This post may contain affiliate links. I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase
The Shopify affiliate program is great as you can earn big commissions while promoting a quality product that can help people start their online stores quickly and easily.
Shopify is a robust e-commerce platform that lets you create and customize an online store of all sizes. You can manage products, inventory, shipping payments, etc., all in one place.
It does not only provide you with the e-commerce platform, but also with hosting, so you don’t need to worry about that. The Shopify interface is very intuitive, and you can create a nice-looking store without any prior knowledge of the platform.
It can easily be integrated with hundreds of Shopify apps, which adds various functionalities. One of the most popular of these is Oberlo, which lets you add products to your store from AliExpress so you can dropship any products straight to your customers without having any physical inventory. Shopify even created a free course, which teaches users how to use Oberlo and select the right products.
Simply put, if anyone wants to start a dropshipping store, Shopify is the platform to use.
Since dropshipping is really big now, the Shopify affiliate program presents a great opportunity for affiliate marketers.
Shopify Affiliate Program
Shopify cares about their affiliates a lot. I don’t think I have ever seen such a good affiliate landing page as the one Shopify has.
They have done a great job of describing the Shopify affiliate program and its terms. They also have a very informative FAQs page. Usually when I write affiliate program reviews, it takes me some time to find all the important information for the particular program as the information is all over the place and not easy to find.
The Shopify affiliate program used to be self-hosted and you only needed to create a Shopify partner account and submit an application to become a Shopify affiliate.
On June 30, 2022, the self-hosted affiliate program ends, and you will only be able to join it through Impact affiliate network.
Shopify mentions on their website that even if you were accepted to their affiliate program and have Shopify partner account, you still must register with Impact and switch all existing referral links before June 30, 2022.
On the Impact landing page for Shopify affiliate program, I can see that there is just 30% acceptance rate (as of April 2022) so many affiliates are being rejected.
If you are one of the lucky ones, you can start promoting once your application is approved. If you are new to Impact, I recommend checking the Shopify guide on getting started with Impact.
You will be provided with your affiliate link, which by default leads to the Shopify free trial page. However, the program supports deep linking so it is possible to create links to any other Shopify pages. Of course, you are also provided with banners of various sizes.
The Shopify affiliate program has the standard 30-day referral period. You will receive a commission if your visitor clicks on your affiliate link, signs up for a 14-day free trial within 30 days and becomes a paying customer.
It can happen that someone signs up for a 14-day free trial within 30 days but becomes a paying member later (not within the 30 days). Fortunately, in this situation you would also receive a commission.
Shopify Affiliate Program Commission
The commission on Impact is $100 per referral.
Shopify affiliates on the self-hosted program get commission equal to 200% of your visitor’s monthly subscription fee. The commission is paid over the first two months of your visitor’s subscription so if your visitor leaves Shopify during the first month, then you will not receive the commission for the second month.
This applies to all three Shopify standard plans:
Basic Shopify - $29/month - $58 commission
Shopify - $79/month - $158 commission
Advanced Shopify - $299/month - $598 commission
Shopify also has a plan called ‘Shopify Plus’. This plan is designed for large enterprise businesses. The price of Shopify Plus is much higher (around $2000/month) and so the commission is much higher as well. When someone signs up for Shopify Plus through your link, you receive a huge commission of $2000.
Shopify pays commission only through PayPal and only in USD. When you get paid depends on when you were credited for the referral. However, it will take a maximum of 20 days and a minimum of five days.
Can You Make $3000 a month as a Shopify Affiliate?
If you promote Shopify the right way, you can make a lot of money as an affiliate marketer from this one affiliate program alone.
If your goal is to make $3000 a month, you would need 52 of your visitors to sign up through your affiliate link to the Basic Shopify plan.
Let’s say that you have high quality content and a 2% conversion rate. With this conversion rate, you would need to have at least 2500 people each month reading your Shopify-related content.
Most likely less as some people would opt-in to the higher Shopify plans for which you get a higher commission.
To make just $1000 a month, you would need only 17 of your visitors to buy the Basic Shopify plan. With the same 2% conversion rate, your website traffic would have to be just 850.
This is not that hard to achieve, even with a new website.
How to Make Money with the Program
Promoting Shopify can be approached in many ways.
The most common approach is through reviews and educational content. Compare Shopify to Woocommerce, put together tutorials for Shopify or publish content related to dropshipping.
Some Shopify affiliates create full courses on dropshipping and include their affiliate links throughout the lessons. This can be very effective. You could create a completely free course, so it is easier to draw traffic and make money through affiliate marketing alone.
Another way is promoting Shopify through educational videos on YouTube.
However, pretty much all keywords related to Shopify on YouTube are quite competitive.
Since dropshipping became so popular, YouTube got flooded with Shopify tutorials and ‘’success stories’’.
Growing a YouTube channel takes time just as growing a website does. You cannot expect to have many views at the beginning. You would have to pump a lot of quality videos before you started seeing any traction.
Making quality YouTube videos is not easy and it takes time. But if you manage to grow your channel and get views on your videos, it can be a gold mine.
The best thing you can do is combine YouTube content with your own courses. In the video description, you could link both to the Shopify free trial and to your course. The YouTuber in the picture does it in all of his videos and I am sure he is making a fortune.
Should You Join the Shopify Affiliate Program?
If you have an audience that could benefit from using Shopify, then you should definitely join the Shopify affiliate program.
It’s one of the highest paying affiliate programs and Shopify is also a great product. Dropshipping is also on the rise so now is a great time to join the program.
The downside is bigger competition. Whether you decide to promote Shopify through a website or through a YouTube channel, it will be hard to rank your content.
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