Want to know the secret to affiliate marketing success?
Study examples of successful affiliate marketing websites and implement their strategies.
To help you grow your traffic and revenue, we spent over a month analyzing 21 of the best affiliate marketing websites – and identified 63 actionable tips you can use to improve your site today.
Let’s dive straight into the examples.
Affiliate Marketing Websites to Learn From
- Wirecutter
- PCPartPicker
- NerdWallet
- VeryWellFit
- VPNMentor
- SafeWise
- Clever Hiker
- This Is Why Im Broke
- The Points Guy
- RTings
- Dog Food Advisor
- Money Saving Expert
- The Diamond Pro
- Headphones Addict
- Everyday Carry
- GearLab Baby
- Money To The Masses
- Modern Castle
- Garage Gym Reviews
- eBiz Facts
- The Hoops Geek
Each affiliate website in this list shows something different.
From rigorous product testing and systematic EEAT development to schema markup and link building, there are plenty of tactics to add to your affiliate marketing toolbox.
We list certain data for each affiliate marketing website. Here are the tools and strategies we used to find these:
- Estimated monthly visits: Ahrefs
- Year founded (when not available): Wayback Machine
- Estimated revenue: We used revenue reports when available. We extrapolated monthly revenue from the sale price if a website was sold.
1 Wirecutter
Wirecutter offers unbiased, rigorous product reviews for home, garden, health, fitness, tech, and more.
- Niche: General product reviews
- Year founded: 2011
- Monthly visits: 13.4 million
- Estimated revenue: The NY Times acquired Wirecutter for $30 million in 2016. Based on a 40x monthly valuation, their revenue in 2016 was likely about $750,000. 2024 revenue is unknown
How Wirecutter Stands Out
In the review arena, no single website does it quite like Wirecutter, whose dedication to rigor and quality is sometimes extreme but always thorough.
Their reviewers have years of experience using the type of product they’re reviewing. And they invest a significant amount and resources in researching and testing products.
Product reviews often include unique and frankly extraordinary tests designed to find the best possible products. For example, they set a room on fire to test fireproof safes, designed an obstacle course to test robot vacuums, and smeared food on hundreds of dishes to test dishwashers.
This high standard gives them a ton of credibility and reader trust, resulting in a much higher conversion rate than affiliate sites with a less hands-on approach.
They gather data from the best sources, from engineers and scientists to subject matter experts. And they don’t stop at the pros. They sift through countless customer reviews for testimonials from everyday product owners.
All of this adds to the already stellar reputation that this website enjoys, thanks in part to its New York Times ownership. This also sees its reviews posted on the home page of its parent website – how’s that for credibility?
The lengths the testers go to might seem extreme, but its value is evidenced in consumer trust. Many will head straight to Wirecutter for their product review fix. For instance, thousands of consumers search ” vacuum wirecutter ” monthly.
For more information on how to write great product reviews, check out Google’s Product Review Update page.
How Wirecutter Makes Money
Wirecutter has two revenue streams:
- Affiliate commissions
- A monthly subscription fee
Wirecutter is the only affiliate site I’ve seen that charges you to view their content. You get a limited number of free articles per month, and access to additional reviews is gated behind a monthly subscription.
This goes back to reputation. The enormous amount of effort they’ve put into building their database of rigorously tested products has made them a go-to source for recommendations – even if that means the reader has to pay for the information.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Build a brand people trust and actively seek out. While the effort required may seem excessive initially, it can be extremely valuable in the long run.
- Rigorously test your products. Before reviewing a product, consider what tests or experiments you can run to make the review truly valuable to readers.
- Give multiple purchase options. Providing two marketplaces where users can buy a product is worth considering. Even if one offers a better affiliate commission, offering two shifts the question from “Do I buy?” to “Which store should I buy it at?”
2 PCPartPicker
PCPartPicker helps people build PCs by recommending compatible components.
- Niche: PC building
- Year founded: 2010
- Monthly visits: 1.6 million
How PCPartPicker Stands Out
PCPartPicker stands out from other affiliate websites by offering a suite of handy tools that have made it the go-to website for PC builders.
The most impressive tool – and the centerpiece of their business – is the PC Builder.
It enables you to choose your preferred parts, check for compatibility issues, and find the best deals. If you buy a recommended product, PCPartPicker earns a commission.
Here are some helpful features they’ve implemented into the Builder:
- A compatibility alert to flag parts that won’t work together.
- A section that explains compatibility issues and how to solve them.
- The cheapest retailer for parts and how much it will cost (including shipping).
- A graphic that shows how all of the components fit together.
- A “Share Parts” section lets you share your build with anyone online – complete with links to the product pages on PCPartPicker’s website.
- And a price history graph with historical prices for the components you’re considering.
While the Builder is what most definitively sets them apart from competitors, they also have other innovative tools and solutions for PC builders, including pre-designed builds, a user marketplace for completed builds, and a thorough database with information about every component they recommend.
This dedication to building one-of-a-kind solutions for the thorny problem of tool compatibility has helped them dominate the PC component affiliate space.
How PCPartPicker Makes Money
PCPartPicker earns 100% of its revenue from affiliate commissions driven by the builder tool, build guides, and user-created builds.
What’s interesting about their monetization strategy is the many different ways they enable users to participate in, benefit from, and save money in the PC building niche.
- The marketplace allows users to earn money through PCPartPicker (by building PCs and selling them for a profit).
- The sharing feature lets users help others build PCs by giving them a quick overview of each component and what it will cost.
- The Builder helps people save money by mentioning coupons, showing historical pricing for parts, and showing the cheapest marketplace for each product.
These tactics have helped create a dedicated audience who use PCPart Picker for their own builds and share the site with others interested in building PCs.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Make complex tasks easy. Before PCPartPicker, building a computer was a nerve-wracking process. If there’s a thorny problem in your niche, consider how you might create a tool that makes the process easy to solve.
- Use Amazon’s “Add all to cart” feature. If you’re selling multiple items that complement each other, this feature eliminates friction by letting users buy everything with one click.
- Never stop improving. PCPartPicker could have simply created the PC Builder tool, and they likely would have found enormous success. But they continued iterating and adding new features and grew their status from “helpful tool” to “nexus of the PC building niche.”
3 NerdWallet
NerdWallet helps consumers and small businesses make smart money decisions.
- Niche: Finance
- Year founded: 2009
- Monthly visits: 28.9 million
- Estimated revenue: NerdWallet earned $538.9 million in 2022, which equals an average monthly revenue of $44.9 million
How NerdWallet Stands Out
NerdWallet offers a variety of tools that help readers find the best product for their unique situation.
These methods are often side-by-side on the same page. The variety of options boosts affiliate commissions, and they can be found on many pages across the site.
A great example of this is on their Best Credit Cards page, where they have a product comparison table, a filtering option for the table, and a link to a questionnaire that provides personalized recommendations.
Their data and recommendations are legit, thanks to complex, proprietary formulas for their star ratings system.
They focus on readers’ needs with strong editorial guidelines, so it’s easy to see why consumers go to NerdWallet for help making financial decisions—and why this dedication to quality and a tailored user experience has made them an affiliate marketing powerhouse.
How NerdWallet Makes Money
The operation may be complex, but NerdWallet’s monetization strategy is simple: affiliate marketing.
The beauty is in how they promote their products.
Most websites have a static approach to affiliate marketing that doesn’t change based on who visits the website.
NerdWallet offers highly personalized recommendations and guidance through features like product comparison tables, sophisticated calculators, detailed questionnaires, an app that provides customized guidance, and detailed finance guides with relevant offers embedded in the content.
Okay, and what products earn them the most money?
Here’s what their 2022 Q4 investor report says:
- Their top moneymaker was credit card referrals, accounting for 37% of revenue.
- Loans – including mortgages, auto loans, and student loans – made up 15% of revenue.
- All other categories – including insurance, taxes, investing, financial planning, travel planning, banking services, and small business services – generated the remaining 46%.
Top Affiliate Programs
Many of NerdWallet’s partners don’t have public affiliate programs. NerdWallet can only earn referrals from these companies because their enormous traffic numbers enable them to make private agreements.
However, NerdWallet does work with some companies that offer public affiliate programs. Here are some of the top finance affiliate programs they use:
You can also check our list of credit card affiliate programs and insurance affiliate programs.
What We Can Learn
- Put readers first: Provide an unmatched, excellent user experience—ideally, a programmatic one that can be tailored to each reader’s unique situation.
- Focus on big earners. Even a massive website like NerdWallet—which currently has 11 major topic categories—earns more than a third of its revenue from just one of those.
- Explore private partnerships. Even if a company doesn’t offer a public affiliate program, they may entertain a private agreement if you have a strong brand and high traffic.
4 VeryWellFit
VeryWellFit provides authoritative content in the health and fitness niche.
- Niche: Nutrition and fitness
- Year founded: 2018
- Monthly visits: 5.5 million
How VeryWellFit Stands Out
VeryWellFit (VWF) stands out through its intelligent and extensive use of schema markup.
A schema is a set of structured data that helps search engines more effectively understand and display specific information about a website’s pages.
Their deep integration of schema into their SEO strategy substantially boosts their EEAT and visibility in the SERP, both of which can increase rankings and traffic.
Let’s take a deep dive into the types of schema they use and the information they include in their schema markup.
Organization schema: this serves as an umbrella for various sub-schemas.
- sameAs schema indicates that other websites and social media accounts are owned by or closely related to the brand. VWF has sameAs schema pointing at their Wikipedia page and social media accounts
- parentOrganization schema shares information about the company that owns the website.
- address schema shares the organization’s physical address.
- logo schema shares information about their logo.
Article schema: This is predominantly used for VFW’s blog content and encompasses several sub-schemas:
- citation schema shares their sources.
- author schema contains the author’s name and credentials.
- audience schema describes the intended audience of the content.
- itemList schema describes the different elements in list posts.
- review schema shares detailed information about product reviews, including ratings, price, and many more elements.
- mainEntityOfPage clarifies that the content is medical in nature.
Their Author pages have a Person schema, which includes information about their name, a description of themselves, the sameAs social channels, job title, education, and areas of expertise.
They also use breadcrumb schema extensively to help search engines understand their site architecture and hierarchy.
Start with the RankMath WordPress plugin to harness the EEAT and SERP visibility benefits of the schema for your website.
It doesn’t include every type of schema, but it makes it easy to add the most essential schema types without implementing the markup code yourself.
How VeryWellFit Makes Money
VeryWellFit makes money through affiliate commissions and display ads. Some of their top products include shoes, exercise equipment, and meal delivery services.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Use schema markup to boost SEO and SERP visibility. Implementing a variety of schema markups on different pages can significantly increase your EEAT and enhance your visibility in search results.
- Fill out the schema as completely as possible. Providing comprehensive schema data allows search engines to understand your website better. The more information you add, the more Google will trust you.
- Use RankMath for easy schema implementation. Manually adding schema markup can seem daunting, but plugins like RankMath can simplify the process. Just remember that it doesn’t include every single schema type, and you may need to implement lesser-known schema directly to your site’s HTML code.
5 VPNMentor
VPN Mentor helps people by providing VPN recommendations and internet privacy advice.
- Niche: VPN
- Year founded: 2014
- Monthly visits: 800,000
- Estimated revenue: Purchased in 2022 for $150 million. Based on a 40x monthly revenue valuation, their monthly revenue is likely around $3.75 million
How VPNMentor Stands Out
VPNMentor has a dedicated team of cybersecurity researchers who find evidence of data breaches in major software programs and publish reports on those breaches.
They run PR campaigns to get those reports in front of writers and journalists at major news publications, which gives them plenty of high-authority backlinks when the publishers run stories on the data breaches. These backlinks increase their rankings and help drive more traffic.
For example, check the impressive backlink profile of a data breach report involving Spotify:
This earned them incredibly valuable links from high-DR sites like Wikipedia, CNET, WeLiveSecurity, and hundreds of other sites.
We discussed this innovative link-building strategy in our VPN niche deep-dive podcast episode.
While little is publicly known about their exact methods, here’s an overview of what we believe is happening:
- VPNMentor’s team of cybersecurity experts is performing ethical hacking. They find evidence of data breaches, privately notify the companies who experienced the breach to let them fix the issue, and then go public with the news once the companies have been made aware.
- They likely employ multiple PR firms to ensure all of their reports receive massive news coverage from publications in many different languages and locations.
- The cost of maintaining a team of researchers and hiring PR firms is mitigated by the increased rankings, traffic, and conversions that the swell of backlinks provides.
Of course, many sites won’t be able to hire researchers and PR firms to promote their content, but there can still be plenty of value in taking a more budget-oriented, DIY approach.
To learn more about running a successful PR campaign for link-building purposes, check out our podcast on the topic:
How VPNMentor Makes Money
VPNMentor earns money through VPN affiliate commissions. Its parent company, Kape Technologies, also owns multiple VPN companies, and it promotes those services heavily in its content.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Conduct original research for content and link-building. Uncovering new information or insights within your niche can serve as compelling content for your audience.
- Invest in strategic resources and partnerships. This could include hiring experts in your field to produce unique, high-quality content or partnering with PR firms to get your content in front of a larger audience.
- Cultivate relationships with media outlets. Building relationships with journalists and media outlets in your niche can be a powerful way to increase your site’s visibility.
6 Safewise
Safewise provides product recommendations and tips for home safety and security.
- Niche: Home safety and security
- Year founded: 2013
- Monthly visits: 670,000
How Safewise Stands Out
Safewise attracts backlinks by providing in-depth statistics pages on everything from home safety and identifying theft to burglary and crime rates. This helps improve their Google rankings and drives more traffic and affiliate conversions.
But the smart link building tactics don’t stop at topic selection.
Safewise’s approach to citing sources seems clear and straightforward at first glance – neatly organized footnotes that provide the source for the information presented.
However, these footnotes are more than meets the eye. They’re actually jump links that lead to an extensive list of sources at the bottom of the page.
Here’s an example from their Home Safety and Security stats page:
For readers – many of whom are writers searching for a credible statistic to cite – this can be a bit of a maze.
When faced with the task of combing through the list to find the appropriate source, many will not bother and will instead link directly to the Safewise article.
Here’s a quick look at the impressive backlink profile for the Home Security stats page:
Safewise also strategically places one of its own articles as the third item in the Sources list. This positioning places it directly in the middle of the reader’s line of sight when they click the jump link. As a result, their content is subtly highlighted and primed for more traffic and engagement.
Sneaky? Perhaps. But it’s undeniably brilliant for SEO.
And finally, they incorporate EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) into their statistics pages by featuring a relevant quote from a criminal justice and theft expert at the end of each section.
This provides additional value to the reader and signals to Google that the content is credible and authoritative.
How Safewise Makes Money
They make affiliate income on the products they recommend. Their most popular products include safes, security cameras, smart doorbells, and self-defense tools like tasers and stun guns.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Create statistics pages to attract backlinks. If you can build a statistics page that ranks, you can generate high-quality passive backlinks that would otherwise be hard to get.
- If you have a sizeable audience, run a survey and publish unique data. This gives you unique data that no one else in the industry has, and that uniqueness will help your statistics page rank higher. Other statistics pages will also link to you as the source for their data. For more on this, check out our podcast on running surveys:
- Optimize your statistics page. Add expert commentary to boost EEAT and increase your page’s chance of ranking. Set up footnote jump links to a sources list to encourage readers to link to your page.
7 Clever Hiker
Clever Hiker provides guidance and gear recommendations for backpackers, hikers, and campers.
- Niche: Backpacking, hiking, and camping
- Year founded: 2012
- Monthly visits: 100,000
How Clever Hiker Stands Out
Clever Hiker’s standout affiliate marketing strategies are their free video courses, and trip guides to popular wilderness destinations.
These resources give them a hard-to-replicate traffic source and boost EEAT and credibility by proving the authors “walk their talk.”
The video courses act as beginner-friendly introductions to wilderness exploration.
This approach captures people near the beginning of the customer journey. Rather than focusing solely on high buyer intent like most affiliate websites, they educate beginners about the fundamentals.
As these beginners gain knowledge and confidence, they’re more likely to engage in the niche and purchase products Clever Hiker recommends.
However, a free course is only effective if it’s up-to-date.
To address this, they made sure that the videos – which were made over 8 years ago – covered evergreen topics and didn’t mention specific products.
For example, their video about ultralight shelters only covers general tent categories.
Clever Hiker would have needed constant video updates if they covered specific tents.
However, focusing on timeless fundamentals has allowed their content to stay relevant for years.
Along with their courses, Clever Hiker offers extensive guides to 49 popular destinations, complete with crucial trail info, author photos from the trails, trip planning resources, gear advice, and much more.
How Clever Hiker Makes Money
They recommend affiliate products related to backpacking, camping, and hiking. Some of their most popular products include backpacking hammocks, freeze-dried meals, water bottles, and sleeping pads.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Create a free, evergreen video course that teaches the fundamentals of your niche. You can build audience trust by establishing your site as one that knows what it’s talking about, and you can also convert those newbies into affiliate conversions.
- Share your own relatable experiences. This proves to readers that you’re involved in the niche, boosting EEAT and audience trust. You can also recommend the items needed to complete the tasks, giving you another avenue to earn commissions.
- While Clever Hiker didn’t take this route, offering a free course can be an incredible lead magnet for a paid course. We employ this strategy here at Authority Hacker with our free authority site training course.
8 This Is Why Im Broke
This Is Why Im Broke is not your usual affiliate marketing website. They’ve carved out a unique niche by highlighting entertaining novelty items.
- Niche: Novelty items and gifts
- Year founded: 2011
- Monthly visits: 545,000
How This Is Why Im Broke Stands Out
This Is Why Im Broke is committed to featuring fun, shareable, and interesting products, whether or not they have an affiliate partnership with the product creator.
The single-minded focus on products is built into the site’s user experience, allowing users to scroll endlessly through wild and wacky finds (and generating a ton of lucrative clicks to affiliate offers).
They often source these unique products through their product pitch page, where they invite creators to pitch their offerings directly. This allows them to find products that most other sites have yet to hear of.
They also use their product catalog to create gift guides for a variety of people and circumstances, driving substantial organic traffic from Google.
How This Is Why Im Broke Makes Money
ThisIsWhyImBroke earns its bread entirely through affiliate commissions. According to a Reddit AMA with the site owner, 66% of its revenue comes from Amazon, with 80% of that from products not even featured on the website.
This is possible because when a user clicks on one of their Amazon affiliate links, a cookie is placed on their device, which tracks any purchases they make on Amazon within a certain time frame.
So, even if the user is driven to Amazon purely by curiosity but doesn’t buy the item, the site still earns commissions from unrelated products that Amazon recommends.
In essence, they’ve found a way to monetize window shopping by directing high traffic to Amazon, one of the most powerful online conversion machines.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Affiliate niches don’t always have to be serious. If you have a knack for spotting light-hearted novelty products, you can build a successful affiliate marketing website without in-depth reviews and rigorous testing.
- Product-focused websites can still thrive. Despite many recommendation-heavy sites taking a hit from Google updates, ThisIsWhyImBroke proves that the model is still viable if done right.
- Don’t write off Amazon affiliate websites just yet. Although Amazon commissions are lower than ever, you can still earn a decent amount through the Amazon affiliate program if you drive a lot of traffic.
9 The Points Guy
The Points Guy (TPG) is a website in the travel niche with an emphasis on loyalty programs and credit cards.
- Niche: Loyalty programs, credit cards, and travel
- Year founded: 2010
- Monthly visits: 2.6 million
- Estimated revenue: $4.5 million per month
How The Points Guy Stands Out
There are two things that set TPG apart from other affiliate websites:
- Their focus is on the travel sub-niche of credit card points and rewards.
- Their transition into a broad lifestyle media brand.
This approach not only built a dedicated audience and topical authority but also drove traffic through their news arm and social channels, increased exposure for their affiliate offers, and built more links through viral social content.
Initially, TPG was all about traveling efficiently by using certain credit cards or rewards programs.
While they could have easily stuck to the miles-and-points content and still been quite successful, they pivoted into a broader lifestyle and travel niche.
Today, TPG’s website and social channels balance core credit card advice with broader travel news and lifestyle content.
Their engaging content across platforms lures readers back to their site, getting more eyeballs on their credit card affiliate offers.
This is especially noticeable on social channels like Instagram, where much of the content is unrelated to credit cards or travel rewards.
How The Points Guy Makes Money
The Points Guy makes most of their money from credit card referrals, which they promote in a variety of ways.
Similar to NerdWallet, they have an expansive collection of detailed credit card comparison articles that provide an in-depth look at the features, benefits, and costs associated with various credit cards.
They also offer a service called CardMatch, which is a questionnaire that matches you with the right credit card for your situation.
In addition to credit cards, TPG leverages hotel and airline rewards programs, reviewing them while nudging readers to sign up for associated credit cards.
Finally, they show unobtrusive display ads that promote credit card offers and their CardMatch service.
Top Affiliate Programs
While there isn’t any publicly available information about The Points Guy’s credit card affiliate agreements, you can still profit from credit card referrals through the Bankrate Credit Cards affiliate program.
You can also check out our list of financial affiliate programs and travel affiliate programs.
What We Can Learn
- Find your angle: In a saturated market, targeting a unique sub-niche can help you stand out.
- Mix it up with content: Publishing news or entertainment content within your niche can boost your social media and email engagement, drive extra traffic, and create link-building opportunities.
- Maximize your affiliate offers: Use banner ads to promote your top affiliates. High conversion rates and value can give you a higher ROI than standard display ads.
10 Rtings
Rtings specializes in reviews of electronics and home goods.
- Niche: Product reviews
- Year founded: 2011
- Monthly visits: 6 million
How Rtings Stands Out
Rtings uses a granular quantitative scoring process. This data-driven approach enhances reader trust and substantially increases affiliate conversions.
Here’s how it works:
- They define unique testing categories based on common use cases.
- They identify score components for each use case.
- They test and assign a weighted score based on how crucial it is for successful task completion.
This is best shown with an example.
In their Best Ninja Blenders review, they test blenders on multi-purpose blending, smoothie-making, crushing ice, soup blending, and professional use.
Each of these categories is broken down into multiple elements.
For instance, the smoothie-making capability is rated based on how well the blender can process fibrous ingredients, its noise level, its build quality, and how easy it is to clean afterward.
To ensure an accurate review, they apply weights to each score.
For example, 60% of the smoothie-making score is based on the blender’s ability to blend fibrous ingredients. The remaining 40% is divided equally among the other four elements – build quality, cleaning, noise level, and crushed ice capability.
Each element is given a granular score from 1 to 10. With the weighting applied, each category receives an overall score out of 10.
By providing such a detailed breakdown and scoring system, Rtings.com ensures its readers understand the thorough research and consideration that goes into each review.
If you’d like to learn more about the Rtings approach to product reviews, we discussed them at length in this podcast:
How Rtings Makes Money
Rtings.com earns revenue from affiliate commissions and an “Insider Access” subscription program.
Their affiliate monetization is pretty standard. But unlike other affiliate sites, they focus on a very narrow product range. They currently review only 12 product categories, but they cover every base within these.
For example, their TV category features 18 different types of TVs. This means they can review each product type comprehensively despite limited bandwidth.
Subscribers gain full access to their suite of product selection tools and in-depth looks at the raw testing data.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Take a granular, quantitative approach to your product reviews. Consider the major use cases of your product. Apply scoring weights based on different elements’ importance for each use case.
- Narrow your focus. Center your attention on a select group of product types. You’ll build incredible topical authority, learn the ins and outs of those products better than anyone, and recycle your tests for use in many different roundup reviews and comparison articles.
- Maintain up-to-date reviews. Rtings often revise reviews and product roundups with information about the latest products, and they routinely remove inferior products when better products are released.
11 Dog Food Advisor
Dog Food Advisor provides dog food recommendations for different breeds, buyer preferences, and health conditions.
- Niche: Dog food
- Year founded: 2008
- Monthly visits: 990,000
- Estimated revenue: Dog Food Advisor was purchased by Wag! in 2023 for $9 million. Based on that valuation, their monthly revenue is likely around $225,000
How Dog Food Advisor Stands Out
Dog Food Advisor effectively uses pop-ups to build their email subscriptions and convert visitors to regular buyers.
Their lead magnet is a dog food recall alert newsletter. It’s a great choice because every visitor to the site is probably a dog owner, and the urgent nature of a recall notice means readers will be highly motivated to subscribe.
Here are the tactics they use to increase the engagement of their pop ups:
- Eye-catching pop-up featuring a cute dog.
- Social-proof claims that 750,000+ others have enrolled in the recall alerts.
- Specific recall locations (US and Canada) provide relevance.
- Use of ‘lifesaving’ in copy, conveying the possible risks of not subscribing.
- Yellow and red colors for urgency.
- Emphasis that the recall alerts are free.
And here’s a banner pop up that shows all of those strategies in action:
They also employ an exit intent pop up that appears when you move your mouse to exit the page.
As you can see, the exit intent pop up uses the same CTR-boosting elements as the banner pop up.
Beyond the pop ups, they also heavily promote the recall alert notifications on their home page, giving it important real estate near the top of the page and at the bottom of their home page:
These link to a page on their site that lists all of the latest recalls. This page also has a call-to-action to sign up for the email list:
When you click on that link, you get to a sign up page that allows you to add your email to the list. It uses many of the same elements as the pop ups, and also makes it easy for readers to share the page on social media.
How Dog Food Advisor Makes Money
They earn affiliate income from their dog food recommendations. Some of their most popular affiliate products include puppy food, grain-free food, and dry food.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Use exit intent pop ups. These can significantly increase conversions by capturing people who would have left your site and never returned.
- Create a relevant, urgent lead magnet. Your lead magnet will be most effective if it is broadly relevant to your audience and may save them or their loved ones from harm.
- Consider the copy you use in your pop ups. Even a slight change in wording can significantly impact conversion rates. In particular, understand the core motivation for signing up for what you’re offering.
12 Money Saving Expert
Money Saving Expert (MSE) provides UK-specific advice about loans, credit cards, insurance, and other financial topics.
- Niche: UK financial advice
- Year founded: 2003
- Monthly visits: 6.5 million
How Money Saving Expert Stands Out
MSE excels by simplifying complex financial topics.
This positions them as the go-to source of financial advice and product recommendations, serving millions of UK residents and generating substantial income from affiliate commissions.
Here are some of the general tactics they use to improve reader comprehension:
- Content is written at around an 8th-grade level. Jargon and complex topics are always broken down into layman’s terms that anyone can understand. A free readability tool like Hemingway can help with this.
- Expandable FAQ sections answer relevant questions that don’t fit into the flow of the content.
- Quotes from regular people (not financial experts) explain the value of the advice from the consumer’s point of view.
- Use of UK-specific phrases and spelling.
- Detailed, step-by-step instructions for important processes are provided – complete with a breakdown of costs.
- Easily skimmed content with frequent subheadings, lists, tables, quotes, and images.
- Users can provide article feedback on their forum, helping MSE make future iterations of articles more helpful.
- Embedding helpful videos from their YouTube channel that provide a more visual way to understand the topic.
- Frequent updates keep content fresh.
Above all, they create helpful, easy-to-digest content that resonates with most readers.
How Money Saving Expert Make Money
MSE earns revenue from affiliate commissions. Its top product categories include bank accounts, credit cards, and loan referrals.
Top Affiliate Programs
Most of their partners don’t have public affiliate programs. However, our guide to the best financial affiliate programs provides alternatives.
What We Can Learn
- Keep it simple. Don’t assume readers can grasp complex vocabulary or jargon easily. Write at an 8th-grade level and break down complex concepts.
- Make it skimmable and interactive. Incorporating interactive elements such as jump links, bulleted lists, tables, FAQ sections, and highlighted key information can enhance the user experience. Visual aids like tables, infographics, or videos can make content more digestible and engaging.
- Update your content frequently. If any aspect of your content becomes outdated, update it! Content refreshes are great for SEO, and they show your audience that you’re committed to providing reliable and accurate information.
13 The Diamond Pro
The Diamond Pro helps people by offering accurate information, personal buying advice from industry veterans, and transparent reviews about diamonds and related products.
- Niche: Gemstones, precious metals, and jewelry
- Year founded: 2009
- Monthly visits: 251,000
How The Diamond Pro Stands Out
The Diamond Pro differentiates itself through deal alerts, “ask an expert” forms, and unique ways of including affiliate links in educational content. These tactics increase conversions and improve email collection.
Let’s start with the deal alerts.
These colored box-outs advertise discounts at popular diamond retailers. Readers must enter their email addresses to get the discount code, doubling as a clever email collection tactic and affiliate traffic driver.
They also collect emails and earn commissions by embedding a form at the bottom of each article that lets readers ask questions about diamonds, gold, or jewelry. A diamond expert will respond with tips, recommendations, and an affiliate link for the site offering the best deal.
Finally, they incorporate affiliate links in educational content by embedding tools and quizzes.
One example is a gold pricing calculator they embed in gold-related content. When readers fill out the calculator, they are shown a form that offers a free quote from a gold buyer.
They also embed a simple quiz that shows the reader two diamonds and asks them to select the one that matches the description.
Clicking on either redirects you to a website where you can buy the diamond.
How The Diamond Pro Makes Money
The Diamond Pro makes money by referring people to websites that buy and sell diamonds, gold, and similar items.
Their unique strategy of answering questions and providing recommendations directly via email works well in the diamond niche due to the high value of the products. A 5% commission on a $6,500 purchase is worth a few emails back and forth.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Use deal alerts to drive traffic and collect emails. If you can negotiate exclusive discounts with your affiliate partners, you can either offer them for free to generate more upfront commissions or require an email signup to build your list.
- Offer targeted advice to collect emails and recommended products. An “Ask an Expert” form at the end of articles or product pages lets you provide valuable advice and recommend relevant products, leading to potential conversions.
- Add affiliate links to educational content. Use quizzes, calculators, and other interactive elements to generate affiliate commissions from informational posts.
14 Headphones Addict
Headphones Addict tests headphones and earbuds to discover the best options for different use cases.
- Niche: Headphones
- Year founded: 2015
- Monthly visits: 28,000
How Headphones Addict Stand Out
Headphones Addict has a sophisticated internal linking strategy, which helps them improve their rankings with high topical authority and earn more revenue by recommending additional products. It also improves their site architecture, a crucial part of SEO.
This tactic is made possible by a core of over 150 pieces of informational content, which they link to heavily from both their commercial content and other info content.
For example, this headphone review links to 30 internal posts – 20 informational posts that explain topics discussed in the article in more detail and 10 relevant product reviews.
All links are contextually relevant and never inserted unless it makes sense to do so.
They also have individual reviews for every product they feature in a roundup review, allowing them to link to the individual review and help people who want more information than a roundup review summary can provide.
How Headphones Addict Makes Money
Headphones Addict makes money through affiliate commissions. Their most popular products include earbuds, noise-canceling headphones, and workout headphones.
Top Affiliate Programs
For other relevant programs, check our list of electronics affiliate programs.
What We Can Learn
- Build a strong foundation of informational content. This tells Google you have strong topical authority and gives your reviews extra credibility because the relevant on-site resources signal to readers that you’re knowledgeable in your niche.
- Link to relevant resources. Begin by writing comprehensively to cover all the key elements a reader needs to know. Then, identify terms or concepts that might need more explanation and link them to the informational articles on your site that explain those topics.
- Use concise and descriptive anchor text. Include only essential words needed to describe the topic. Ensure the text accurately describes the link destination because Google uses anchor text to pinpoint what your pages are about.
15 Everyday Carry
Everyday Carry (EDC) recommends practical everyday items you can carry on your person.
- Niche: Essential everyday gear
- Year founded: 2009
- Monthly visits: 92,000
How Everyday Carry Stands Out
EDC was purchased by Ridge – a high-end wallet company – in 2022. This acquisition has increased sales of their wallets, which now feature prominently across the site.
This purchase was a good idea for The Ridge for a few reasons.
- Wallets are a centerpiece of the “everyday carry” philosophy. Not everyone needs a knife, flashlight, or watch, but every man I know carries a wallet daily. A knife or flashlight company might not have found as much value in buying EDC.
- As it’s a male-focused site, most people who browse Everyday Carry need a wallet. Virtually every visitor is a potential customer.
- The Ridge earns money from the site’s other affiliate categories. Their purchase doubles as a traffic source for their products and a secondary revenue stream independent of their wallet business.
What’s impressive about this merger is how The Ridge has inserted its products into Everyday Carry content without seeming spammy or pushy.
First, The Ridge doesn’t hide that they are affiliated with EDC. The top of every page clearly states that The Ridge “supports” EDC. This transparency improves reader trust and prevents a scandal in the EDC community if someone were to figure out that The Ridge owned EDC.
They also curate themed “loadouts” that combine items with a similar theme into one batch of products. Ridge wallets are prominent in these.
Many of their wallet roundup reviews contain a Ridge wallet, which usually takes the top spot.
Finally, their more general buying and gift guides, which feature a variety of products, usually include a Ridge wallet near the top of the post.
How Everyday Carry Makes Money
EDC makes money by recommending Ridge wallets, earning affiliate commissions on other product recommendations, and sponsorship opportunities, which include sponsored content, giveaways, and social and email promotions.
Top Affiliate Programs
For affiliate programs with similar products, check our articles listing the top survival affiliate programs, self-defense affiliate programs, and tech affiliate programs.
What We Can Learn
- Creating a product is a great monetization strategy. Selling your own product is more involved than promoting affiliate products, but you’ll keep a lot more of the profit.
- Subtle promotion is king. If you sell products, you need to be thoughtful about how you promote them. The integrity of the blog has to be maintained, or you risk losing the trust of your readership.
- Ensure your product is something the majority of readers would want. This strategy won’t work if there isn’t a significant overlap between the website’s readers and interest in your product.
16 GearLab Baby
GearLab Baby helps parents find the best baby products for their children.
- Niche: Baby products
- Year founded: 2011
- Monthly visits: 297,000
How GearLab Baby Stands Out
GearLab Baby places a lot of emphasis on building EEAT, which helps them rank higher in the search results and generate more traffic.
EEAT is a complex topic with many different elements. Here’s a summary of what GearLab Baby does right in this department:
- Referencing their pediatrician-led credentials on the homepage twice above the fold.
- Utilizing appropriate schema on important pages, including Organization schema on their general About page, Person schema on their author About pages, and article schema on each blog post.
- Author pages showcase authors’ photos, backgrounds, expertise, and credentials.
- The general About page defines the company’s mission, purpose, and goals.
- A unique physical address and a direct contact form on their contact page.
- Reviews include “experience-proving language” showcasing direct experience with the product. An example is “We had to take the crib apart to swap parts around.”
- Trust basics like a privacy policy, terms & conditions, and an SSL certificate.
Check out our YouTube video for a complete walkthrough of how to improve your site’s EEAT.
How GearLab Baby Makes Money
GearLab Baby makes money through affiliate commissions. Some of their top products include car seats, strollers, and diapers.
Top Affiliate Programs
The only affiliate program GearLab Baby uses is Amazon.
For other programs, you can use in the baby niche, check our list of baby products affiliate programs.
What We Can Learn
- Treat every niche as if it’s YMYL. YMYL stands for Your Money Or Your Life, meaning the content can affect your health or financial situation. To rank for YMYL content, you need someone with real experience and credentials to author or review your content. Applying this concept to any niche can help you rank higher.
- Implement schema on important pages. Your general About page should have an organization schema, Author pages should have a person schema, and all posts should have an article schema. You can use the RankMath plugin to add these.
- Use experience-proving language. Google wants to see that the author of a post has experience with the topic. Using first-person language that indicates personal knowledge – whether physically reviewing a product or performing the steps in a guide – helps prove to Google that you know what you’re talking about.
17 Money to the Masses
Money to the Masses is a UK-centric personal finance website.
- Niche: Consumer finance
- Year founded: 2010
- Monthly visits: 150,000
How Money to the Masses Stands Out
Money to the Masses uses video and frequent content updates to keep high-value articles fresh and at the top of the search results. This helps them beat higher authority competition and drive more traffic and affiliate conversions.
For example, they rank in the top 3 for the lucrative keyword “best credit cards uk” despite having low domain authority compared to the competition.
There are a few strategies that help them accomplish this.
First, they ensure the title displays the latest month and year, signaling to Google and users that the content is current.
They also release monthly YouTube videos – simple screen shares of the updated article narrated by their founder, Damien. These videos are low-effort and low-budget, but that’s okay because they’re not trying to succeed on YouTube. The videos are merely a vehicle for SEO improvement; high production quality isn’t required.
Finally, they keep the content fresh by updating articles with their latest recommendations. Merely changing the title or adding videos will not move the SEO needle; the content must also evolve.
For a deeper dive into what Money to the Masses does right, check this podcast episode:
How Money to the Masses Makes Money
Money to the Masses earns money from financial product affiliate commissions. Some of their top products include credit cards, bank account signups, and mortgage loans.
Top Affiliate Programs
Many of their top affiliate deals are private and not accessible to the public. However, they do use some public affiliate programs.
What We Can Learn
- Update your content regularly. By frequently refreshing your content with the latest information, you can gain a competitive edge over websites that don’t put as much effort in — even if they have higher domain authority. Remember to update the title with the month and year to inform readers and Google that the content is fresh!
- Use YouTube videos to boost your SEO. Creating relevant YouTube videos and embedding them in your content can boost your SEO efforts. This works even better if you refresh the videos along with your content.
- Focus on practicality over production value. Going through your updated post and sharing useful information in a single-take “talking head” video for YouTube can provide a substantial SEO boost.
18 Modern Castle
Modern Castle is a home products review site with an emphasis on vacuums, air purifiers, and furniture.
- Niche: Home product reviews
- Year founded: 2017
- Monthly visits: 50,000
How Modern Castle Stands Out
Similar to Wirecutter, they rigorously test their products by running unique experiments. Where they go beyond is in making detailed YouTube videos for all of their product reviews.
While their videos boost their organic traffic by proving they have real experience with the products, they’ve also performed exceptionally well on YouTube, garnering over 10,000,000 views in five years.
What truly stands out is how they’ve systemized their review process for several different types of products—vacuums, robot vacuums, and air purifiers.
Each review follows a similar, replicable format, and videos are scripted, further simplifying the review process for new products.
The company’s narrow focus on popular products and streamlined review process allows it to compete successfully in a crowded niche with a small team.
Their vacuum reviews exemplify their comprehensive, straightforward approach. They cover every feature, run cleaning tests on various debris types and surfaces, and rate them for battery life, noise, maneuverability, and maintenance.
While the videos aren’t flashy or overly polished—they consist of narration, product demonstrations, and test footage—the exhaustive and original experiments are enough to help Modern Castle achieve a high level of affiliate marketing success.
Extra: For a deeper dive into their review methodology, read through their About Page.
How Modern Castle Makes Money
Modern Castle earns money through affiliate commissions and sponsored videos on its YouTube channel. Its top affiliate categories include vacuums, robot vacuums, and air purifiers.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Incorporate video into your review process. Video will make your reviews more trustworthy, boost your SEO, drive traffic through YouTube, and give you more real estate on the SERP by ranking for both an article and a video.
- Systemize your review process. Focus on a high-traffic vertical with constant new product releases and capitalize by running each product through the same tests and using the same format for all your reviews.
- Script your videos. While there’s value in an off-the-cuff approach, scripting your review videos can reduce shooting gaffes and editing time, allowing you to review more products in less time.
19 eBiz Facts
eBiz Facts provides guidance on how to make money online.
- Niche: Online business
- Year founded: 2018
- Monthly visits: 60,000
How eBiz Facts Stands Out
eBiz Facts distinguishes itself by expertly meshing user-generated content (UGC) and editorial material.
Utilizing UGC effectively isn’t easy, but it can substantially enhance your site’s credibility and EEAT, thereby boosting traffic and creating a unique, hard-to-copy asset.
They encourage readers to submit course reviews, which they publish under their primary review, to calculate an overall product rating. These reviews are surprisingly detailed, including the reviewer’s identity, course rating, earnings, course duration, pros and cons, and specific aspects like presentation and value.
An example from their review of our Authority Site System course:
They only publish valid reviews, with reviewers providing proof of course purchase. To maintain quality, they vet each reviewer’s identity and content, rewarding users with a website backlink and a small charity donation.
It’s worth noting that eBiz Facts doesn’t directly pay for reviews to prevent spamming.
To further leverage their UGC, they combine all of their course reviews into one mega roundup review. Here’s an example from their best affiliate marketing courses page.
Alongside high-quality UGC, their well-researched and honest editorial process has been crucial to their ascent as an online course review powerhouse.
This combination was necessary; if they had merely focused on editorial quality or great UGC, they likely wouldn’t have reached the heights they have.
How eBiz Facts Makes Money
They make money through the affiliate commissions they earn from recommending courses.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Leverage user-generated content. Encouraging users to add their reviews to your product reviews can boost traffic and conversion rates. It also builds a moat around your reviews that the competition will have difficulty overcoming, cementing your status at the top of the SERP.
- Provide slight incentives. If you ask users to leave reviews, be careful about how you incentivize them. You need to offer something of value to accumulate a significant number of reviews, but if the incentive is too great, you may get people who try to game the system with inauthentic spam.
- Couple your reviews with high-quality editorial content. High-quality UGC won’t matter if your primary content is low-quality. Only a combination of great editorial content and great UGC will produce a long-term win.
20 Garage Gym Reviews
Garage Gym Reviews (GGR) helps people build their ideal home gym.
- Niche: Home gym
- Year founded: 2014
- Monthly visits: 1.3 million
How Garage Gym Reviews Stands Out
GGR capitalizes on people’s love for discounts with a prominent section in their navigation dedicated to coupons.
The site generates substantial traffic using four types of coupon pages, including:
- General product discount pages. Example: Treadmill Coupons
- Company-specific discount pages. Example: Titan Fitness Coupon Code
- Holiday discount pages. Example: 4th of July Treadmill Sales
- Military discount page: A constantly updated page that shares all companies who offer discounts for active U.S. servicemembers and veterans.
As you can see, some of these pages drive a lot of visitors.
The SEO traffic isn’t the only benefit. They target searchers with high buyer intent. People looking for coupons have usually already decided to buy and are looking for the best deals.
By capturing these searchers, you can direct them to merchant websites through your affiliate links or by offering them an exclusive affiliate discount code you’ve negotiated with the merchant. Either way, you’re likely earning a commission!
Now that we’ve established clear incentives for publishing coupon content, we have to answer an important question: aside from the coupon codes, what do you write about?
Well, it depends on the type of coupon page.
For company coupon pages, GGR includes the following information:
- The coupon codes
- How to apply them at checkout
- Common holidays the company’s products go on sale
- Why GGR likes the company’s products
- Why you should buy from the company
- FAQs about the company.
And on general product coupon pages, they include:
- Common types of discounts. Examples include shipping/assembly discounts, financing, holiday sales, and bundles.
- Specific coupon codes. They list the top companies offering discount codes and link to their company-specific coupon pages.
- FAQ section. They end the content with FAQs about coupon codes for the product type.
The content might seem rather thin compared to what’s required to rank for other high-traffic keywords, but it’s enough to rank over other sites that simply list promo codes and nothing else.
How Garage Gym Reviews Makes Money
Garage Gym Reviews makes money through affiliate commissions. Some of their top products include pre-workout supplements, squat racks, and treadmills.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- Leverage coupon and deal pages. By creating pages about general product discounts, company-specific discounts, holiday discounts, and military discounts in your niche, you can drive significant traffic for high buyer intent keywords.
- Don’t just publish the coupon codes. Offer additional information, such as how to apply them at checkout, information on common sales events, reasons you like the company’s products, and FAQs about the company.
- Add your coupon pages to the navigation menu. This can improve your coupon page SEO through improved site architecture, and many visitors will notice you have extensive coupon resources and may re-visit your site the next time they buy something.
21 The Hoops Geek
The Hoops Geek (THG) provides basketball shoe recommendations and coaching advice.
- Niche: Basketball
- Year founded: 2016
- Monthly visits: 161,000
How The Hoops Geek Stands Out
The Hoops Geek takes a “review aggregation” approach to product reviews. These in-depth basketball shoe reviews integrate YouTube reviews, leveraging the EEAT and conversion-boosting benefits of product testing and expertise without physically buying or testing the shoes.
Pretty smart, right?
For instance, their review of Air Jordan 36 incorporates insights from eight expert YouTube reviewers.
It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. The YouTubers get more views from people who find them through THG, and THG uses its content to inform its product reviews.
They watch each review — or at least read the transcripts — and gauge how well the reviewers rate the sneakers in various categories, including traction, cushion, materials, and fit.
The reviews don’t necessarily conform to these specific rating guidelines, so THG looks for quotes from each review that capture the reviewer’s thoughts on each category and then translates that into a score out of 10.
The individual scores are used to create an overall score from each reviewer, and then the scores from all the reviews are combined to create a final score.
The effort involved in finding a score isn’t merely about providing quantitative clarity to users. It also helps the reviews rank on Google by using a review schema that shows a star rating in the search results.
While this approach would be very effective if they were merely trying to earn commissions through product reviews, THG has taken it further.
They’ve used their 1,200+ shoe reviews and created a searchable database that enables users to quickly find the best shoes in 19 different categories and dozens of brands and shoe types.
This intelligent use of their one-of-a-kind database has elevated THG from an SEO-based product review site to owning one of the most trusted and widely known tools for choosing basketball shoes.
For more insight on TheHoopsGeek, check this podcast episode where we discuss their tactics:
How The Hoops Geek Makes Money
The Hoops Geek makes money through shoe affiliate commissions and display ads.
Top Affiliate Programs
What We Can Learn
- YouTube reviews are a great source of product review information. If you can’t get your hands on a product – or want to avoid the work involved in testing it – summarizing YouTube reviews can be a solid alternative.
- Use reviewer comments to come up with a scoring system. People – and Google – want to see numerical ratings for your content. Find a way to turn YouTube reviewer comments into a sophisticated rating process, and your traffic and affiliate revenue will thank you.
- Turn your reviews into a searchable database of products. If you have a critical mass of product reviews in a particular category, creating a searchable database can drive repeat visitors who consistently use your tool to find new products.
Summing Up
We’ve covered 21 websites and analyzed what they’re doing right.
But we didn’t cover the intricacies of how they’re doing it.
If you’re serious about becoming a successful affiliate marketer, the next step is to learn that secret sauce – how to put together all of the moving parts that make up a profitable website.
That’s where our free authority site training comes in.
In this value-packed training, you’ll learn 7 proven tactics that make new sites 83% more successful.
