9 Affiliate Marketing Examples For Your Blogging Site

Most people asking “which niche should I pick for affiliate marketing?” are asking the wrong question. The real question is whether real blogs in that niche are already making money. Nine examples will answer that for you faster than any theory, and every one of them is a topic you could have started today if you had the right structure in place.

These are nine actual blogging websites making affiliate commissions right now. Sports cards, personal finance, tech, kitchen appliances, fitness, web hosting, pet products, household goods, and multi-niche review sites. None of them require genius-level writing. Every single one is run by a regular person who kept creating content until the traffic showed up. Here is what each one looks like and what you can copy from it.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Nine proven niche examples with real traffic numbers from SimilarWeb
How to identify an affiliate link on any blog by hovering over it
Which affiliate networks pay $65 to $300 per sale in the web hosting niche
How to use SimilarWeb to find traffic gaps your competitors are ignoring
Why you can join Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target all at once
The one Google search that reveals every affiliate program in your niche
How to know which social platforms a competitor is not using so you can move in
Your next step to find the right niche for your skill set at finder.platformproof.com

Example 1: Sports Cards with the eBay Affiliate Program (Gold Card Auctions)

The first site is Gold Card Auctions. Believe it or not, eBay runs its own affiliate program. You recommend products being sold and collect a commission on each one, just like any other affiliate program. The cards featured on Gold Card Auctions include Lamar Jackson, who had an MVP-caliber season, Derek Jeter, and Anthony Davis of the Lakers. These are not cheap items. A single card can sell for $500 or more.

Think about what that looks like in practice. A five percent commission on a $500 sports card is $25 for one transaction. If ten people a week click through and buy, that is $1,000 per month from a blog about sports cards. The person running that site has an interest in sports cards. They built a website around that interest, joined eBay’s affiliate program, and created content. That is the whole model. There is nothing exotic about it.

If you follow sports cards or have any interest in collectibles, this niche is wide open. You do not have to be Gold Card Auctions. You just have to create more or better content than they do and show up in the places they are not.

Example 2: Banking and Investing (Bankrate)

Bankrate is a major website in the personal finance and investing space. The way to confirm they are doing affiliate marketing is straightforward. Hover over one of their links, look at the bottom left corner of your browser, and see where the URL points. If it goes to Fidelity, E-Trade, or another financial institution, they are sending referral traffic and collecting a commission for it.

A quick search for “E-Trade affiliate program” confirms that FlexOffers carries E-Trade as an affiliate partner. FlexOffers is an affiliate network that requires an application and approval before you can promote listed brands. Once you are in, you have access to the entire investment services category. That includes Motley Fool, Forex Mentor, Margin Affiliate, and Bitcoin-related programs. The investing niche is not just about budgeting tips. It covers brokerage accounts, trading platforms, and crypto.

Bankrate pulls 11.78 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb. You are not going to compete with them head-on. But if you pick a tighter slice of the finance world, something like retirement accounts for freelancers or stock market basics for beginners, you have a lane. The category rank of 53 tells you there is enormous demand in this space, and a well-focused new site can chip away at it.

Example 3: Tech and Laptops (TechRadar)

TechRadar is one of the bigger names in tech publishing and they are deep in affiliate marketing. Scroll through their articles and you will see “View at Amazon” links scattered throughout. Hover over one and the URL structure is a dead giveaway: it routes through Amazon’s affiliate tracking system. TechRadar is an Amazon affiliate. That is not speculation; that link format is only available to Associates program members.

SimilarWeb puts TechRadar at 52.9 million visits per month. That number is not the point. The point is that the tech niche sustains that kind of traffic because there are millions of people searching for “best laptop 2024” or “best gaming headset” every single month. TechRadar earns affiliate commissions on every product that a reader clicks through and buys.

Look at one of their best-laptops articles and you will see something worth copying. A single product listing links to Amazon, Best Buy, and HP all on the same row. Scroll further and there are Walmart and Dell links. This is not accident. They have joined multiple affiliate programs so that wherever a reader wants to buy, there is a tracked link to capture that sale. You can do the same. Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart all run affiliate programs, and nothing stops you from joining all of them.

Example 4: Kitchen Appliances and Stand Mixers (Foodle)

Foodle is a cooking and kitchen website built around product reviews, and they are running affiliate links to Amazon throughout. Hover over any product link on the site and you will see where it goes. SimilarWeb shows 636,000 visits per month. That is not a national media company. That is one person, or a small team, who decided to write about stand mixers and kept at it.

This site also runs native ads alongside affiliate links, so they have two income streams from the same traffic. The cooking and kitchen niche is competitive, but Foodle is not doing anything special that a motivated person could not replicate. They wrote the content, they built the site, they put in the hours.

Here is where an opportunity exists. Foodle has a blog. Do they have a YouTube channel? Do they have a Pinterest account? Are they showing up on LinkedIn where surprisingly many professionals search for home organization and cooking content? If any of those answers is no, that is a gap. A new creator who covers the same kitchen appliance niche but also posts on YouTube and Pinterest is pulling traffic from places Foodle is not touching. That is how smaller sites grow: find what the leader is not doing and go do it there.

Example 5: Sports and Fitness Products (Very Well Fit)

Very Well Fit covers sports, fitness, and health, and their basketball content is a clear example of affiliate marketing in action. Pull up their best basketballs article and hover over any product link. You will see a referral ID in the URL, something like “dav-wealth-20.” That string identifies the publisher as an affiliate. All of the links on that page, Spalding on Amazon, Walmart, and others, are commission-generating affiliate links.

SimilarWeb shows Very Well Fit at 10.7 million visits per month. More interesting is where the traffic comes from: Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, and Rocket. That is a useful piece of intelligence. If you scroll down to the competitors section and click into any of those sites, you can see which affiliate programs they use. But the traffic source list also shows you what Very Well Fit is NOT doing. They are not on LinkedIn. They are not on Instagram in a meaningful way. For a fitness and sports content creator, Instagram and LinkedIn are not minor channels. Those are gaps.

A new blogger who covers basketballs, sports gear, or fitness equipment and builds out Instagram Reels and LinkedIn posts alongside a blog has an opening that a 10-million-visit-per-month site has left on the table. This is the same pattern that shows up across every example in this list.

Not sure which niche fits your skills and schedule?

The Platform Proof Finder gives you a personalized answer in minutes at finder.platformproof.com.

Example 6: Web Hosting for High Commissions (Hosting FAQs)

Web hosting is one of the highest-paying affiliate niches available. Hosting FAQs is a site dedicated to web hosting reviews and comparisons. They promote Hostgator and similar providers, and one look at the affiliate link structure makes clear they have joined multiple hosting affiliate programs.

Bluehost pays at least $65 per sale. Other hosting providers pay $300 per sale. Some pay recurring monthly commissions as long as the referred customer stays a customer. If you refer ten people in a month at $65 each, that is $650. At $300 per sale, that same ten referrals is $3,000. This niche has per-transaction payouts that most product review niches cannot match.

Hosting FAQs pulls 318,000 visits per month. Almost all of that traffic comes from search. The SimilarWeb data shows their top organic keywords are “free web hosting” and related terms. Now look at their social presence: it is almost entirely Facebook. They are not on YouTube, Quora, Twitter, or LinkedIn in any meaningful way. For a niche where people are actively asking questions about hosting options, Quora and YouTube tutorials would send substantial traffic. That is an opening.

If you have any background in websites, technology, or even just small business, the web hosting niche is a strong match. You do not need to be a developer. You need to understand what beginners need when they are trying to set up a website for the first time, and then answer those questions consistently.

Example 7: Pet Products and Vacuums (Prime Reviews)

Prime Reviews covers product recommendations across various categories including vacuums designed for pet owners. Hover over any product link and you will see an Amazon shortened URL. That shortened URL is the affiliate link. Prime Reviews earns a commission on every product a reader clicks through and purchases from Amazon.

SimilarWeb shows 85,000 visits per month. Almost all of it comes from search. Their top keywords are “best vacuum” and “best pet hair vacuum.” No significant social presence at all. For a topic like pet products, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok are obvious traffic channels that this site is not using. Pet content does well in short-form video and photo formats. If you built a blog around pet products and also posted on Instagram and TikTok, you would be drawing from traffic sources that Prime Reviews is leaving entirely on the table.

The pet niche is broad and profitable. Americans spend over $140 billion per year on pets. Vacuums, grooming tools, food, supplements, training equipment, travel gear: every one of those sub-niches has its own affiliate programs and its own audience. An 85,000-visit site is proof of concept. The question is how much further you could take it with a more complete traffic strategy.

Example 8: Multi-Niche Tech and Home (T3.com)

T3.com covers a wide range of consumer products. Their content spans gaming (PlayStation 5 reviews, best gaming headsets), household appliances (best frying pans, best nonstick cookware), and seasonal deals (Boxing Day sales). On any given product page they are linking to Walmart and Amazon, both affiliate links, and those links open in new tabs so the reader stays on the T3 site after clicking through.

That last detail matters. When an affiliate link opens in a new tab, the reader can click through to buy and then come back to keep reading. That behavior keeps session duration high and gives the site more chances to convert the same reader on multiple products within one visit. It is a small thing that makes a real difference in affiliate revenue.

SimilarWeb shows T3 at 15 million visits per month. Their traffic comes primarily from search. They are present on Facebook but the data shows relatively little YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok activity for a site this large. For a site covering consumer tech and home goods, YouTube product reviews are one of the highest-converting traffic sources available. That is a gap even a site with 15 million monthly visits has not fully closed.

The broader point of the T3 example is that a site does not have to be tightly focused on one product category to succeed. Multiple content verticals can live on one domain as long as they are related to the same general audience. Someone shopping for the best frying pan is also potentially shopping for the best vacuum or the best gaming headset. A multi-niche approach can work if you have the content volume to support it.

Example 9: The Multi-Affiliate Stack (Best Laptops Articles)

The ninth example is less a single site and more a technique you can see across TechRadar and similar publications. On a best laptops article, a single product row shows links to Amazon, Best Buy, HP, Walmart, and Dell. Five different affiliate programs represented in one product listing. If a reader prefers to buy from Dell because they trust the brand, there is a Dell affiliate link. If they always shop Amazon, there is an Amazon link. The site captures the commission regardless of which option the reader chooses.

This approach works because in affiliate marketing you are not bound to one program. You can join Amazon Associates, Best Buy’s affiliate program, Target’s affiliate program, Walmart’s affiliate program, and individual brand programs all at the same time. The only management overhead is tracking commissions across multiple dashboards. That is a real cost, but the payoff is capturing sales you would otherwise miss because a reader preferred a retailer you did not cover.

For a new blogger, starting with one or two programs and adding more as traffic grows is the practical approach. You need content volume before multi-affiliate stacking becomes worth the management complexity. But once the content is there, stacking programs is one of the most direct ways to increase revenue from existing traffic without creating new posts.

How to Spot a Traffic Gap in Any Niche

Every one of these nine examples showed the same pattern when run through SimilarWeb. The sites are strong in one or two traffic sources, usually search and Facebook, and weak or absent from several others. That weakness is your opening.

Here is the process. Find a competitor in your target niche. Run their domain through SimilarWeb. Look at the social traffic breakdown. If they are getting traffic from Facebook but not from YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest, that is a list of channels you can move into without competing directly against their established presence. You do not need to be better than them everywhere. You need to be present somewhere they are not.

SimilarWeb also shows you the exact organic keywords driving a competitor’s search traffic. If you create better content targeting those same keywords while also building out social channels they are ignoring, you are pulling traffic from multiple directions simultaneously. That combination compounds over time in a way that a search-only or social-only strategy does not.

How to Find the Affiliate Program in Your Niche

Every niche has affiliate programs. The fastest way to find them is a Google search. Take your niche topic and add “affiliate program” at the end. Search “E-Trade affiliate program” and you find FlexOffers. Search “Bluehost affiliate program” and you find their direct program paying $65 per sale. Search “Walmart affiliate program” and you find Impact. Search “sporting goods affiliate program” and a list of options appears.

Most affiliate programs either run directly through the brand or through a network. The major networks are Amazon Associates, FlexOffers, Impact, Commission Junction (CJ), ShareASale, and Rakuten. If you are applying for a network like FlexOffers, you typically need to apply and qualify before accessing certain brands. Amazon Associates is easier to get started with for beginners because approval is relatively straightforward.

To verify whether a website is using affiliate links before you even search for the program, hover over any product link on that site. Look at the bottom left corner of your browser. If the URL contains “amazon.com” or a tracking parameter, it is an affiliate link. If it goes to a page on the same domain for a more detailed review, it is probably just internal linking. Follow the links and the affiliate structure becomes visible quickly.

Honest Drawbacks to This Model

None of these sites got to 600,000 or 10 million monthly visits overnight. The transcript is clear that serious money requires 100 or more pieces of content and a sustained effort over time. If you are looking for income in the next 30 days, blogging affiliate marketing is not that. It is a model that builds gradually.

Affiliate link maintenance is real work. Products go out of stock. Affiliate programs end or change commission rates. Amazon famously cut commission rates across most categories in 2020. If you are promoting products through a program that changes its rates, your revenue changes overnight without any change in traffic. Diversifying across multiple programs reduces but does not eliminate that risk.

Search traffic from Google takes months to build for a new domain. The sites in these examples have been publishing for years in most cases. A new site needs to lean on social channels, YouTube, email, or community building to get early traffic while organic search slowly grows. That is exactly the gap strategy: use social channels your competitors ignore to get traffic before your domain has enough authority to rank well.

The domain name matters a little but not as much as content volume. Prime Reviews chose a .org domain, which is not ideal for a for-profit review site. But they still pulled 85,000 visits per month. The content is doing more work than the domain extension. Choose a .com if you can, keep the name memorable, and focus energy on content rather than perfecting every setup detail before you start.

Find Your X

Nine different niches. Sports cards, investing, tech, kitchen appliances, fitness, web hosting, pet products, household goods, and multi-category review content. Every single one works. The niche is not the variable that determines your success. The variable is whether you pick something you will keep creating content about long enough for the traffic to build.

If you are not sure which niche fits your background, schedule, and income goals, the Platform Proof Finder walks you through it. It is built to match you to the right starting point based on what you already know and how much time you have. Start at finder.platformproof.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a large audience to make money with a blogging affiliate site?

No. Foodle earns affiliate commissions with 636,000 monthly visits. Prime Reviews does it with 85,000. A smaller audience that is highly focused on a buying decision converts better than a large general audience. You need enough traffic to generate sales, not millions of visits before you see your first commission check.

Can I join more than one affiliate program at the same time?

Yes. You can be an affiliate for Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and individual brands all at once. The practical consideration is that you have to log into each dashboard separately to track commissions and clicks. Starting with one or two programs and adding more once your traffic is established keeps the management load reasonable.

How do I find affiliate programs in a niche I am interested in?

Search Google for your topic plus the words “affiliate program.” For example, “stand mixer affiliate program” or “web hosting affiliate program.” Most programs either run directly through the brand’s website or through a network like Amazon Associates, FlexOffers, Impact, ShareASale, or Commission Junction. Start with that search and follow the results.

How can I tell if a blog is using affiliate links?

Hover over a product link on the site and look at the URL that appears in the bottom left corner of your browser. If it routes through Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, or contains a tracking parameter with a publisher ID, it is an affiliate link. A shortened URL that you cannot immediately identify can also be an affiliate link. You can also look at the URL structure directly in the address bar after clicking if links open in new tabs.

What is SimilarWeb and how do I use it to research competitors?

SimilarWeb is a web analytics tool that estimates traffic volume, traffic sources, and keyword data for any public website. You enter a competitor’s domain, and it shows you monthly visits, which social platforms send them traffic, and which organic search terms drive their rankings. Use the social traffic breakdown to find channels they are not using. Use the keyword data to identify content you could create to compete for the same search terms.

How many blog posts do I need before I start making money?

There is no universal number, but 100 pieces of content is a reasonable threshold to expect meaningful organic traffic from search. Early on, social media channels will be your primary traffic source because new domains take time to rank. The honest answer is that serious search traffic from Google typically takes six to twelve months to build on a new domain, regardless of how good your content is.

Is the web hosting niche too competitive for a new blogger?

It is competitive, but the commissions justify the effort. Bluehost pays at least $65 per sale and some hosting providers pay $300 per sale. If you find a specific angle, beginners setting up their first WordPress site, podcasters who need hosting, or ecommerce stores looking for managed hosting, you can create targeted content that ranks for longer-tail keywords rather than competing head-on for “best web hosting,” which is one of the most contested terms in the niche.

Should I create one website covering multiple niches or separate sites for each niche?

T3.com shows that one site covering multiple related niches can work at scale with 15 million monthly visits. For a beginner, one tightly focused site is easier to grow. A site about stand mixers is easier to rank for and easier to build authority around than a general home goods site. Start focused, add content categories as your audience grows, and let the data tell you where to expand.

Sources

SimilarWeb traffic data referenced in the video for Bankrate (11.78M visits), TechRadar (52.9M visits), Foodle (636K visits), Very Well Fit (10.7M visits), Hosting FAQs (318K visits), Prime Reviews (85K visits), and T3.com (15M visits)
eBay Partner Network (eBay’s affiliate program) for sports cards and collectibles
FlexOffers affiliate network listing E-Trade, Motley Fool, Forex Mentor, and investment-related programs
Amazon Associates program referenced for TechRadar, Foodle, Very Well Fit, and Prime Reviews affiliate links
Bluehost affiliate program commission rates ($65+ per sale) and comparable web hosting affiliate payouts referenced from the video