The trend of food blogging has been gaining momentum with the influx of food bloggers. Essentially, the trend started when people began taking pictures of what they ate and posting them on social media.
Food blogging is now taken quite seriously as a career. After all, who wouldn’t relish delicious meals while earning a good amount of money. If you are already a food blogger or starting out as one, you must know about affiliate programs and their benefits. Affiliate programs are what help food bloggers to make money.
So, what is affiliate marketing after all?
In simple terms, affiliate marketing requires the food blogger to promote a third-party product on his/her posts and site. The food blogger earns a commission on every sale made by the third-party through the visitors of their site. Promoting products through affiliate programs is the best way to increase your income.
Through affiliate marketing food bloggers usually get paid on a pay per click basis, pay per sale basis, or pay per lead basis. Before coming down to discussing the top 10 best affiliate programs for food blogs, let’s take a look at each payment method.
- Pay Per Click – PPC is one of the most popular methods of earning money online. Under this method, whenever a visitor clicks on the link referring to the merchant’s page, the affiliate gets paid for referral irrespective of the purchase being made.
- Pay Per Sale – As evident by its name, under the pay per sale method, the affiliate earns money after a sale is done. Therefore, once the visitor makes a purchase from the merchant’s site, the affiliate is paid a percentage of the sale.
- Pay Per Lead – The pay per lead method requires the affiliate to promote the merchant’s site and expand the customer base. The merchant pays the affiliate after a successful promotion by the affiliate.
Now that you have an idea about what affiliate marketing is and its importance for a food blogger, here’s a list of the best 10 affiliate programs that you should look out.
Top 10 Affiliate Programs That Food Bloggers Must Join
Starting out as a new food blogger, choosing the right kind of affiliate programs out of a pool of different programs can be challenging. Therefore, this list will help you select the best affiliate programs for your food blog to get the money flowing in.
- Sovrn
The Sovrn affiliate program is essentially an ad network that pays on a Cost Per Thousand (CPM) basis. This means the food blogger gets paid for every thousand impressions on the site and the ad. Moreover, your visitors don’t need to click on the ad for you to make money.
Sovrn is beneficial for food bloggers because their visitors are mostly looking to view recipes or their content rather than buying something displayed on the ads. Therefore, the probability of viewers clicking on the ads is highly unlikely.
Food Bloggers don’t make much money through a CPC basis. For that reason, Sovrn seems to be one of the top 10 affiliate programs for food blogs for a good earning.
- Bluprint
The Bluprint affiliate program was formerly known as Craftsy. This platform has more than 13 million subscribers due to the percentage of commission it offers. The commission offered by Bluprint ranges between 15% to 75% on every sale, however, the percentage depends on the customer type or product. Additionally, it also offers $5 to $15 for gifts, signups, and membership.
Bluprint also provides over 1300 classes of over 20 categories such as cooking, yoga, knitting, dance, music, photography, and art. These in-dept classes along with the commission are the main reasons for a high volume of subscribers. The affiliate program also provides exceptional customer service that helps bloggers with strategies to sell the products on their blogs.
So if you are a food blogger, you can promote the classes offered by Bluprint to avail the following:
- 75% commission when new customers take their first class or buy a DVD
- 15% commission when new customers purchase a physical product
- 15% commission when existing customers purchase a DVD or take a class
- 4% commission when existing customers purchase a physical product
- $5 on every Bluprint signup
- $15 on every monthly membership
- $25 on every annual membership
- $15 for referrals who are accepted into the program
- Snake River Farms
Snake River Farms are the top brands for American Wagyu beef, Northwest source-certified beef, and Kurobuta Pork. Their brand is featured on the menus of the best restaurants ranging from Michelin starred restaurants to local food joints. This food-centric affiliate program offers a recurring commission of 20% to 40% every month.
The benefits that the Snake River Farms affiliate program offer food bloggers are as below:
- 7% commission on every sale
- $5 as a 2-tier signup bonus
- High-value orders
- Dedicated program management
- Regularly updated Data feed
- Increased sales on special occasions, summers, and end-of-year holiday season.
- Sun Basket
Sun Basket is a healthy meal delivery service that delivers meals made with organic and seasonal ingredients. Their products don’t contain antibiotics and hormones making them the healthiest choice for health-conscious customers. Moreover, their pre-set meals cater to various dietary requirements and lifestyle choices like gluten-free, vegan, pescatarian, paleo, etc. In fact, even their packaging is recyclable making it environmental-friendly. The program offers $20 per sale to affiliates with an average affiliate commission of $89.
- Gourmet Ads
Gourmet Ads is a global Ad Network made of various food-related websites. The Gourmet Ads affiliate programs work in a similar way as Sovrn, however, the ads only display ads and food which are cooking-related. They provide a bonus of $50 for every site that joins the program through you. However, to count a site as a referral, they require the referred site to send 150,000 impressions and be with them for at least 90 days.
- Swoop
Swoop is essentially a food blogging affiliate program which usually pays on a Pay Per Sale basis. The program requires food bloggers to place advertisements of 1 to 2 products on their platform and persuade their readers to buy the products. The ad can either be a recipe or another article that relates to your post as well. Therefore, whenever a visitor clicks on the link and makes a purchase, the food blogger receives a commission based on a certain percentage of the sale.
- Restuarant.com
The Restaurant.com affiliate program is another great one for food blogs as it offers deals on over 62,000 restaurants across the US. The food blogger can earn a commission each time a visitor clicks on the link placed in the site or email campaign and purchases a product. Restaurant.com offers gift certificates of $5 to $100 that visitors can use at various restaurants in the US.
- Amazon Associates
One of the best and most popular affiliate programs is the Amazon Associates affiliate program. It’s an easy to use program especially for beginners and offers a commission on every sale. Whenever a visitor clicks on the link in your blog and purchases a product from Amazon, you receive a commission between 4% to 8% of the sale. Moreover, even if the visitor doesn’t purchase a product that you have linked to but ends up purchasing another product, you can still earn a commission. The advantage of the Amazon Associates affiliate program is that Amazon is a trusted brand and you will find visitors often buying products from there.
- Katz Gluten Free
For food bloggers who focus on health-related food blogs that focus on dietary requirements, the Katz-Gluten Free affiliate program is for you. Katz Gluten Free features products that are for gluten-intolerant people. These products contain fresh-ingredients, are high in quality, 100% pure and contain no added preservatives. The program offers a commission of 10% per sale every time a visitor clicks on the link and purchases Katz gluten-free products.
- Fresh Direct
Fresh Direct is an online grocery delivery service in the US. With a majority of the population switching to online grocery shopping, the Fresh Direct affiliate program is something to leverage on. The program under the benefit Cruciferous Greens offers a commission to food bloggers each time a visitor completes a payment at FreshDirect.com. Moreover, it also provides recipes and coupons to motivate visitors to shop online.
Apart from the above affiliate programs, you can also find out about the popular food delivery apps that offer affiliate programs in your region. For instance in India, Swiggy and Zomato are the popular food delivery apps that also offer affiliate programs for food blogs. Lastly, it’s important to remember the saying, “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket”. Similarly, even with affiliate marketing, program diversification it is important to increase your earnings and avoid risks.