There’s something very attractive about earning a passive income from affiliate marketing.
Who doesn’t love the idea of a website that makes money while you sleep?
The problem is that “passive” income is rarely passive.
Making income from any website, even remotely, hands-off, requires a lot of work. However, implementing pay per click affiliate programs can dramatically reduce this work.
That way, once your website gets traffic, you let somebody else do all the hard work for you.
You get paid for simply hosting links, images, or videos on your site that your visitors then click on. Yes, that also describes display ad networks…where you get paid for each click you send to an advertiser.
We are going to show you 10 of the best pay per click affiliate programs out there.
We use or have used several of these ourselves.
Which is why we can earn this much in a single month.
Some of the PPC programs we’re about to share with you rival the earnings potential of the Amazon Associates program.
But before we go any further.
There’s one more thing…
We need to check this off before we get to the details of the programs themselves.
This is a basic but entirely relevant tip for improving your chances of working with any of these companies.
Avoid discussing controversial or contentious topics on your site.
Your approval options will be limited if your site is already sharp and edgy.
For those of you still in the early days of your content publishing career, do yourself a favor by avoiding topics such as politics, religion, sexuality, violence, guns, obviously illegal activities, malware, torrents, etc.
The advertisers represented by the programs listed below are 100% risk-averse and always will be.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs
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1 Adsense
Google AdSense was my first foray into contextual advertising, where I was paid per click instead of per sale via affiliate links.
This was way back in the early 2000s.
It was a time when AdSense was the only game on the affiliate marketing block.
These days, they have multiple competitors, many outpacing Google’s offering.
The first issue is that AdSense is notoriously difficult to get approved for.
But more importantly, earning a full-time income from AdSense alone has become very difficult.
This is down to their RPM (rate per mile), which is basically how much money you can earn from 1,000 visitors.
In the good old days of PPC affiliate marketing, RPMs of $30 were pretty common.
Even idiots like me could make money because you got paid anywhere from $1 to $10 per click.
Right now, you’d be lucky to earn 10c per click unless you’re operating in a really lucrative niche, e.g., affiliate marketing, insurance, or web hosting.
But it’s easy enough to make money in those niches without AdSense if you already have traffic.
Where Google leads the rest of the market is the success of its YouTube AdSense program with social media influencers.
They’re untouchable there…for now.
- URL: Google AdSense sign-up
- Traffic requirements: None
- RPM: Up to $7
- Affiliate program: None
- Payment threshold: US$100
- Payment frequency: Net 30
2 Media.net
Media.net is usually the first port of call for affiliate marketing publishers who want to make more as a PPC affiliate.
Most newbies use AdSense as their default setting when trying to monetize their website.
It then takes them months to figure out they could potentially double their income by signing up with other pay per click programs.
Like Media.net, for example.
The increased earnings are made possible because they pull ads from the Yahoo Bing Network.
Plus, you don’t need to ditch AdSense to use Media.net – their ad units will happily coexist on the same page.
Which is usually what experienced affiliate publishers do to earn more from each click.
Regarding RPM, this platform offers around $10, but you might earn more if you blog on topics like credit cards, personal finance, etc.
We actually tested Media.net internally not too long ago.
The end result was a 5x increase in earnings from the exact same volume of traffic.
So, this PPC affiliate program is definitely worth your while.
- URL: Media.net sign-up
- Traffic requirements: 5,000 monthly visitors
- RPM: Up to $10
- Affiliate program: Yes
- Payment threshold: US$100
- Payment frequency: Net 30
3 Ezoic
Ezoic emerged as a competitor to AdSense way back in 2010.
A decade later, Ezoic enjoyed a surge in popularity among affiliate marketing publishers, especially those with huge content sites.
So why are they swapping over to this PPC affiliate program?
The most obvious reason is that Ezoic offers a vastly improved RPM compared to AdSense or Media.net.
You can earn up to $15 per 1,000 visitors, putting it on par with many popular affiliate programs.
However, your website needs to get a minimum of 10,000 unique visitors per month.
Ezoic also focuses on optimizing ads on your site via machine learning (at least they didn’t call it AI), so you won’t have to fiddle with manually placing ad blocks.
And finally, their referral program pays you 3% of your referral’s lifetime revenue.
- URL: Ezoic sign-up
- Traffic requirements: 10,000 monthly visitors
- RPM: Up to $15
- Affiliate program: Yes
- Payment threshold: US$20
- Payment frequency: Net 30
4 Mediavine
Mediavine is the next step up the ladder for affiliates generating significant amounts of traffic, and they now want to make more money from that.
However, for starters, this PPC affiliate program is far more selective about the publishers they work with.
That’s not to say other pay per click affiliate programs don’t work with high-quality websites and publishers.
It’s just that Mediavine takes things to the next level.
A perfect example of this is their barrier to entry – your site needs to have a bare minimum of 50,000 unique visitors per month.
So that roots out spammy content publishers uploading churn-and-burn affiliate marketing websites.
Which leaves more money in the pot for you.
And that brings us to discussing earning potential – Mediavine pays more per click.
They now occupy the space that Google AdSense once did with RPMs of up to $30.
So, a website with 50,000 visitors can expect to earn around $1,500 per month (probably more) as a PPC affiliate.
Or roughly as much money as you’d expect to make promoting products via Amazon’s Associate’s program.
Their payment terms are net 65, though, so your February earnings would not be paid until May.
- URL: Mediavine sign-up
- Traffic requirements: 50,000 monthly visitors
- RPM: Up to $30
- Affiliate program: No
- Payment threshold: US$25
- Payment frequency: Net 65
5 AdThrive
You might need to sit down if you’re still reeling from the fact that Mediavine has such a high entry barrier.
AdThrive requires websites to have a minimum of 100,000 unique visitors per month.
Even when you are approved, they still vet your site to make sure your audience is a good fit for their advertisers.
They even check that you’re not on the shitlist with any other major pay per click affiliate programs.
So again, the focus is on a high-quality symbiotic relationship between advertisers, publishers, and AdThrive.
In terms of RPM, they pay $12 – $30 per 1,000 visitors.
This places them well ahead of 90% of other pay per click affiliate programs.
We’ve heard from a number of Authority Hacker students who’ve increased their site revenue dramatically (like 3x to 5x) by simply swapping over to AdThrive.
- URL: AdThrive sign-up
- Traffic requirements: 100,000 monthly visitors
- RPM: Up to $30
- Affiliate program: No
- Payment threshold: US$25
- Payment frequency: Net 45
6 Skimlinks
Skimlinks is one of the older pay per click affiliate programs out there – outliving most of its competitors.
They offer affiliate marketers a way to monetize their content without relying directly on affiliate programs.
Install their script on your site, which will then recommend products you can link to from within your content.
How it works is that they pay a 75/25 split on all money earned through commissions.
And you also don’t have to do any tracking or other nerdy stuff because they take care of that for you.
The line between Skimlinks and pay per click affiliate programs is a little blurry because Skimlinks represent affiliate programs instead of just advertisers.
But then they’re effectively the same thing.
They also run a referral program that pays you a 35% cut of your referrals’ commissions for their first 12 months with this PPC affiliate platform.
Just remember that they pay a net of 90, so you’ll be waiting at least three months for your cash.
Note: They no longer support Amazon as of March 31st, 2020.
- URL: Skimlinks sign-up
- Traffic requirements: None
- RPM: Varies depending on the niche
- Affiliate program: Yes
- Payment threshold: US$65
- Payment frequency: Net 90-ish
Check out our in-depth Slimlinks review.
7 Propeller Ads
You might not be familiar with PropellerAds, but 150,000 affiliate publishers are already there.
So, how do they compare to the other PPC affiliate programs in our roundup?
For starters, their ads are compatible with Google AdSense, so you can display multiple affiliate ads on the same page.
They also moderate their ad inventory to prevent any issues with malware, etc.
But they serve adult content, so you’ll need to ensure it works for your audience.
Something else worth mentioning is their claim of bypassing ad-blocking technology, adding around 20% to your bottom line.
Regarding how much you can make with your ads, RPMs are up to $7, but not much more than that.
But when you earn money, you get paid quickly – they pay out every Thursday once you’ve earned more than $5 in a given week.
That’s the fastest payment schedule for any PPC affiliate programs listed here.
And finally, you get a 5% cut of all revenue generated by referrals for their lifetime with PropellerAds.
- URL: PropellerAds sign-up
- Traffic requirements: None
- RPM: Up to $7
- Affiliate program: Yes
- Payment threshold: US$5
- Payment frequency: Net 7
8 Infolinks
Infolinks is another pay per click affiliate program in the same vein as Skimlinks.
They also claim to be the 3rd largest pay-per-click company of their type in the world.
And to be fair, they serve ads for a pretty impressive list of brand names, such as Nike, Netflix, and others.
What sets them apart from similar programs is that Infolinks analyzes your website traffic in real-time, serving up whatever ads best suit your visitor.
However, an RPM of up to $5 might not seem like anything to write home about in terms of making money.
But there are two things to consider here:
- You’ll end up using their ads alongside other PPC programs, such as AdSense
- This is still 2x – 5x more than you’ll earn from a typical AdSense unit
They also give you the opportunity to make money with their referral program.
You’ll get paid 10% of the revenue from any affiliate publishers you refer to this platform.
- URL: Infolinks sign-up
- Traffic requirements: None
- RPM: Up to $5
- Affiliate program: Yes
- Payment threshold: US$50
- Payment frequency: Net 45
9 Outbrain
Outbrain does things a little bit differently to pretty much any of the other pay per click affiliate programs listed here.
Most of these programs focus on having you host ads on your site, getting paid for each click.
Outbrain also allows publishers to purchase ad space from other affiliate publishers on the network.
So it holds a lot of promise for advertisers and affiliate marketing publishers alike.
Which is probably why they’ve managed to stay in business for almost two decades now.
And also why they get to work with companies like 3M, Lego, Merck, Panasonic, Disney, and IHG, for example.
They claim to offer publishers the “highest RPMs”, which is all well and good…except they don’t provide any proof.
But after some digging around I found that most publishers enjoy a pretty healthy RPM of between $5 and $10 with the platform.
One nice touch though is that they’re constantly analyzing how ads on your site are performing, tweaking them to give you the best RPM.
You will, however, be waiting for up to three months to get paid.
- URL: Outbrain sign-up
- Traffic requirements: 3 million monthly visitors (not a typo)
- RPM: Up to $10
- Referral program: No
- Payment threshold: US$50
- Payment frequency: Net 60 or Net 90
10 Revenue Hits
And that brings us to RevenueHits – the last of the pay per click affiliate programs in this roundup.
But this is a program with an important difference.
RevenueHits is a CPA (cost-per-action) program. You’ll only get paid if someone clicks on an ad and completes an action.
So it’s similar to referring a visitor to an advertiser using traditional affiliate links in that you only make money when the advertiser gets paid.
Unlike AdSense and others, where you get paid every time somebody clicks on an ad unit.
Within reason – they obviously check for click farms, etc.
But the fact remains that there’s very little point in driving crappy affiliate traffic to RevenueHits offers.
It’s just not going to convert.
Is this affiliate program worth your time and effort?
The short answer is “Yes,” as long as your site receives a relatively high volume of warm traffic.
That’s how you hit those $10 RPM figures with affiliate programs like this one.
They also offer several different ad formats, including display, floating, footer, pop-under, and all the other usual suspects.
This platform is apparently also slightly more tolerant of “edgy” content, so they’re definitely worth a look if others have turned you down.
They also operate a referral program where you get paid 10% of everything a referral earns within their first 12 months of working with RevenueHits.
- URL: RevenueHits sign-up
- Traffic requirements: None
- RPM: Up to $10
- Affiliate program: Yes
- Payment threshold: US$20 (PayPal)
- Payment frequency: Net 30
Over to You
It’s strange to look back from the end of this roundup on pay per click affiliate programs to see just how far Google has fallen in this market.
Once upon a time, they seemed absolutely untouchable.
These days, Google has been completely eclipsed by companies that use a fraction of their resources.
Which is bizarre.
But it’s also bloody good news for you because this is how the free market is meant to operate – the best provider(s) wins.
Pay-per-click affiliate programs like AdThrive and Mediavine can rise to the top of the heap.
And for dozens of similar companies to thrive, the way to drop the ball is with Google!
This diversity also means that you have an additional way to make money with your affiliate site through pay per click affiliate programs.
You’re not sure how to build an affiliate site?
No sweat – we’re happy to show you how to do that in our free training.
Your time, wisely invested, will give you the knowledge and skills you need to launch a basic website.
And no, it’s not a pitch fest where we spend 90% of our time talking about how great we are.
We teach you the same stuff most “gurus” hide inside an expensive course.
So, if you’re tired of bingeing Netflix or Disney+…or other material…why not sign up?
You have absolutely nothing to lose.
And a whole lot to gain.
Just tell us the best email address to send your invite.
