The 10 Best Shopify Affiliate Programs for 2024

If you’re a content creator within Shopify’s ecosystem, then Shopify affiliate programs are a great way to generate passive income. 

But with so many affiliate programs related to Shopify, it can be tricky to know which ones to promote to your audience.

You want to promote value-boosting products that help your followers achieve their goals. 

And at the same time, you want to earn a decent commission for referring customers to these products and service providers.

So, in this post, we’ll delve into the world of Shopify affiliate programs and uncover the best ones to promote to your audience.

We’ll cover Shopify’s own affiliate program. But we’ll also explore other affiliate programs (such as those from awesome shopify apps) that can both amplify your earnings and delight your audience.

With a whopping 1.7 million users on Shopify, it’s time to make some affiliate commissions - let’s go!

What are Shopify Affiliate Programs?

So you're a content creator. And you've found this awesome Shopify tool that you genuinely believe will benefit your audience, like a powerful upselling app that’s making you tons of money.

You want to share it with your followers, and at the same time, earn a little something for your effort. This is where an affiliate program comes into play.

An affiliate program for a Shopify tool, like that upselling app, is essentially a partnership between you (the affiliate) and the tool's company (the merchant). 

Here's how it typically works:

• Join the Program: First, you'd need to sign up for the affiliate program offered by the upselling app. Usually, this is free and straightforward.

• Get Your Unique Link: After you're accepted into the program, they'll provide you with a unique affiliate link or sometimes a discount code. This link or code is how they track sales that come from your promotions.

• Promote the Tool: Now, you create content about the upselling app. It could be a blog post, a video tutorial, a social media post, or even an email newsletter - whatever suits your style. In this content, you include your unique affiliate link or code, so when your audience clicks on it and makes a purchase, the app company knows it came from you.

• Earn Commissions: When someone from your audience uses your link or code to install the upsell app, you earn a commission. This commission is usually a percentage of the sale price and can vary depending on the affiliate program.

• Tracking and Payments: The app company typically provides a dashboard or system where you can track your clicks, sales, and commissions. They'll also have a payment schedule, so you know when and how you'll receive your earnings.

• Additional Support: Some affiliate programs might offer additional support like marketing materials, tips, or even exclusive content to help you promote their product effectively.

The great thing is that as a content creator, you can pick products or tools that align with your niche and audience. It's a win-win because you're helping your audience discover useful tools, and you're earning money from it.

Just remember to be transparent with your audience about your affiliate relationships. Being honest and recommending products you genuinely believe in builds trust, and that's key to successful affiliate marketing in the Shopify ecosystem or anywhere else.

With this in mind, let’s begin by reviewing shopify’s own affiliate program that pays you to refer ecommerce retailers to their platform.

The Shopify Affiliate Program

Shopify's affiliate program is a popular choice among content creators, and it offers some unique advantages. Let's look at the pros and cons, to help you decide if it's a good fit for you

The Pros of Shopify’s Affiliate Program

• Good Earnings Potential: Shopify offers competitive commissions, which can be quite lucrative, especially if you refer businesses or entrepreneurs who choose higher-tier subscription plans. The more successful your referrals, the more you can earn. Commissions change from time to time, but at the time of writing Shopify pays between $25-150 per referral (for a transacting store), plus up to $500 for point of sale referrals.

• Long Cookie Duration: Shopify's affiliate program provides a generous 30-day cookie duration. This means that if someone clicks your affiliate link but doesn't sign up immediately and returns to Shopify within 30 days to make a purchase, you'll still earn a commission.

• Great Promotional Resources: Shopify provides a range of promotional resources, including banners, educational content, lead magnets, and a dashboard to track your referrals and earnings. These resources can make it easier for you to promote the platform effectively.

• Reputable Brand: Lastly, Shopify is a well-known and trusted e-commerce platform, which can make it easier to promote to your audience. Many people are already familiar with the brand, so it may require less effort to convince them to try it.

The Cons of Shopify’s Affiliate Program:

With the good stuff out of the way, let’s explore some of the drawbacks of the Shopify affiliate program:

• Niche Limitations: Shopify's affiliate program is best suited for content creators whose audiences are interested in e-commerce, online businesses, or website creation. If your audience doesn't align with these topics, it might not be the best fit.

• Competitive Market: Because Shopify is so well-known, the affiliate market can be competitive. You'll be competing with other affiliates for the attention of potential referrals.

• Payout Methods: The lack of choice around payment methods isn’t great if you don’t like, or can’t use, PayPal. Also worth noting is that, regardless of your region/country, all commission payments are made in USD.

• Non-Recurring Revenue: Shopify pays a fixed-bounty for all full price plan merchant referral. While this means you get $150 up front - it doesn’t allow you to build recurring revenue which makes it less attractive for those looking to create passive income.

Best Shopify Affiliate Programs for Apps & Tools

With an audience interested in eCommerce, Shopify’s affiliate program isn’t the only way to make money by referring users. 

You can make additional income by suggesting tools and apps that help your audience achieve their goals.

These related affiliate programs often offer more generous terms than Shopify, and they’re the perfect addition to your audience's eCommerce marketing toolkit.

1. ReConvert Partner Program

ReConvert is the #1 rated upselling app on Shopify with over 40,000+ active users. ReConvert allows you to instantly boost your revenue via checkout upsells, one-click upsells and thank you page offers.

Recommending ReConvert to your audience or clients is a no-brainer when you consider that users rarely get less than 1000% ROI against the costs of using the app. 

As well as being a great product for your audience, ReConvert’s partner program is also great for you as a referrer. ReConvert offers a generous lifetime recurring revenue share of up to 30% - which allows you to build a consistent stream of income over time.

In addition, ReConvert offers exclusive discounts to your audience, a partner badge you can place on your website, and white glove support when needed.

Plus, as a ReConvert partner, you’ll also get access to exciting co-marketing opportunities and gain exposure to their user base with joint campaigns. You’ll also get free support from the ReConvert team - to help you learn the product, troubleshoot issues and access new features before anyone else. 

Become a ReConvert Partner Today

2. Omnisend Affiliate Program

Omnisend is a powerful, but intuitive marketing platform that has a great affiliate program to boot.

Omnisend empowers your audience to build high-converting email & SMS marketing campaigns for their stores. Think leveled-up abandoned cart sequences, welcome email flows, birthday email campaigns and more.

As an Omnisend affiliate, you’ll get paid at least 20% monthly recurring commissions for each new paid sign up you send their way. They also have an amazing bank of resources (banners, ads etc) to help you promote their product.

As a bonus, you’ll also get a dedicated account manager to help you maximize your earnings by providing the best materials and priority support.

3. Loox Affiliate Program

Loox is one of the best-loved social proof marketing platforms on Shopify. Loox lets your followers and clients add customer reviews, photos, videos, referrals, and social proof upsells with ease.

Every store needs social proof and reviews, so recommending Loox is the perfect solution to meet these needs.

The Loox affiliate program is awesome because you get a competitive revenue share plus dedicated support. All Loox partners receive tailored training and success calls to ensure you can promote the product with confidence.

Loox are also open to co-marketing initiatives with partners and affiliates. These can help drive awareness for you, and expand your reach and audience.

4. AutoDS Affiliate Program

If your audience is interested in dropshipping, then joining the AutoDS affiliate program is a a must.

Auto-DS is an all-in-one dropshipping solution that helps users automate their dropshipping journey, find top dropshipping products, and explore private suppliers.

As an Auto-DS affiliate, you`ll get 20% of all subscription payments for the first 3 months after someone joins with your affiliate link.

Plus, your referees get a special offer to - they get a full month trial for $1 instead of the usual 14 days. This way, they can get more familiar with the platform and are likely to remain lifelong users.

5. PageFly Affiliate Program

Pagefly is the #1 page builder for Shopify. The platform lets retailers build fully customized stores without the need to code.

So if your audience is interested in creating a customized storefront, product page, homepage or building a one-off landing page, then Pagelfy is the tool for them.

The Pagefly affiliate program is great too - you’ll earn a whopping 50% commission on the 1st month and 30% recurring commission thereafter. So if you refer users to their premium plan at $200/mo, you’ll get $100 off the bat and then $60 per month as long as they keep using the product.

At the moment, PageFly are also running a 3-month trial at $1/mo for new merchants, so it’s a super easy sell to your audience - especially when you consider the stickiness of a product that actually builds the structure of your website.

6. Printful Affiliate Program

Printful is a very popular print-on-demand platform that lets your audience launch and scale businesses without the need to invest in inventory. You could create content around how to build a Shopify t-shirt store, and suggest Printful as their best supplier.

Printful’s affiliate program is well established. Thousands of bloggers, YouTubers, ecommerce experts, and other content creators promote Printful to their audiences - and they’ve made over $2 million in commissions to date.

They pay a recurring revenue of 10% on all sales. So if you send them 20 merchants, who make 5 sales a day at $18, you’ll generate $48,600 per year. Not bad, right?

To help you succeed and earn commissions they provide marketing materials, resources, and affiliate marketing tips. Plus, you’ll have access to tracking and reporting tools on your personal dashboard to monitor your efforts in real-time.

7. Vitals Affiliate Program

Vitals is a powerful Shopify app with lots of features to convert more customers. It’s an all-in-one conversion marketing app: reviews, upsells, bundles, replays, pop-ups, and 40+ more.

It’s a great app to suggest to new merchants and marketers, since it takes a lot of the guesswork out of conversion optimization.

Vital’s affiliate program pays you up to 25% in recurring revenue. So, theoretically if you refer 100 paying users, you can make an extra $7,200 in revenue per year. And as an affiliate, they offer your audience an extended 45-day free trial.

Vitals is an easy sell - with excellent reviews, and outstanding 24/7 customer support, and over 30,000+ active users, you won’t have to over-promote this product to make money.

Best Shopify Affiliate Programs for Themes

Since your audience is interested in building on Shopify, the Shopify affiliate program and associated Shopify apps aren’t the only thing they’ll need to build a high-converting store.

They’ll also need a theme to get their business off the ground. You can recommend the following awesome themes, and open up another stream of affiliate revenue to take your earnings to the next level.

8. Debutify Referral Program

Debutify is a plug-and-play theme for Shopify. It comes with over 45+ add ons such as cart upsells, trust badges, and wish lists - so it can save your audience a lot of money on third-party apps.

The theme is super responsive and designed for conversion on all devices. It’s also fully customizable without needing any code - so it’s an amazing out of the box theme for people dipping their toes in the world of eCommerce, as well as for established sellers looking for an all-in-one solution.

Debutify’s affiliate program is attractive too - with 90-day cookie attribution, awesome promotional resources, and up to 45% commission on every purchase for top affiliates.

For your first referral you’ll get 25% of the purchase price and then get 15% every time a customer renews their plan. Then, with lifetime commissions, the more you refer, the more you’ll make!

9. Booster Theme Affiliate Program

Booster is one of the quickest, sleekest, and most user-friendly Shopify themes available. Similar to Debutify, Booster comes preloaded with over 40+ native apps and plugins. So, it’s ready to convert out-of-the box.

From an affiliate marketing standpoint, Booster is awesome. Booster is a one-time payment theme for users - so the average order value is $399 and they pay affiliates up to 30% of the purchase price.

Booster states that their affiliates earn $1.75 per click on average - which is pretty impressive. They claim their top affiliate makes $19.84 per click - which is pretty insane - but we’re prepared to believe it since the product itself is great.

10. Template Monster Affiliate Program

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TemplateMonster is a large and growing marketplace where you can find high-quality Shopify themes to promote to your audience.

Template Monster’s affiliate program boasts over 165,000 affiliates worldwide - so you know you’re in good hands when it comes to support and marketing materials.

As an affiliate partner, you’ll earn 30% commission for the 1st purchase that a user places with a referral link and  30% commission for the next orders placed by the same users.

Best Shopify Apps To Create Your An Affiliate Program for your Store

Ok, so far we’ve discussed the best affiliate programs for content creators, agencies and influencers. 

But if you’re a Shopify store owner, and you want to create a program so influencers can promote your store, there’s several apps worth checking out.

1. UpPromote

UpPromote is the go-to affiliate marketing app for Shopify merchants. Trusted by top brands and experts, it's known for its effortless setup. It combines influencer marketing and referral programs to boost sales and loyalty.

What's great is that you can customize everything to match your brand, from affiliate links to the affiliate portal. It's all about consistency.

You can also create rewards and discounts for customers who refer friends or make repeat purchases. Tracking is a breeze, with insights into referral orders via various channels.

To motivate affiliates, UpPromote offers bonuses, gifts, and store credit. Automation is key, with options for PayPal auto-pay and auto-tier commissions.

Plus, their support team is always ready to assist. Whether you're new to affiliate marketing or a pro, SecoMapp is a powerful tool to supercharge your revenue and Shopify store. It's like having a 24/7 marketing assistant at your fingertips!

2. RefferalCandy

RefferalCandy is your ticket to attracting more customers, increasing sales, and thriving in the e-commerce world. It's all about harnessing the power of referrals, affiliate marketing, and rewards to make your brand shine.

With ReferralCandy, setting up a referral or affiliate program is a breeze. You can literally have it up and running in as little as 30 minutes. That's quick, right?

What's neat is that you can use post-purchase popups, emails, and pages to get customers enrolled in your program. It's all about convenience.

And let's talk about rewards – you can dish out cash and coupons for both one-off and subscription sales. It's a fantastic way to keep customers coming back for more.

Essentially, ReferralCandy is a great app for growing your Shopify store through referrals and affiliates. It's a quick, customizable, and powerful tool that works for all sorts of industries. So, if you're looking to supercharge your sales and brand loyalty, this app is one to check out.

3. Refersion

Refersion is another great app to create your own influencer and affiliate marketing program, offering data attribution, performance insights, and relationship-building tools.

One of its standout features is the ability to manage an unlimited number of affiliates and offers. You can customize commissions and offer bonus rewards to supercharge your affiliate program. Plus, it's user-friendly for both you and your affiliates, with intuitive dashboards.

Customization is key with Refersion. You can tailor your registration page and collaborate with affiliates who perfectly align with your brand's identity.

Plus, something exciting: you can also tap into the Refersion Marketplace to get discovered by new affiliates. It's a fantastic way to expand your affiliate network and reach new audiences.

In a nutshell, Refersion is a comprehensive, customizable, and user-friendly platform that's perfect for building strong affiliate relationships and boosting your brand's success.

4. Snowball

Snowball is another awesome affiliate program  app for Shopify.

One of the standout features is the ability to effortlessly turn your customers into affiliates when they make a purchase. It's all about maximizing your marketing potential.

Sending payouts to your affiliates is a breeze too. With just two clicks, you can send bulk instant cash or gift card rewards. It's quick and efficient.

Snowball also shines when it comes to influencer marketing. It unlocks accurate attribution and ROI insights, helping you make informed decisions about your campaigns.

Worried about affiliate code leaks and coupon abuse? Say goodbye to those problems with Snowball. It's designed to keep your marketing strategies clean and effective.

Creating sign-up forms and adding affiliates manually is super easy, just a click away. It's all about giving you full control over your marketing programs.

Overall, Snowball is a great app to empower your customers to become revenue-generating affiliates or launch influencer programs.

Use Shopify Affiliate Programs to Generate Income Today

Shopify affiliate programs are an awesome way to monetize your audience and build a sustainable income.

When you're diving into the world of affiliate marketing to recommend Shopify apps and plugins, remember to first off know your audience inside and out – what they need, what bugs them, what they want. 

Then, keep it real. Only recommend stuff you truly believe in, things you've used or researched thoroughly. Quality over quantity is the name of the game – it's not about bombarding your audience with options but offering them the cream of the crop. 

Also, remember to show, don't just tell. Prove the value of the app or plugin with your own experiences and success stories. Always be upfront about your affiliate links – it's not just good manners, it builds trust. 

Focus on educating your audience - break down how the app or theme works, and why it's a problem-solver. Always stay updated so your recommendations remain on point.

Utilize all your platforms – blog, social media, email – to reach your whole audience. And remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint – build that lasting relationship with your audience. 

Keep it above board, and always focus on helping rather than hard-selling. With these principles in mind, you'll rock the affiliate marketing game!