This post may contain affiliate links. I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase
There is no need to introduce Nike. We all know the brand and many of us love it. Nike dominates the sports industry and I am confident that many of you will be wearing a Nike product while reading this Nike affiliate program review.
In this review, you will learn everything there is to know about the program together with tips about how you can approach promoting Nike products.
Nike Affiliate Program
Nike doesn’t have an in-house affiliate program so affiliates can join it only through affiliate networks. However, Nike does have a simple affiliate landing page on which you can find basic information about the program.
When you click on the ‘’Apply Now’’ button, you will be taken to the Nike affiliate program overview on AWIN affiliate network (depending on your location, you may be taken to a different affiliate network).
Another place where you can join the program is CJ Affiliates. However, the program terms on CJ Affiliates are worse than on AWIN.
The program on AWIN has a 30-day referral period while CJ Affiliate’s has only a 7-day period. It’s strange as it does not correspond with the Nike affiliate landing page which mentions the 30-day referral.
Therefore, I would recommend that you always go to the landing page first and click on the ‘’Apply Now’’ button. This way you will be redirected to the program overview on an affiliate network and the program terms should match.
If you go to Google and start looking for the Nike affiliate program directly, you may find the program on other affiliate networks, but the program terms may be different just like on CJ Affiliate.
I am mentioning this because the length of the referral period matters and because the commission also differs a lot.
Nike Affiliate Program Commission
The program has commission of up to 11%, which is amazing. If you were in the Amazon Associates program and promoted Nike products on Amazon, you would earn only 7%. You can earn a 4% higher commission rate if you send traffic directly to Nike's official website via the Nike affiliate program.
The 11% commission rate does not apply to all products, but, in general, you will always have a better rate if you promote Nike through their own affiliate program.
If you decide to promote Nike on CJ Affiliates, you will not only have a lower referral period but also a lot lower commission rate. Affiliates promoting Nike on CJ Affiliates earn only 1% from each sale.
It’s interesting to see that in spite of the terrible program terms, the program seems to work for many affiliates.
The 3-month EPC (earnings per hundred clicks) for the program is $23 (at the time of writing this review – it constantly changes) which is not bad at all.
So, apparently even affiliates promoting Nike through CJ Affiliates can still make money.
This demonstrates that Nike is a great brand to promote as people like and trust its products. The better the brand the easier it is for you to convert your visitors into customers.
How to Make Money with the Program
Nike sells a wide range of clothing, shoes, accessories and equipment. There are thousands of products to choose from across each of these categories.
However, I would recommend choosing only one category and preferably at the beginning just one subcategory.
For instance, you would decide to promote shoes and your subcategory would be running shoes.
This way you are maximizing your chances for success. If you decide to promote Nike through a website (which you should), then you need to think in terms of optimizing your content for keywords that have low competition.
It goes without saying that you will never rank well for competitive keywords like ‘’Nike shoes‘’ or ‘’Nike running shoes‘’. You need to target long-tail keywords like ‘’best Nike running shoes for marathon’’. These particular keywords have only around 70 searches a month which may seem like nothing and not worth the effort, but you must target multiple long-tail keywords and then it adds up.
Be prepared that even ranking for long-tail keywords won’t be easy. There are many affiliates targeting long-tail keywords related to Nike, so the keywords difficulty is still quite high.
The keywords ‘’best Nike running shoes for marathon’’ have a keyword difficulty of 36.
Therefore, you should also target keywords that do not include Nike at all.
To give an example, if you were promoting just Nike running shoes, you could target the keywords ’’ tips for running beginners’’.
These keywords have a search volume of 1600 and a keyword difficulty of just 16. That’s an awesome keyword to target. You could write a post around this keyword and include a tip to wear high-quality running shoes. You could link to the product straight from the article but even better would be to link to your other post which reviews the top running shoes.
If your visitor clicks from a normal, informational post on your affiliate link, the chances of that visitor converting are much smaller. It’s because visitors who visit your post about running tips for beginners may not have a buying intent. They want to learn the tips, but they are not necessarily ready to purchase anything.
If your post convinces them that they need new shoes, what will they do? They would do exactly what you would do – go on Google and start looking for reviews on good running shoes.
So that’s why it is better to link to your reviews on your website first rather than sending your visitors directly to the product. You want your website to be the website on which they read the reviews.
When you link to your reviews from general posts like the one in our example, don’t forget to include products for both men and women.
Plan an Expansion
This was just an example of how you could approach promoting Nike through your website and content. Your goal should be to focus on one subcategory. Once you are successful in one subcategory, you can think about expanding to other subcategories.
In our example, besides running shoes you could, for instance, start promoting gym shoes.
Obviously, you don’t have to expand to other categories if you feel there are still plenty of good keywords to target and thus space for growth.
When you are starting out with a new affiliate website, you never know how it will go so it is better to stay away from registering a domain that includes your main keyword (it does not help SEO as it did years ago anyway). This way you will always have the opportunity to expand and it’s up to you whether you decide to do so. If you had the domain bestrunningshoes.com then any promotion of gym shoes would just not look right.
Join Nike Affiliate Program Alternatives
Don’t just join the Nike affiliate program but also join alternative affiliate programs like Adidas’s.
Personally, I don’t mind wearing a Nike t-shirt and Adidas shoes, but there are many people who are loyal to just one brand.
Visitors who land on your website through a keyword that does not include the word ’’Nike ’’ may not be fans of Nike.
If you don’t include any alternatives to Nike, then you may miss out on many sales.
Using YouTube for Promotion
If you don’t want to launch an affiliate website and still want to promote the Nike affiliate program, you can try it through a YouTube channel.
Video reviews are, for most products, better than article reviews. Reviews are perceived as more trustworthy when you are actually seen with the product. You can show the product up close and be emotional about it.
However, I would still not recommend using YouTube for this program.
There is even more competition for Nike-related keywords than there is on Google and it also takes time and money to shoot a quality review video.
You will not have much success if you only do a slideshow with product pictures and short descriptions. The best video reviews are those with the products being shown.
This is obviously hard as you would have to purchase the product for each of your reviews.
Should You Join the Nike Affiliate Program?
The Nike affiliate program definitely has potential. The commission is high, and the standard 30-day referral period is also great for such a big brand like Nike.
The only downside of this program is that is has a lot of competition. So many affiliates are promoting Nike and so it’s getting harder and harder to rank for keywords with higher buyer intent.
However, don’t let this stop you. If you choose the right approach, you can earn money promoting Nike’s products.
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I want to be part of Nike affiliate program
I would like to join en to promote Nike Affiliate program…
I need to know which large price product companies have an Aff. Program eg
Cars, aeroplanes, yachts, homes etc
There are many. Here on the blog I have covered Expedia and Booking.com for instance.