Shopify Affiliate Program Review (Updated 2023)
With The Shopify affiliate program, 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.
In this affiliate program review, you will learn everything you need about the Shopify affiliate program.
You will also learn valuable tips on becoming a successful Shopify affiliate.
Before I talk about the Shopify affiliate program, I first want to clarify some confusion many people have.
Shopify has an affiliate program, but it also has a Shopify partner program, and there are big differences between them.
The Shopify partner program primarily targets people who work with Shopify as a Shopify theme/app developer or an agency.
Even if you are not a developer or an agency, you can still apply and be accepted to the Shopify partner program.
Nevertheless, you could only promote a premium Shopify Plus plan that costs $2.000 a month. For such referrals, you would get a recurring 20% affiliate commission.
This review is about the Shopify affiliate program, which is suitable for all affiliates, whether they are active Shopify users or not.
With the Shopify affiliate program, you can promote the standard Shopify plans.
Shopify Affiliate Program
Shopify takes its affiliate program seriously, as it is one of the main reasons why the platform has grown so rapidly.
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.
The self-hosted Shopify affiliate program ended on June 30, 2022, and migrated to the Impact Radius affiliate network.
Shopify mentioned on its website that even if you were accepted to their self-hosted affiliate program and had a Shopify partner account, you still must register with Impact Radius and switch all existing referral links.
You will still find a landing page for the affiliate program on the Shopify website, but all the "Apply now" buttons will take you to the sign-up page on Impact Radius.
The Shopify affiliate program on Impact has a very low acceptance rate. Currently, only 12% of all applicants become Shopify affiliates.
How to become a Shopify affiliate? You have to meet the Shopify affiliate program requirements:
- Own and run an active website
- Have an established audience
- Create original content, such as online courses, seminars, blog posts, or videos
- Have experience with Shopify and/or other e-commerce platforms
- Have read and agreed to the Shopify Partner Program Agreement
Shopify affiliate program is not limited to any country. Anyone can become a Shopify affiliate as long as he/she is accepted to the Impact Radius affiliate network.
You will know whether you got accepted or not within 5 business days. Unfortunately, Shopify will not tell you the reasons why you can’t join the Shopify affiliate program if you get denied.
Once you get accepted, you can start promoting Shopify plans right away. 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 creating links to any other Shopify pages is possible. Of course, you are also provided with banners of various sizes.
The Shopify affiliate program has a standard 30-day referral period.
Shopify Affiliate Program Commission
The Shopify affiliate commission on Impact is $150 per referral for all full-price plan referrals.
Shopify runs a lot of pricing incentives and promotional offers, and you don’t get a commission for referrals that only try a free trial.
For example, for the promotion "Start a 3-day free trial, and pay $1 for your first 3 months", you would only receive a commission if the referral paid the full price after the 3 months.
Shopify currently has 3 main plans. Basic, Shopify, and Advanced. All these plans have the same promotion - $1 per month for the first 3 months. This promotion only applies to monthly plans and not yearly ones. For all yearly plans, Shopify has a 25% discount.
The affiliate commission is the same for all plans. Whether your referral buys just a Basic or expensive Advanced plan, your commission will always be $150.
If you are a successful Shopify affiliate that generates a lot of commissions, you will be contacted to join an invite-only Commerce Coach Affiliate Program.
The main benefit of being part of the Commerce Coach Affiliate Program is that your affiliate commission is increased. Instead of $150 per referral, you could earn $200 per referral and even more.
Another benefit is getting a dedicated partner manager you can always contact.
You get paid your affiliate commission through Impact through PayPal (in USD) or direct deposit. Impact requires a minimum balance of $10 before sending a payment, but since the Shopify affiliate commission is $150, that will never be a problem.
Unfortunately, the affiliate commission is non-recurring.
Can You Make $1000 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.
To make $1000 a month, you would need only around 7 referrals.
Let’s say you have high-quality content and a 2% conversion rate. With this conversion rate, you would only need 350 people each month to read your Shopify-related content. This is not that hard to achieve, even with a new website.
Nevertheless, you must expect that many of your referrals will only be on the free trial and not become paying customers, so you don’t get paid any commission for these referrals.
But this doesn’t change the fact that you can make a lot of money with the Shopify affiliate program, and you don’t need a blog with huge traffic as you need with other affiliate programs like the Booking.com affiliate program.
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.
However, most of the Shopify keywords with affiliate monetization potential are very competitive. I recommend using a tool like Surfer to optimize your content and get an edge over other Shopify affiliates.
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.
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.
If you decide to try Youtube, the best thing you can do is combine YouTube content with your own courses/blog content. In the video description, you could link both to the Shopify free trial and to your course. The YouTuber in the screenshot does this 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, you should join the Shopify affiliate program.
It’s one of the highest-paying affiliate programs, and Shopify is also a great product. Even though dropshipping is no longer trending as much as a few years ago, the demand is still quite high, and many people will always use it as a more user-friendly alternative to Woccommerce.
The downside is a bigger competition. Whether you decide to promote Shopify through a website or a YouTube channel, it will be hard to rank your content.
Also, Shopify is very picky about who they allow to join the program, so it is not easy to become a Shopify affiliate.
what if the customer directly purchases the full plan instead like the customer pays full amount for the basic plan instead of 1$ trial? will i get any commission ?
If your referral signs up without a free trial and makes a payment, you would receive a commission.