The affiliate marketing software that a company uses is critical to a program’s success. Affiliate tracking software must register users, generate links, track user/link activity, attribute conversions, produce reports, and integrate with payment solutions such as PayPal. Other features merchants may desire are multichannel analytics, messaging, email marketing, deep linking, fraud detection, and integration with marketing and business tools. Finally, the software should be reliable, efficient, and foster trust between merchants (advertisers) and affiliates (publishers).

Subscription ecommerce allows customers to sign up for goods and services that they want regularly. The goods are then automatically delivered to customers weekly, monthly, or quarterly. The main subscription product categories and niches include food, beverages, clothing, fashion, health, personal hygiene, beauty, toys, and pet. Subscription-based online streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime, also belong to subscription commerce. Additionally, Netflix deserves credit as a subscription commerce pioneer. Ten years before Birch Box, it was shipping DVDs to subscribers monthly.

Before financial technology start-ups became all the rage, there was TransferWise. In 2011, TransferWise launched to disrupt the money transfer sector, which it has. It enables people to send and receive money–internationally and locally–at mid-market exchange rates and low fees. All costs are known upfront and guaranteed (up to 48 hours). By contrast, many money transfer companies and banks markup exchange rates and charge high fees. Some even hide their pricing details in their terms and conditions.

TransferWise customers can hold 40+ currencies and get bank account details for the US, UK, Eurozone, Australia, and New Zealand through a “borderless” multi-currency account. A debit Mastercard is also available in some regions.

Success in affiliate marketing partly depends on how much a program pays. Therefore, you should consider the commission rate of each affiliate program. I tend to promote high-paying merchants that pay at least 30 percent or $50 per sale. If I sell $100,000 worth of goods, I’ll earn $30,000, for example. By contrast, if I focus on too many programs that pay low or single-digit commission rates, I’ll never achieve my income goals. For instance, at a 5 percent commission rate, I would make $5,000 per $100,000 sold.

It may seem obvious to promote programs that pay well. However, I see many affiliates painstakingly market low-paying programs, for example, Amazon Associates, which tops out at 10 percent.