7 Best Financial Affiliate Programs in 2022 (Based on Data)

Make money by talking about money? It sounds too good to be true, but financial affiliate programs are one way to do just that.

Websites like Investopedia, NerdWallet, and The Points Guy earn commissions on many of the financial services and products discussed on their websites. Credit cards, credit checks, insurance, investors, robo-advisors, and more are all financial services that offer affiliate programs you can promote to your audience.

And recognizable brands like these aren't the only ones making bank by recommending banks.

As an active member of the FI/RE (financial independence, retire early) community, I've spoken to several community members who receive significant commissions from personal finance affiliate programs.

One popular influencer even revealed that she made half of her mid six-figures revenue stream from a single bank affiliate program (see if you can guess which one it is).

Read along for tips from the experts we surveyed, plus our list of the best financial affiliate programs based on what the world's most popular finance blogs are heavily promoting.

How we compiled this data

We pulled data from over 100 finance blogs and analyzed their affiliate links to form a profile of the most heavily promoted financial affiliate programs in the space.

All based on publicly available information on the publisher's website, run through Affilimate's affiliate link detection algorithm.

We started by including the most popular finance blogs, like The Penny Hoarder, a personal finance blog started by a single person that was acquired at the end of 2020 for a respectable $102.5 million dollars.

According to an interviewer with AdExchanger, they were already pulling $20 million per year from affiliates back in 2016 (!) -

These are the kinds of finance sites we included in our analysis. But we didn't stop there.

After that, we looked at more niche websites focusing on specific areas of personal finance: loans, banks, credit cards, investing services, and more.

To conclude, we boiled it down to this list: the best financial affiliate programs, based predominantly on how many outbound links content publishers throw their way - a very strong signal that a product or service is profitable to promote as an affiliate.

But before we get to the list, a couple tips from the experts we talked to about the realities of finding success in the personal finance niche.

Tips for success as a finance affiliate

The personal financial services niche is competitive. Very competitive.

You'll be bumping elbows with blogs that have been around for decades, written by people who have long since reached millionaire status. Well-known blogs include Mr. Money Mustache, Doctor of Credit and The Mad Fientist.

Plus, financial topics are generally categorized as Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content by Google, so competing with established blogs for financial buyer intent keywords is even more difficult than normal. It will take time to build the authority needed to rank on these pages.

Your best bet is to build an audience based on a specific lifestyle or niche. This allows you to promote not only based on SEO, but also owned spaces like your email list or social channels.

Two examples of money blogs that blend in lifestyle include the anonymously-run digital nomad blog A Purple Life and the popular finance blog and podcast for Latinas, Yo Quiero Dinero.

We reached out to both of them to ask about tips for success as a finance affiliate, and their answers were pretty similar: recommend products you use and trust.

As Janesse from Yo Queiro Dinero puts it:

"If I wouldn't recommend it to my mom, I don't promote it."

And while it's unlikely it's the first time you've heard this advice, it pays off.

Trust is key when promoting personal finance affiliate programs to a loyal audience.

These aren't consumable products that people spend a few dollars on just to try out. They are tools that directly affect users' savings, credit and investments. Both Google and your audience will look for expertise, authority and trustworthiness in your content.

It's a big responsibility, so familiarizing yourself with the best financial affiliate programs will guarantee that you provide your specific audience the best financial services and products for them.

Financial Affiliate Programs

Financial services affiliate programs fall into a handful of categories: bank affiliate programs, credit report affiliate programs, trading/investing affiliate programs, and budgeting/net worth tracking affiliate programs. We've also dipped our toes into crypto for good measure at the end of the post.

Some products fall under multiple categories. For example, Personal Capital offers both a net worth tracking tool and investment management services.

Here are the best financial affiliate programs based on our analysis of 100+ finance blogs:

• Personal Capital affiliate program
• Credit Karma affiliate program
• Credit Sesame affiliate program
• BBVA Bank affiliate program
• Coinbase affiliate program
• Robinhood affiliate program
• Questrade affiliate program

Are you struggling with tons of affiliate platforms and links?

If you're running website that's monetized with affiliate marketing, there's a high probability your affiliate commissions are scattered across a ton of different platforms.

This makes it hard to get an overview of what's working well, efficiently test different products and programs, let alone optimize your content for conversion.

Affilimate was designed to fix that. It helps you collect your affiliate data (clicks, commissions, and content analytics) into ONE place so you can optimize conversion and grow your revenue.

Start your free Affilimate account and get tracking today.

Jules Costa

(@julesontap)

Jules Costa is a Brazilian-American freelance writer and money expert who has been featured on NPR, Personal Capital and Boston 25.

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