Target Affiliate Program – Does It Really Beat Amazon ?

Let’s face it we all know the name Amazon and it’s association with the affiliate market, but how many of you have heard of the Target Affiliate Program, maybe if your live in the United States or Canada but worldwide it’s probably fairly less well-known. In this article I will show you how and why you should be joining Target and how it compares to the giant that is Amazon.

How to Join Target Affiliate Program

Joining Target Affiliates is free and very simple to do. You register through a company called Impact Radius and as with most affiliate programs it’s a form filling exercise with your name, address, website and how you intend to promote their products.

However, because Target is US based you may have to jump through a few more hoops to get accepted if you are outside the USA.

As previous suggested you do have to be accepted to participate, and they will probably look at your website to see how their products will fit in with your site and make sure it is geared to a UA audience. Make sure you have plenty of great content on there and the wording is English US to give you a chance to be given the green light to promote.

That’s quickly look at the major Pros and Cons of joining Target.

The Pros Of Target Affiliate Program

Brand Identity – Certainly in the US and Canada Target is a well-known brand and most people will recognize it. There main outlets are still bricks and mortar stores but their online presence is beginning to get noticed. They are not yet at Amazon in the online battle but moving up fast.

Longer Cookies – One thing they do beat Amazon on is the life of their cookies. Amazon has a cookie life of just 24 hours, whereas Target exceed this and give you 7 days. This is a massive advantage as it gives you a longer period for the people you direct to products to actually buy.

This then increases your chances of making more commissions as your conversion rate is ultimately higher. Any advantage you can gain as an affiliate is vital for your success.

If you are thinking these are biscuits that you can eat then you would be incorrect. Shame I love cookies! A cookie on the internet is a small piece of code that is downloaded onto a users’ computer or mobile device which is then tracked to you (the affiliate). Either way cookies are lovely 🙂

Commissions Vary

Commissions do vary across the different categories and range between 1% – 8% this is comparable to Amazon and the going rate for this sort of marketing. This means you can focus on the larger commissions.

Large Product Range

This is a massive catalogue of products that you can offer your visitors. These include the following categories :-

• Beauty & Health
• Baby Gear and Furniture
• Home and Outdoor Living
• Apparel and Accessories

Great Advertising Packs

Target promotional images are a great feature and will help you when promoting on the internet. They have product widgets and over 150 plus different banners, special offers and promotions that you can utilize. These are also updated on a regular basis so you can swap them out from time.

There are many various sizes too which means you can place them in different areas of your website or advertising platforms. There is no limit to the promotional material you can add, although adding banners and link text does tend to get better results.

The Cons of Target Affiliate Program

USA Based

Primary a United States based business, this shouldn’t stop you from joining. If you research where the majority of your traffic already comes from I would put money on it that the top country driving traffic to your website would be the United States.

Unless you are specifically targeting another country of course lol

So although this does narrow down your potential market it is still a huge market. You could still do really well if you live in the UK, Europe, China or Australia and of course any other country that Impact Radius supports.

Low Commissions

With certain affiliate programs you can earn a 50% commission on any product sales, so I have to mention about the low percentage that the Target program pays out. This can be outweighed by the amount of product choice that they have together with a great brand awareness and trust.

The same can also be said of other programs such as Amazon this doesn’t seem to deter people from signing up and promoting. If you can get good targeted traffic and clicks then you could make a tidy passive income every month.

Commission Structure

As I have already briefly mentioned there is a varied commission structure when it comes to Target’s program for affiliates.

This will vary because of two factors.

1. What you are actually selling. There are four main categories Beauty & Health is the worst of the categories with just a 1% commission across the board, no matter how much you sell. Maybe to the one promote! Baby Gear and Furniture is the next up the scale with commissions starting from 3% up to 5%. Leaving the two other sections Apparel and Accessories, together with Home and Outdoor Living as the best ranging from 5% to a respectable 8%.
2. The second factor would be how many sales per month you would be making. Basically the more sales the more percentage you make. Apart from Beauty and Health which is a flat 1% as said above.

At least there is a 7-day cookie on your links which does give you a better chance of making sales.

They estimate the EPC (Earnings Per Clicks) to be around $12-$13 this means for every 100 clicks the average payout would be $12-$13.

Support

There is a support email address for all the affiliates to contact with any issues. They would probably has a full time affiliate manager that will reply to your queries.

Best Way to Promote Target Products

If you are new to the affiliate marketing game and are wondering how you would go about promoting the Target products then here is a quick insight into what to do.

Niche Website

First thing I would do is create a website / blog where you can use content to draw visitors to your site. By placing promotional links, banners and images across your site you can then direct people to buy.

I would recommend WordPress as the platform to use when building your site as this has the flexibility to handle loads information and is very easy to use.

Read my article on Building A Website For Free this will show you how to get up and running is just a few minutes

Social Media

Discover which of the social networks your target audience is on and then focus on that one. Pinterest is a great site and a search engine all of its own. Images pinned here can get loads of shares and go viral meaning you get 1000s of visitors from just one image.

Training

The other thing I would always recommend would be training. There are many aspects of affiliate marketing and to be able to know all of them, ongoing training and support would be definite advantage.

Sites such as Wealthy Affiliate has a great support community and their training (some of which is free) is like no other site I have seen. They have 10s of thousands active members and many are full time affiliate marketers. Well worth picking their brains don’t you think!

Check out a detailed breakdown of the Wealthy Affiliate Training and then sign up for your free account.

You can thank me later 🙂

Final Words

If you are promoting any of the niches that I have mentioned earlier then joining Target as an affiliate would definitely be beneficial to your business. Yes you will have to get some decent traffic but, with the wide range of products there should be plenty to promote to generate a good income.

I would certainly look into more training as you build your business. A community such as Wealthy Affiliate will be handy to keep to updated with everything new that is happening in the online marketing space. The more you learn the more you can compete with and beat your competition.