Recurring affiliate programs are the best way to ensure a compounding flow of income. Here is a list of 10 affiliate programs with recurring commissions in different niches such including Affiliate Marketing, VPN, hosting, and SEO. These are top-paying, best-converting affiliate programs you should join today in order to reap the fruits of your labor tomorrow.

I’m sure you’ll agree – the best affiliate programs are those with recurring lifetime earnings, where you only work hard once and get paid for the rest of your life. Sounds like an impossible dream, right?

It’s not. 

In fact, there are plenty of affiliate programs that pay lifetime recurring commissions.

Affiliate ProgramRecurring CommissionOffer and Target Audience
ScaleoUp to 30%Affiliate tracking software for digital marketers
Shopify20%E-commerce platform for online businesses
PureVPN35%Virtual private network service for Internet security
Elegant ThemesUp to 50%WordPress themes and plugins for website design
GetResponse33%Email marketing software for businesses
AWeber30%Email marketing software for small businesses
Instapage50%Landing page builder for marketers and agencies
Mangools30%SEO tools for bloggers, marketers, and businesses
Hunter.io30%Email finder and verification tool for sales and marketing professionals
DreamhostUp to 50%Web hosting and domain registration for website owners

What is a lifetime commission?

When an affiliate program states that it offers “lifetime” or “recurring” commissions, it means either:

  1. The program sells monthly/annual subscriptions, and you will receive your cut as long as the referred client remains an active payer.
  2. The program sells physical goods, and you will receive commissions on all the items the referred customer purchases.

The first option is the most popular one. Most businesses sell subscription-based digital goods and offer lifetime commissions to attract as many affiliates as possible.

What are the benefits of lifetime commissions?

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

It’s actually a win-win scenario for both the affiliate and the advertiser, even though the advertiser only ends up receiving about 80% off the price, on average.

From the affiliate’s perspective, promoting programs that offer lifetime affiliate commissions is a much more profitable and passive income online business. As an affiliate, your profits are no longer bound to you actively promoting your affiliate offers. Having a couple of dozens of active referred clients can guarantee a steady income stream.

This is much better than promoting an affiliate program that only pays a one-time fee to the marketer.

For example, if you refer a customer to a web hosting company, that company pays you a one-time commission, even though the customer you referred will be paying the hosting fee for a very long time.

In this sense, the recurring commission seems more legitimate and fair when applied to subscription payments.

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

In other words, it means that as long as the customer keeps paying for the product or service, the affiliate who referred the customer keeps collecting the fee.

Isn’t it great?

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

So, in this post, I want to share the best affiliate programs that pay lifetime commissions to their affiliates. All these programs are time-tested, well-known, and established so that you can rest assured, you will be paid and enjoy your hard-earned money.

Affiliate Programs with Lifetime Recurrent Commissions:

This list features and lists affiliate programs based on the following:

  • Profitability per sale.
  • Average conversion rate.
  • Cookie duration – the longer, the better.
  • How easy is it to reach a payout? The smaller threshold, the better.

1 – Scaleo – Up to 30% Recurring Commissions

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

Scaleo is an affiliate marketing software operating on a monthly subscription base. Since most clients are from a B2B sector, subscriptions generally remain for years and are billed monthly. This affiliate program recurring commission is therefore staying live for the duration of the referred client’s active subscription.

There is no minimum threshold for payouts, and the more you refer, the higher your commission is. This affiliate program has the highest successful conversion rate.

  • Minimum payout: 0
  • Cashout method: PayPal

2 – Shopify – 20% Recurring Commission

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

Shopify is the most well-known eCommerce software and online shop maker. Currently, it powers more than 1 million companies around the world.

Shopify offers both an Affiliate Program and a Partner Program. Affiliates are paid a one-time fee, but you can earn a recurring commission of 20% on each active monthly subscription as a partner.

  • Minimum payout: 0
  • Cashout method: PayPal

3 – PureVPN – 35% Recurring Commission

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

You have probably noticed that all the best recurring affiliate programs 2023 include VPN services. These are often reliable, high-paying, high-ticket affiliate programs. PureVPN is the pioneer in the field of VPN services. It has a vast network of over 6,500 encrypted VPN servers and nearly 300,000 anonymous IPs. Furthermore, it does not monitor or record any behavior of the customer.

PureVPN can be found on affiliate networks such as LinkShare, Commission Junction, and more. It also offers a two-tier affiliate program to multiply your revenue by referring more affiliates and receiving commissions from their invoices.

  • Minimum payout: 0
  • Cashout method: PayPal

4 – Elegant Themes – 50% Recurring Commission

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

Elegantthemes for WordPress offers a visual drag and drop way to create a WordPress website. The famous Divi website builder is among the most popular WordPress Premium themes.

If you are a business owner or a freelancer, you can recommend these ready-to-use designs to your clients. 

  • Minimum payout: $200
  • Cashout method: PayPal

5 – GetResponse – 33% Recurring Commission

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

GetRepsonse is an email marketing site that has managed to incorporate even more services such as landing pages, webinars, web forms, all in one place. They offer a wide variety of services that can interest any blogger.

If you are a freelancer and your primary audience is webmasters who engage in email marketing, you can refer them to GetResponse. The cookie duration is 120 days.

  • Minimum payout: 0
  • Cashout method: PayPal

6 – AWeber – 30% Recurring Commissions

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

AWeber is a well-known email marketing platform with tools to create marketing strategies like a pro. Like GetResponse, they’re offering an autoresponder and several more marketing tools. AWeber’s primary emphasis is on email marketing networks.

Do you have an audience (clients, social media followers, blog readers, customers) looking for a full end-to-end email solution? Refer them to AWeber to make a monthly 30% commission on anything they pay.

  • Minimum payout: $50
  • Cashout method: PayPal

7 – Instapage- 50% Recurring Commission

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

Stand out as a marketing expert and help your clients achieve higher conversions by recommending Instapage through your affiliate link. You can earn a recurring 50% revenue your first year and 30% for every month afterward.

  • Minimum payout: $100
  • Cashout method: PayPal

8 – Mangools – 30% Recurring Commissions

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

Mangools offers many different SEO tools, all in one place. KWFinder is the most popular (alongside a few other tools, which do not offer lifetime commissions, which is why we aren’t mentioning them here.) This tool helps you search for long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty and beat the Search Engines competition.

  • Minimum payout: $150
  • Cashout method: PayPal

9 – Hunter.io – 30% Recurring Commissions

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

Generate recurring revenue from your content while helping professionals do cold email outreach. You can use Hunter.io to find the email addresses of people you should contact when reaching out to someone through a website. A useful tool used by many agencies that contact bloggers and influencers.

  • Minimum payout: $100
  • Cashout method: PayPal

10 – Dreamhost – 50% Recurring Commission

Top 10 Affiliate Programs With Recurring Lifetime Commissions in 2024 - recurring affiliate programs

With Dreamhost, you can earn recurring revenue, and you decide upon the % you allocate to your earn. The higher discount you offer your clients, the smaller your commission is, and vice versa. You can choose not to provide any discount and get a 50% commission on your referred client’s billing cycle. 

Most people sign up and stay with a hosting company for years so that they can enjoy decent recurring revenue. Your referral earnings can be applied to your hosting billing or cashed out. This is one of the most popular recurring commission affiliate programs you will find online in 2023.

  • Minimum payout: none
  • Cashout method: PayPal / account credit

Conclusion

Of course, these are not the only recurring affiliate programs that offer lifetime payouts. These are the most easy-to-use, easy-to-get paid, and easy-to-earn affiliate programs since they all are popular brand names, well-known, well-established, and have very high conversion rates. If you are in the digital marketing business, it’s worth signing up with these diverse companies and promoting them to your clients, depending on their needs. Even if affiliate marketing isn’t your primary source of revenue, having a nice side hassle in the form of recurring revenue isn’t a bad idea, especially now, in the post-Covid-19 crisis

I hope this list of the best affiliate programs with recurring commissions will help you kickstart 2023 with a new flow of lifetime revenue share affiliate programs.

What is recurring commission in affiliate programs?

A recurring commission is a commission that is paid to an affiliate on a regular basis, for example monthly or quarterly. Recurring commissions are most often associated with online marketing, where affiliates are paid based on the number of sales they make over a period of time. You might want to have an affiliate program with recurring commissions for many reasons. One of the most common reasons is to help with branding. Having an affiliate program with recurring commissions can create a loyal following who will work hard for your business and spread word-of-mouth advertising. Here are some other benefits from having an affiliate program with recurring commissions.

Which are the best affiliate programs with a recurring commission for beginners?

If you’re serious about making money from your website, you already know that affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn a recurring income. Recurring income is where a product or service provider continues to pay you per lead or sale you generate for them. The key to earning big bucks with affiliate marketing is to find products that offer a recurring-revenue model. Recurring revenue comes in three flavors: subscription, membership, and high ticket (see below)

What are the high-ticket recurring affiliate programs?

High ticket programs are those that pay out $1000 or more. They’re not common, but they do exist. Here are some of them: Matchbook (Gold package only) – offers coupon codes for 6-figure businesses like Uber and Airbnb College Investor – pays out once you help students do better than their peers in investing class. Call Loop – pays you monthly based on how many calls you make to customers.

There are a few different types of high-ticket affiliate programs available. Some of them are easier to get into than others. The easiest is probably the monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription service. This is when someone pays a certain amount every month or year for a product and you get paid for every person who clicks your link and joins the program. The next type of high-ticket affiliate program is one where you get paid when you refer someone to a business that offers expensive coaching or consulting. This works better if you have connections to people doing well and can afford to pay for coaching or consulting. These types of programs can run anywhere from $10,000 all the way up to well over $100,000.

Another type of affiliate program that offers large recurring payments is those offering online education courses, especially those related to making money online. You can join these programs and then promote their courses through an email list, blog posts, and social media shares consistently over time so that they start to trust you as an authority in your field. As they become more connected with you as an expert, they will be more likely to buy your products and services because they know they will help them achieve their goals faster.

What is a good commission rate for affiliates?

With so many different rates and payouts, knowing what constitutes a good commission rate can be hard. That’s why we’ve scoured the web for some of the best affiliate programs, and found their payout percentages.
I often get this question: “What is a good commission rate to pay affiliates for selling my products?” Here’s the deal: It isn’t just about paying a certain percentage. You need to consider a few factors before making your decision.

Let’s start with the basics: how much are you selling your product for?
Are you selling them for $100 per unit?
Then, if you’re paying an affiliate $10 commission per sale, that means they need to sell 10 units in order to earn that $100.
That’s not very efficient and means you’re losing a lot of money on each sale. In these cases, it might be better to pay a higher flat fee instead of a commission.
If you paid an affiliate $50 once for each sale they made, that means they got their money when the sale happened.

This is more efficient because you aren’t losing out on anything if someone only buys one unit. The next thing to consider is your profit margin. How much profit do you make on each product? So let’s say that your profit margin is $55 per product (it doesn’t matter if it’s a high-ticket item or not—you still want to know).

What do lifetime affiliate programs mean?

Lifetime affiliate programs refer to affiliate programs that offer lifetime commissions on all referred clients. This means you only need to refer a customer ones and you will receive a % off his payments for the duration of the client’s membership.

Last Updated on January 19, 2024

Author

Elizabeth is a Senior Content Manager at Scaleo. Currently enjoying the life in Prague and sharing professional affiliate marketing tips. She's been in the online marketing business since 2006 and gladly shares all her insights and ideas on this blog.