s important to note that you do not have to be an Aweber user yourself to be able to join the program, so it costs nothing on your end.
Payment thresholds and methods
Based on the information that we have collected while doing research for this review, it seems that the payment threshold is $100. This shouldn’t scare you, though, if you know for a fact that your conversions are going to be good enough for you to make enough commissions in your first few months of being an Aweber affiliate.
As for the payment method, unfortunately there is only one available, and it is PayPal.
And while PayPal is indeed convenient because it is available almost anywhere on the planet, it also has some caveats, such as the fact that it’s been deleting a lot of accounts in the past few years, leaving people with no other option than to skip on affiliate programs that use it exclusively.
The payments are sent out once a month and another thing that we’d like to point out here is that you will have to wait for just two weeks to get your commissions approved. With many other affiliate programs, this waiting time can sometimes be 30 days or even 60 days.
Pros and cons to being an Aweber affiliate
The first and most obvious benefit of being an Aweber affiliate is the 30% recurring commission. Even if your performance doesn’t get stellar in the first half a year or even first year of recommending Aweber, you can still rest assured that you’ll get 30% out of whatever your referrals are purchasing on the Aweber site (and also renewing their plans, too!).
Your commission rate can get to 50%, so it’s quite a good rate when put side by side with what other companies can offer.
Another advantage is the length of the cookie. We haven’t seen that many affiliate programs with cookies longer than 30 or 60 months, let alone 365 days, which is what Aweber is giving to their ‘Advocates’.
There really aren’t a lot of drawbacks other than the fact that you need to apply on the company’s own website. The approval rate is difficult to assess, but the more traffic you are getting on your site and the higher your following, the better chances you have when it comes to being accepted into the program.
As for the platform itself, it seems that monitoring what is happening with your Aweber affiliate link and the number of conversions you are getting is very easy.
Aweber affiliate program alternatives
If, for any reason, you seem to find that being an Aweber affiliate doesn’t make sense for you (maybe if you can’t get your earnings through PayPal, for example), here are a few other options to consider.
GetResponse
We’ve written about this program before and even made a separate review of it, so if you have some time on your hands, we suggest that you give it a read.
Joining the GetResponse affiliate program can result in you making 33% of whatever your referrals are spending in recurring commissions or $100 off the bat. You choose your payment model depending on what you feel might work better for you.
The cookie lasts for 120 days, which isn’t bad at all given the 30-day industry standard. We’d say that this one is among the highest earning options available today.
You might also like: GetResponse Affiliate Program Review
Sendinblue
As a Sendinblue affiliate, you can make $6 (or 5 euros) on free trials, which is an advantage in itself. The brand actually pays you for every tryout, which is an undeniable benefit. As for paid plans, you will get a commission of $120, so significantly more than what you can expect with other choices.
The cookie lasts for 90 days, so it’s way shorter when compared to the one of the Aweber affiliate program, but still three times longer than the 30 days of most other programs.
Read more: Sendinblue Affiliate Program
ActiveCampaign
With its 90-day tracking cookie and 20% to 30% recurring commission rate, this one definitely seems like a good program to take into account. But we’d say that one of the most significant reasons to mull it over would have to be the fact that ActiveCampaign is really a well-known email marketing service.
There are quite a bit of bonuses available, too, in the sense that if you refer $100 of new business to the brand over the first 90 days of your activity, you can get a 20% rate which is then increased to 30% if you refer $500 worth of new business over a period of 90 days.
You might also like: ActiveCampaign Affiliate Program Review
Moosend
The Moosend affiliate program resembles the Aweber one, at least in terms of commissions. For every purchase made through your affiliate link, you can earn a 30% rate.
The cookie does last for 90 days, though, so it’s shorter compared to the one offered by Aweber, GetResponse, and some other programs.
Read more: Moosend Affiliate Program
Constant Contact
The 120-day tracking cookie ensured by this program is one of the reasons you should consider it. But the commission isn’t too bad either, although we do have to note that you should not expect a recurring one in this case.
Every purchase will get you a rate of $105, which is pretty good, but the free trials will also earn you a commission of $5. The sky’s the limit when it comes to how much you can make with this earning opportunity because there is no maximum threshold whatsoever.
You might also like: Constant Contact Affiliate Program Review
Final thoughts
So, should you become an Aweber affiliate? We’d say that this program is at least worth taking into account — the recurring rate along with the fact that the cookie lasts for a whole year are two of the main benefits that you can expect.
Aweber is also one of the best-known and oldest services in the industry, so you might have less trouble recommending it to your followers. Be sure to read the Aweber affiliate program terms before joining to ensure that you don’t risk being booted out of it by accident.
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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