Crypto Affiliate Programs Unveiled: Payout Models, Key Parameters, And Profitability

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.

Crypto and affiliate marketing have been walking hand in hand for a while now. Almost any crypto-related project has an affiliate program these days. However, with abundance comes perplexity: every program looks pretty much the same to the untrained eye. 

To know the difference between a great program and a stingy one, you need to be able to evaluate many factors, the most important being the payment model.

Top payout models in crypto affiliate programs

Most programs work by CPA (Cost Per Action), which means that an affiliate is compensated for a target action. This action depends on the company’s goals. 

If the company wants to attract customers, it might be paying affiliates for registered users or app instals. If the goal is to increase turnover, affiliates might be compensated for user deposits or transactions. The following examples should help make things clearer. 

A cryptocurrency exchange 

Crypto exchanges are always looking for new active traders but their ultimate goal is to accumulate funds and encourage trading. So, it often happens that exchanges reward their affiliates with a percentage of the commission for all trades performed by the users that an affiliate attracted to the exchange.

Let’s say an exchange is offering 30% commission. Affiliate A brought in users B and C. They started trading on the platform and their monthly turnover amounted to 5 BTC. With an average commission rate of 1%, users B and C paid a total of 0.05 BTC in commission. At the end of the month, the exchange shares 30% of that accumulated commission with affiliate A, whose compensation will be 0.05 * 0.3 = 0.015 BTC. 

A typical example of such a program is one from Binance.

An instant exchange service 

As opposed to large crypto exchanges where the main user activity is trading, instant exchange services provide simple ways to swap crypto or buy crypto for fiat currency. Their goal is to increase turnover, that is, for users to perform as many swaps as possible. So, it’s more common for such services to compensate their affiliates with a percentage of the turnover. Aimed at a broader audience, these services have clear transaction fees and simple compensation mechanics.

For example, an exchange service compensates its affiliates 0.4% of all the exchanges performed by users they referred to the program. Let’s say affiliate A brought in users B, C and D. During one month, they exchanged cryptocurrencies for a total of 5 BTC. In this case, the affiliate will receive 5 * 0.004 = 0.02 BTC in compensation. 

ChangeNOW, an instant exchange service, runs an affiliate program with these types of clear conditions. 

Crypto wallets, payment solutions and others 

Other crypto projects such as crypto wallets, payment solutions, and supplementary services are usually interested in new users. It’s common for them to compensate affiliates by a CPL (Cost Per Lead) or CPS (Cost Per Sale) model, which implies a flat fee.

Let’s wrap it up with another example. A hardware wallet pays its affiliates a flat fee of $25 for each referred user that buys a device. Affiliate A places a referral link in their blog post, 100 people follow that link and 10 make a purchase. In this case, by the end of the month, the affiliate will be rewarded with 10 * $25 = $250. 

A hardware crypto wallet Trezor runs one of the most successful programs compensating affiliates by CPS.

Other crucial parameters

A compensation model is not the only distinguishing parameter for crypto affiliate programs. Factors such as cookie duration, referral levels or quality of support play a huge role too.

An affiliate program that offers high payouts but for example has a short cookie duration will lose to the one with lower but infinite payouts for referred users. 

Cookie duration or attribution horizon

When an affiliate refers a user to the company, there are multiple ways in which this user will be attributed to the affiliate. Things are easy when it is a one-time deal and an affiliate gets compensated once. When the user generates cash flow for the company for a time, the company gets to decide for how long they will be compensating an affiliate who brought them in and how much this compensation will be. 

The most common options are:

•       One-time compensation;
•       Lifetime compensation (as long as the user generates cash flow, an affiliate will be receiving their reward);
•       30 days;
•       90 days. 

A company can establish its own rules and affiliate reward rates but these are the most common conditions on the market. 

Referral level

Depending on an affiliate’s performance, a company can set different levels of compensation, usually in the form of a progressive scale. For example, if an affiliate brings in 10 to 50 users every month, they get 20% of their accumulated commissions. So, 50 to 100 is 30% and 100+ is 40%. 

Referral conditions can be revised on a weekly or monthly basis, which means affiliates may be compensated differently from month to month based on their performance. 

Payout currency

Another important factor is the payout currency. Often, affiliates have a choice regarding how they are compensated for driving their audience to the product. The most common options are: 

•       BTC;
•       Fiat currencies;
•       Internal tokens;

Fiat and crypto are the optimal choice, however, a company that offers flexibility to their affiliates scores more points.

Accepted traffic

Some programs impose restrictions on what kind of traffic they accept. On a general note, crypto affiliate programs target participants with their own traffic (social media influencers, bloggers, or platform developers). Affiliates who buy traffic from third-party providers, for example, those who work with advertising platforms are not always eligible to participate.

Such restrictions mainly arise from the fact that two of the most popular formats in advertising networks are push notifications and pop-under banners - both are highly intrusive. So it is understandable that not every company wishes to be associated with this.

What’s next?

As you can see, many factors contribute to the quality and convenience of a crypto affiliate program. A program that balances high payouts, clear conditions and helpful support is one by the ChangeNOW crypto exchange. 

The ChangeNOW.io affiliate program is designed for social media influencers, bloggers, website owners, and platform developers. It offers tools for each category of affiliates specifically designed to meet their needs. Providing high rewards, infinite cookie duration and payouts in bitcoin and fiat, the ChangeNOW affiliate program is a great way for affiliates of all expertise levels to generate a stable passive revenue stream.

Summing up

Knowing the key parameters of an affiliate program should make it easier to select the right crypto affiliate program. Keep in mind that the size of the payout doesn’t give you the whole picture. Consider other factors and make an informed decision when choosing an affiliate program to join.

Image sourced from Pexels

This content should not be interpreted as investment advice. Cryptocurrency is a volatile market; do your independent research and only invest what you can afford to lose. New token launches and small market capitalization coins are inherently more risky than large cap cryptocurrencies. These tokens are subject to larger liquidity and market risks.