Affiliate marketing has captured the attention of modern marketing gurus, owing to its simple working mechanism and income generation capabilities. This, in turn, has given an opportunity to website owners and bloggers to explore different audiences and niches.
People are induced into buying products by the extensive review written by these bloggers. Affiliate marketing can be understood as an organized and bigger method of referral marketing, where affiliate marketers can earn commission based on the affiliate sales volume executed through their affiliate links.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Before we dive into the Target Affiliate Program review, here’s a brief introduction to affiliate marketing. With the growing popularity of the E-commerce industry, affiliate marketing is also becoming a sustainable business. You may have heard of people making a decent amount of money with affiliate marketing, but how does it work?
- You would have to enroll in an affiliate program. These programs are offered by giants such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target. You can select any one of them (or others) based on the niches they serve and the rate of commission offered.
- Once successfully enrolled, you’d be provided with different affiliate links and banners, which you can place on your own website.
- Whenever any visitor purchases a product from your affiliate link, you’d be paid a commission.
Read More: Affiliate Marketing Business Model: The Definitive Guide
How to Join the Target Affiliate Marketing Program
Much like the Walmart Affiliate program, the Target Affiliate Program is managed by Impact Radius. This means that you’d get access to all the affiliate tools offered by Impact Radius. Here are a few prerequisites to join the network:
- You must have decent traffic. It goes without saying that you would not be able to earn a sizable regular income unless you own a website or blog with regular traffic.
People often spend years building a customer base that would lead to decent conversion rates before starting their journey towards a successful affiliate marketing business.
New website owners are not advised to jump into the affiliate business without decent traffic.
- Your website can’t be involved in any prohibited activities such as those which involve the promotion of activities that are not in the public interest.
- You would then need to complete an application form with the Target Affiliate Program, filling in all the required information about your business and website. As an added advantage, you could also enroll in multiple websites under the same application form.
- It would take two business days for your application to be accepted (or rejected). Target would ensure that you fulfill all the required criteria and are likely to adhere to its established terms and conditions.
- Once enrolled, you’d be provided access to Target’s newsletters and banner ads, and other affiliate tools to facilitate your marketing efforts.
Target Affiliate Marketing Advantages
With all of the affiliate programs available, why choose the Target Affiliate Program?
Reputed Brand
Target is a famous name in the American department store industry. It’s third on the list of department stores in the US, after Amazon and Walmart. With thousands of customers across the US, Target is a well-reputed brand that offers quality products.
7-day Cookies
Unlike its competitors, such as Amazon and Walmart, the Target Affiliate Program offers a seven-day cookie duration. This means that if a customer completes a purchase within 7 days of first clicking the affiliate link on your website, it would be considered as your sale for commission purposes.
This is in stark contrast to affiliate programs of Amazon and Walmart, which only have 24-hour and 3-day referral periods respectively.
The cookie isn’t product-specific, which means that you’d earn a commission even if the visitor purchases any other product (within the permissible category of products) after clicking your affiliate link.
For example, if your affiliate link is for product X, and the customer buys product Y after clicking on the product X link, you’d still earn a commission (provided product Y is also made available by Target for its affiliate program).
Commission Structure
Target’s commission structure is based on the kinds of products you deal in. For example, you can earn a commission of at least 5% whilst dealing in Apparel & Accessories and Home & Outdoor Living Products.
This rate can be elevated to a maximum of 8%, depending on your volume of sales level. The commission on Baby Gear & Furniture ranges from 3% – 5%. However, if you have a health and beauty-related website, you would not make more than 1%, irrespective of your sales per month.
Affiliate Assistance
Much like other affiliate marketplaces, Target also offers its affiliate marketers access to pre-designed banner ads and weekly newsletters with product links, affiliate codes, marketing materials, and customized banners to be placed on their websites and blogging platforms.
These assist blog owners in their affiliate marketing strategies, as they don’t need to spend a considerable amount designing these banners.
Target Affiliate Program Disadvantages
We’ve taken a look at the advantages of the Target Affiliate Program, but what are the areas that this program lacks?
Only US-Based Customers
Although Target accepts affiliate marketers from all over the world, it requires the audience to be based in the US. This is because, unlike Amazon, Target does not ship its products internationally.
This means that if you are a non-US resident, you’d still be eligible for the program, provided all your customers are in the US. However, if you have a customer base that lives outside of the US, the Target Affiliate Program won’t serve much of a purpose.
Limited Affiliate Products
Unlike giants such as Amazon and Walmart, Target only deals in a limited category of digital and physical products, and to make matters worse, it only offers four popular categories of products for affiliate purposes.
- Apparel and Accessories
- Home and Outdoor Products
- Baby Gear and Furniture
- Health and Beauty Products
This narrows down the scope of affiliate earnings with Target, which makes this program ideal only for sellers who exclusively deal in the above-mentioned categories of products. However, you can choose between thousands of products within these four niches.
Should I Join the Target Affiliate Program?
Before you jump in to the Target Affiliate Program, there are a few things you need to consider in order to determine if it’s the right program for you. The niche that your website or blog post targets play a huge role.
Niche and Location
If you aren’t dealing in Target’s affiliate products, trying to join their program wouldn’t be in your best interest. Also, if the majority of your target customers are non-US-based, Amazon would be a better affiliate partner to consider, as Target doesn’t facilitate international shipping.
Commission Rates
If you are eligible for the Target Affiliate Program, you’d need to consider the commission rates for your niche.
If you are dealing in a health and beauty-related range of products, you’d be better off choosing the Amazon Affiliate program or the Walmart Affiliate program, as they offer more commission than Target’s 1%.
Although you get a shorter cookie period on Amazon and Walmart, the higher commission rates (4%) and the generality of the niche make up for it. The trade-off is between an additional commission of 3% or 4 extra days of cookie.
When it comes to other product categories, such as Apparel and Accessories, Baby Gear, and Home Products, the commission rates on Target are competitive when compared to other affiliate programs. Where Walmart offers a constant commission of 4% across all its affiliate products, you could earn a commission as high as 8% with the Target Affiliate Program.
The leading marketplace for households and furniture, Etsy Affiliates, offers only a commission of 2-4%, whereas you’d be able to churn in an average commission of 5% through the Target Affiliate Program.
How Much Can I Make With The Target Affiliate Program?
If you’re under the impression that you’d start making hundreds of thousands of dollars the moment you start with affiliate marketing, you’d be mistaken. Affiliate marketing is a field of business that requires a considerable gestation period.
This also depends on the stage of your business at which you decide to incorporate affiliate marketing. A well-reputed website would not take much time to generate a sizable monthly income. Whereas, a new web space would take years to reach that level.
Let’s better understand this concept with the following example:
Suppose you target a single product named X, which sells at $1000. With an average commission rate of 5%, you’d be earning $50 on each sale of product X. Now to earn $1000 each month, you’d need to sell 20 of these affiliate products. Assuming a normal conversion rate of 2%, you’d need at least 1000 visitors to your website each month.
That might not sound like a lot in absolute terms, but considering the competition on the web, attracting 1000 visitors to your webpage can be a hard nut to crack. It all falls back on the quality of the content on your website. Producing high-quality and SEO-optimized content might help you rank higher on search engines leading to higher traffic.
Although an average conversion rate of 2% is considered a decent percentage, you can aim to improve your conversion rates by including reliable and detailed product reviews that assist viewers in arriving at a decision about the product.
If you’re looking to deal in Target’s Health and Beauty Products, which offers only a commission of 1%, you’d need much higher traffic (5000 visits per month) to generate the same amount of income. On the flip side, other programs would offer you a higher income with the same amount of traffic.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few FAQs about the Target Affiliate Program.
Q: How Much Does It Cost to Join the Affiliate Program?
A: The Target Affiliate Program is completely free to join. The platform does not require you to deposit any amount of money as fixed security, unlike some other affiliate programs. You could start your affiliate marketing journey at no additional investment with Target.
Q: How Many Links Can I Place on My Website?
A: Target does not place a threshold on the number of affiliate links that can be placed on your web space. It’s totally left up to your discretion, but make sure you don’t go overboard with these link placements.
Your main focus should be to provide value addition through quality content that would compel visitors to buy the product. You should consider placing the links and banners at prominent places on your website so that your target audience doesn’t miss them.
What Is the Estimated EPC from the Program?
EPC refers to the Estimated Payout Per Click. This takes into account various parameters, such as commission rates and conversion rates. The average affiliate payouts per 100 clicks for the Target Affiliate Program is $12 to $13.
This is quite a decent payout considering Target’s competitive affiliate commission rates. You can further see an increase in your EPC as your search engine rankings, website traffic, and conversion rates grow.
Final Thoughts
Everything has its spectrum of advantages and disadvantages. It all boils down to the fact of whether it’s appropriate for your purpose or not. If the Target Affiliate Program fulfills your needs and marketing goals, you should definitely enroll in it.
It’s one of the best niche affiliate programs available that have a wide variety of products on offer. With a 7-day referral period, it provides enough room for your target audience to make purchasing decisions.
Target’s weekly newsletter updates and affiliate tools assistance also make their program ideal for marketers who are just starting out as affiliate partners.
