The ongoing cost-of-living crisis has made unexpected expenses a major challenge for many.

As a result, promoting payday loan affiliate programs can offer your audience tailored options for short-term help.

An astonishing two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This partly explains why the global payday loans market is expected to expand by almost 4% annually from 2022 – 2030.

Despite payday loans’ high interest rates, about 12 million Americans take them out each year to cover short-term costs. And while payday loans are not an ideal solution, they can provide a lifeline in times of need.

If you want to help borrowers find the best payday loan options and earn commissions, consider promoting these payday loan affiliate programs and networks…

1 LeadsMarket

The first thing you need to understand about this niche: payday loan providers often use third-party data providers to track down potential customers.

LeadsMarket is one such provider, billing itself as an online marketplace where affiliate marketing pros can sell lead data to borrowers for a fixed price per lead, call, or click.

Its 1,000+ affiliate partners can tap into a network of over 100 direct lenders, helping them earn more money from the leads they generate. The platform paid more than $100 million in commissions in 2020.

As well as paying (varying) sums for consumer lead data, LeadsMarket offers a 3% bonus on all commissions earned by affiliates you refer to the program.

Sign up for the LeadsMarket payday loan affiliate program to access a genuinely impressive selection of affiliate marketing resources, including customizable HTML templates, WordPress themes, and JavaScript forms to boost your website’s lead generation potential. This makes the program a good fit for first-time affiliate marketers who need help building (or optimizing) a website.

URL: LeadsMarket affiliate program
Managed by: In-house
Commission rate: Unlisted
Cookie duration: n/a
Products/Services sold: Online payday loan leads
Payment methods: PayPal, bank ACH, wire transfer, check, WebMoney, EPESE, Payoneer
Market(s): US, UK
Additional resources: HTML templates, WordPress themes, JavaScript lead capture forms, XML integration, email templates, banner ads, dedicated account manager

2 LeadNetwork

Honestly, there’s very little to differentiate LeadNetwork from LeadsMarket. Right down to their near-identical company descriptions:

Still, as far as we can tell, they’re separate companies that just happen to do the exact same thing: selling payday loan leads generated by affiliates to third-party borrowers.

Affiliates can choose between revenue share, flat CPA, and tier-structured payouts, allowing you to find the payment model that best suits your business. For instance, if you typically refer high-borrowing customers, you’ll likely earn more from a revenue-sharing partnership than a fixed CPA deal.

As with LeadsMarket, LeadNetwork’s payday loan affiliate program also offers potential for multi-tiered earnings: if you refer another affiliate marketer, you earn a 3% cut of their revenues for life.

New to affiliate marketing? LeadNetwork offers in-depth support on everything from email marketing to organic and paid search, helping you start earning commissions faster.

URL: LeadNetwork affiliate program
Managed by: In-house
Commission rate: Unlisted
Cookie duration: n/a
Products/Services sold: Online payday loan leads
Payment methods: PayPal, wire transfer, bank ACH, check
Market(s): US only
Additional resources: Email marketing creatives, SEO advice, Google Ads support, loan request form templates

3 LeadsGate

LeadsMarket and LeadNetwork aren’t the only options for selling payday loan leads; not by a long shot.

Another competitor is LeadsGate, which promises higher payouts than any other payday lead marketplace. That may or may not be true — most platforms don’t publish payout figures — but commissions of up to $230 per lead seem pretty generous.

Impressively, it even pays affiliates for declined leads, which is unusual for this (or any other) industry. LeadsGate claims this feature helps affiliates increase earnings by 5% – 15%. The affiliate program also rewards you with an (unspecified) percentage of revenues earned by other affiliates you refer.

Established nine years ago, LeadsGate has built a network of over 10,000 global affiliates and aggregated 75+ million payday loan leads. Affiliates can access support in three languages: English, Russian, and Thai.

All LeadsGate partners can leverage pre-built JavaScript forms to support their lead generation efforts, while top-performing affiliates get access to premium tools, including an API and unique promotions.

URL: LeadsGate affiliate program
Managed by: In-house
Commission rate: Up to $230 per lead
Cookie duration: n/a
Products/Services sold: Payday loan leads
Payment methods: PayPal, wire transfer, Payoneer, “other popular payment solutions”
Market(s): US only
Additional resources: JavaScript forms

4 Zappian

Guess what? Zappian is a lead generation marketplace. All these platforms are pretty much the same, although Zappian feels a little more transparent than its rivals.

For instance, it provides (some) insight into the types of companies it works with. Zappian has over 250 advertisers on its books, including Accredited Debt Relief, National Debt Relief, and Upstart. That might not make a big difference to you, but we’d definitely prefer to know who’s buying the leads we’re generating.

Since 2013, Zappian claims to have generated over one billion leads and paid $3 million in commissions, so it’s evidently good at what it does.

The company’s 3,100+ affiliates can access 24/7 support from a dedicated account manager, ensuring there’s always someone on hand to answer your questions.

URL: Zappian affiliate program
Managed by: In-house
Commission rate: Unlisted
Cookie duration: n/a
Products/Services sold: Payday loan leads
Payment methods: Unlisted
Market(s): Unlisted
Additional resources: 24/7 access to an account manager

5 Round Sky

Pay-per-lead affiliate marketing is tricky. You’re not encouraging people to buy a pair of socks or a new computer game; you’re asking them to hand over a bunch of personal information to a third party they might never have heard of. With 93% of consumers concerned about data security when filling out online forms, that’s a tough sell.

Enter Round Sky, a payday loan lead generation platform that helps affiliates embed high-quality, customizable lead capture forms on their sites. That way, consumers don’t need to click through to a whole other website to submit their details, making for a smoother (and more trustworthy) user journey.

Affiliates can choose from multiple form templates and tweak the colors to match their own branding.

Round Sky works with 50+ US lenders and thousands of global affiliates, and has been in the payday lead generation space since 2006.

Having signed up for the platform’s payday loan affiliate program, you’ll get instant access to revenue share and CPA offers, website widgets and forms, and API instructions. Affiliate managers are available by phone, email, Skype, Telegram, and other platforms to help resolve problems and optimize your campaigns.

URL: Round Sky affiliate program
Managed by: In-house
Commission rate: Up to $250 per lead
Cookie duration: n/a
Products/Services sold: Short-term loan leads
Payment methods: ACH, PayPal, wire, check
Market(s): US only
Additional resources: API instructions, website widgets, lead capture forms

6 Profitner

Don’t have the time or expertise to craft high-converting landing pages that generate a steady stream of loan leads? Profitner could be the affiliate marketing network you’ve been searching for.

The payday loan lead generation platform claims its landing page templates deliver conversion rates of over 30%, which seems too good to be true given that the median global landing page conversion rate is just 2.35%. But who are we to argue with Profitner’s figures?

Profitner doesn’t just help you convert more traffic; it also rewards you handsomely for referring potential customers, paying commissions of up to $230 per lead. Not all lead gen providers share commission figures, but this aligns with the industry’s best rates.

Approved affiliates get access to the aforementioned landing page templates, as well as pre-built JavaScript lead capture forms and support with API integration.

URL: Profitner affiliate program
Managed by: In-house
Commission rate: Up to $230 per lead
Cookie duration: n/a
Products/Services sold: Short-term loan leads
Payment methods: Wire transfer, Payoneer, ACH, PayPal, WebMoney, Skrill
Market(s): Unlisted
Additional resources: JavaScript forms, landing page templates, API integration

Conclusion

As you can see, the payday loan affiliate programs work a little differently from other affiliate niches.

Rather than earning cash by referring customers to make a direct purchase, you’re more likely to get paid for generating leads and selling them to payday loan providers via a lead generation platform.

Still, the fundamentals remain the same: you stand a higher chance of achieving success — and a job-replacement income — if you create a consistent source of traffic. That means building your own affiliate site.

Not sure where to start? We can help.

Sign up for our free training today to learn seven pro tips for building high-performing affiliate sites, including how to steal your competitors’ best keywords!