Are you a home and Garden blogger? Do you have experience with home repair and are looking for ways to make money? Well, today, we are going to take a look at the Home Depot affiliate program and how to make money in this multibillion-dollar industry.
Why Affiliate Marketing?
It’s one of the easiest online business models that allows you to earn commissions by sending traffic to an external website. You can earn commissions for sales or leads generated, depending on how the program pays.
It is one of the easiest ways to start an online business. Most top affiliate networks only require a functionally working website or blog. I’ve set up a step-by-step guide to help you get your first WordPress blog set up. For less than $4.00 per month, you can start on the path to earning money from home and over time change your life.
Even if you’re still working a full-time job, you can start on a part-time basis and grow it into a full-time venture over time. Unlike other traditional business ventures, you don’t need to acquire any special licenses or insurances to get started. In fact, very little overhead is required.
Related: How Much Does It Cost to Start A Blog What You Need To Know
The cool thing is that once you don’t want to work as a handywoman or handywoman anymore, you can still share your tips and tutorials on your blog and earn money via the Home Depot blogger program.
So if that sounds exciting and you’re ready to join this program, you can do so here.
A Look At the Home Depot Affiliate Program
- The US program is managed through the Impact platform website. If you live in Canada, you can join the HomeDepot.ca affiliate program via CJ Affiliate (formerly known as Commission Junction).
- Anyone with a functionally working website or blog can join the program. You’ll have a better chance of being approved if your site fits their program.
- It’s free to join and all affiliates have the potential to earn commissions on over 500,000 products that fall into the free ship to store home items.
- You will earn commissions whenever someone makes a purchase through your link. The payouts are 2% on appliances, 3% on products and mobile, and buy online pick-up-in-store purchases, 8% on home decor.
- They have a 24-day cookie, which is similar to the Amazon Associate program.
How to Make Money With the Home Depot Program
Now that we’ve taken a quick peek inside the program, it’s time to find out how you can actually make money with your hard efforts. As I mentioned above, the cookie lasts 24 hours, so you can to make sure that you can get people to click through your link.
You might not think that 24 hours is a lot, but it’s better than the Target affiliate program, where the cookie only lasts 7-days.
Target The Home Decor Category
Based on my research, I quickly realized that they pay 8% for select home decor products. When I go to their US-based website, I can see that this category consists of:
Shop by Category
- Furniture
- Bedding & Bath
- Home Accents
- Wallpaper
- Kitchenware
- Tablet & Bar
- Lighting
- Rugs
- Blinds & Window Treatments
- Holiday Decor
Shop by Room
- Living Room
- Bedroom
- Bathroom
- Dining Room
- Kitchen
- Laundry Room
- Entryway
- Home Office
- Outdoor
Featured Brands
- Home Decorations Collection
- The Company Store
- KitchenAid
- Cuisinart
- DeLonghi
- OXO
- Gibson
- SWISSGEAR
- Fiesta
As you can see, there are literally tons of different categories that you can target in the Home Decor & Furniture category.
Find A Profitable Subniche With Low Competition
One of the best things you can do if you want to earn quickly is to use a keyword tool like Jaaxy or KWFinder to uncover low competition keywords you can target.
I’ll be using KWFinder to brainstorm some possible topics you can use to start your blog. You can also use these brainstorm ideas to do further research and see what you can come up with.
Potential Sub Niches to Help You Make Money
At the time of this writing, all these keywords are easy according to the KWFinder color score. If I was wanting to make money with this program, I would consider starting a blog in these sub niches or writing a blog post on them.
- Home Decor Furniture – 3705 searches – 22/100 Green Score
- Shabby Chic Home Decore – 1300 searches – 26/100 Green Score
- Small Office Design – 2900 searches – 16/100 Green Score
- Thermal Blinds – 2850 searches – 27/100 Green Score
- Outdoor Kitchen Appliances – 1300 searches – 26/100 Green Score
I could literally go on and on finding keywords with low competition. You can do the same if you sign up with the Free trial of KWFinder.
When you do, you get 5 free searches daily. Imagine how many keywords you can find, you’ll never run out of content ideas for your niche website or blog.
3 Steps to Make Money
Once you’ve found a keyword or niche you want to target, it’s time to actually write content that is going to help you earn money.
We’re going to talk about 3 things you can do to ensure that you actually earn from your hard efforts. These tips will work with the Ryobi, Lowes, and Walmart affiliate programs, so don’t be afraid to apply them to any program to increase your affiliate commissions.
Step 1: Target Higher Price Range Products
The most obvious thing you can do to increase your commissions is to promote products that cost more. For instance, let’s say that you’re writing a blog post about lighting and ceiling fans.
This falls into the Home Decor category, so you have the potential to earn 8% from any sales. If someone clicks through and buys a lighting fixture, you earn money.
So you want to make it as easy as possible for them to find exactly what they need. You’ll want to go to the Home Depot site and search under “Ceiling Fans With Lights” and select the price range underneath.
There are more than 200 products that fall in the $100 or more price range. This means that you’ll have tons of products that you can choose from.
Don’t Just Promote High Priced Products
We all want to make the most commissions possible, but don’t make the mistake of only promoting high priced products.
Who knows maybe you’ll get more clicks and conversions if you promote those lower-priced products as well.
The great thing is that whenever someone adds something to their cart, Home Depot will suggest other frequently bought items and accessories that will potentially increase your commissions.
Step 2: Use Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are extremely vital for e-commerce websites. Most people will make their buying decision based on customer reviews.
They understand that the reviews are usually non-biased. It’s not important to use reviews on those lower priced items, but when you’re promoting higher-end products, the reviews can help you convert browsers into buyers.
Home Depot makes it easy, as all their reviews are right underneath the product listing.
For example, this integrated LED Indoor Brushed Nickel Ceiling Fan has over 1,100 reviews. More than half the customers rated it 4 out of 5 stars.
Here’s a snippet of a positive review.
As you can see, they are a verified buyer, this is what makes it an unbiased review.
Use The Reviews to Write Your Reviews
Verified buyers leave honest reviews. If you’re writing a product review, you can easily scroll through all the reviews and jot down all the pros and cons of the product.
It’s the perfect way to come up with a comprehensive list of pros and cons that will benefit your readers.
Many new bloggers make the mistake of leaving out the negative reviews because they think that people won’t buy.
Don’t be scared to provide your readers with all the information they need to make a buying decision.
Remember, the 24-hour cookie duration? It’s your job to provide potential buyers with everything they need at their fingertips. The more information you provide them, the more quickly they can make their buying decision.
Step 3: Share Your Project Ideas
The Home Depot program isn’t just an ordinary e-commerce website. It’s a great resource to help homeowners build a smarter home with tons of features for affiliate marketers to make money.
Their DIY section has huge potential to earn commissions from DIY projects and ideas. Home Improvement projects are a great way to convert readers into customers because you have the opportunity to share what you’re working on which tools you’re using.
For instance, let’s say that you’re working on some Christmas woodworking patterns for your home decor. You could create a blog post describing the tools that you’re using and what type of wood is the easiest to work with.
To increase your earnings, you might even consider creating a YouTube video with a woodworking tutorial.
Your blog and tutorials will help people discover the tools they need in the DIY section of the HomeDepot website.
Of course, you’ll want to make sure that you’re targetting keywords that your readers will be searching for. Each blog post, video, and how-to tutorial will need to revolve around one specific keyword.
Here are some topics that I found for you that revolve around DIY projects that you can write and have the potential to rank highly on Google.
I used KWFinder to find some potential DIY topics for your upcoming blog posts.
- how to create an outdoor kitchen island – 2933 searches – 28/100 Green Score
- install a stone bathroom sink – 1050 searches – 25/100 Green Score
Whenever I am looking for a new keyword for a blog post, I want to make sure that it gets enough searches to make it worth my time.
I also want to make sure that it’s NOT too competitive. There’s no use in writing a blog post if you have no hope of ever getting traffic.
Trust me, I’ve written tons of blog posts that are targeting keywords that are too competitive.
Here’s What You Do Now
If you’re ready to become an affiliate marketer and start earning passive income, the first thing you need to do is join some reputable affiliate networks. Some of the networks you need to consider joining are:
Once you get accepted, it’s time to start browsing all the different programs that are related to your blog or website. There are tons of different stores with affiliate programs you can join.
If you still haven’t set up your blog, be sure to check out my tutorial.
Time to Write Content
As soon as you get your blog set up, it’s time to start writing. Don’t worry too much about how your blog looks like, the most important thing is writing content that your readers find helpful.
As soon as you’re done writing your blog posts, do everything you can to work on promotion. You need to increase your traffic if you want to make money.
My JumpStart Blog Traffic eBook will show you exactly what I’m doing to increase my organic traffic.
Rinse and Repeat
Once you’ve written your first blog post, it’s time to rinse and repeat. It’s going to take a lot more than one blog post to create a successful affiliate blog.
You don’t need to write a new blog post every day. But you do need to create a blogging schedule that works for you.
If you’re a brand new blogger, your goal should be to write as much quality content that you can as quickly as you can.
Once you’ve built up an archive of 50 blog posts, you can slow down on how often you publish new blog posts. You just want to make sure that you have plenty of related blog posts people can read when they visit your blog.
Final Take Away
One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is that it takes time to create a profitable blog. Don’t believe all those overnight success stories.
Blogging is a long-term strategy, but with the right persistence, you can create a nice little side gig for yourself. Heck, some people have even managed to turn their blogs into a full-time business.
Affiliate marketing is just one of the many ways to monetize a blog. It’s my personal favorite because, with the right strategy, the amount you earn is limitless.
I highly recommend you invest in an affiliate marketing course to help you cut down on your learning curve.
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Are you a member of this program? If so share your experiences of what’s working and what isn’t in the comments below.