This article contains affiliate links, and we get referral commission at no additional cost to you.
Throughout the last 8 years I’ve made close to $250,000 from promoting AliExpress products.
Want to do the same? Keep reading.
AliExpress is a relatively well-known global marketplace based in China that offers products to international buyers. Just like almost any other big online retail business, AliExpress has an affiliate program to attract buyers to boost sales on the platform.
This review will cover everything you need to know about the AliExpress affiliate program. You will also learn how this affiliate program stands in comparison to Amazon Associates.
AliExpress Affiliate Program: HOW-TO
How to join AliExpress Affiliate Program?
If you want to join through EPN (recommended), you can do it here.
If you want to join through Admitad, you can do it here.
If you want to join the native (official) program, visit portals.aliexpress.com. I will explain the con’s of that program further down. You can login using your buyer AliExpress account, and the application takes a couple minutes to complete.
NOTE: if you use VPN, you might need to turn it off. The affiliate browser extension works with the VPN, but the registration page might not.
You will learn how to:
- Start generating affiliate commission with any budget;
- Pick the right products that convert with minimal headache;
- What kind of an affiliate to be – niche or general;
- How to create your first links and tag them the right way;
- How to build an online community, and play a long-term game;
- SEO basics and how to write articles that rank on search engines and generate free traffic;
And a lot more!
This course is 100% written by me with no AI.
I don’t know how to say it without being cheezy, but honestly I can’t believe I’m giving it all away for this low of a price.
You definitely don’t need it to start, but it makes it a lot easier. It took me years to learn this stuff, and you can learn it in just days.
AliExpress Affiliate Program: Commission
There are three main ways to work with AliExpress: their native program, and a third party company, of which there are several options: EPN, Admitad and AliExpress Portals.
I have been using AliExpress official program for several years before switching to Admitad (despite the lower commission rate) and here is why:
Native Affiliate Program Con’s:
- No dedicated support. I’ve had issues with late payouts and issues with the commission structure (wrong % amounts on categories). I have emailed AliExpress Affiliate support team multiple times, but never received any reply. I can’t emphasize, how annoying and demoralizing it is. Admitad and EPN have dedicated account support.
- No payout on Hot Products – these are the best-selling items. People buy a lot of them so they add up, but the official rate on them is 0%. Admitad offers up to 69% on them, and EPN offers up to 70% (note “up to” – realistically, it’s ~3-9% on most products).
- Sales records are only kept for 6 months. If you don’t download them, they are lost forever. Not a huge issue, but pretty annoying.
- Very limited options for tagging. They allow sub-ID’s but you are limited to 20, and it’s not an easy process to switch between them. EPN and Admitad have a limit of 100,000. Which means that you can tag your links in a way that will show you exactly what link the sales came from. It’s EXTREMELY useful for tracking and optimization.
- Limited payment options. Native program can only pay via bank transfers (they take $15 to complete the transfer, in addition to the fee that your bank may collect). Admitad and EPN have bank transfer, PayPal, WebMoney, crypto and bank card transfers.
I have a EPN account as well, that I use whenever Admitad extension is not working (1% of cases) and for their cashback service.
How much money can you make with AliExpress Affiliate Program?
When I started in ~2015, AliExpress cookie lifetime was 30 days – so as long as someone clicked your affiliate link and made a purchase within 30 days after that on AliExpress, you would get paid. Then they reduced that to 1 day, and then to session-based, which means if the buyer clicked the link, closed the browser, and then opened the website again, you would not get any commission. That created outrage in the affiliate community, and they decided to increase it to 3 days.
I have stepped over $100/month mark approximately 3-4 months in, then it slowed down due to commission structure changes. I kept on creating content, and pages started ranking in Google.
Then as I created more videos and blog posts it slowly went to $1,000 – 2,000 per month, and in peak months (November, March) it sometimes reaches $5,000 – 8,000/month.
After the user makes a purchase, it can take up to 60 days for the commission to process. If the user starts a dispute and AliExpress returns them the money, you do not get paid (that’s why there is a Declined commission tab). On average, I’d say I get my payments ~45 days later.
There is no exact number – your commission amount is directly related to how much effort you put in, and whether you create a process that makes sense.
You don’t have to buy my course to start, but it makes it a lot easier.
How to start making money with AliExpress Affiliate Program?
You can promote your links in a variety of ways – through your own blog, YouTube channel and other forms of social media.
Spamming is never a good option. It might get you money at first, but it is not sustainable, and your account will get banned. Good things take time, and white-hat SEO is the right way to do it.
I described the whole process on how to start in my AliExpress Affiliate Course. It has 50 pages, packed with useful information based on my actual experience. If you think this post is useful, the course is even better.
How to start promoting your affiliate links?
1. Start a shopping community in your language.
A YouTube channel is a good way to start as it does not require any upfront costs, but the disadvantage of those is that they can at any time get shut down.
When you don’t own the platform, you have limited control. I have the YouTube channel, and Instagram + TikTok accounts.
They are great for keeping in touch with the audience, for showcasing the brand and for giving additional SEO power to the website, but I have little control over how the content is being distributed. Some videos perform great, some – not as much as I had hoped.
The views on the channel vary from 20,000 to 200,000 views per month, and some videos that I spent 8-10 hours on per video are not getting any views a month later. I still do it because it is fun, and because I love the community I created.
The easiest wat is promoting products through videos and carousel posts on Instagram and TikTok.
2. Start a website/blog.
It makes you a business owner, once the business starts generating revenue it can be sold at through platforms like Flippa or EmpireFlippers, or you can keep it as a source of passive revenue.
To start a blog, you need a domain name and hosting. For domain names, there are too many options to choose from. I have used GoDaddy in the past, but switched to Ionos (previously 1and1) as their promo and regular rates are cheaper.
For hosting, I recommend BlueHost. They have competitive rates on hosting packages, and as you are starting out and not expecting a lot of traffic, a simple cheapest shared package would do. Unless you get 10,000+ visitors monthly, there is no point to pay more.
When you hit 10,000+ visitors monthly, which realistically won’t happen in the first year, I would recommend moving to a cloud-based VPS from either Bluehost, or anyone else. I have used Dreamhost, A2 and now I am with Cloudways. It is more expensive than Bluehost (~$24 per month instead of $4), but it is worth it with respect to pagespeed. Most providers offer free migration services, so you don’t need to worry about making the move from one provider to another on your own.
The most popular way of starting a blog is WordPress – roughly 62% of all CMS (more than the closest 3 competitors combined). It has a ton of plugins and is easy to setup and use. There are tutorials that have an answer to any question imaginable.
If you made it this far, you probably already have a pretty good idea of where to start.
I suggest you bookmark this page, and come back to it, because I guarantee that you will have more questions when you actually start.
And I will say it one last time: consider getting my course. I honestly think that it’s a very good value for the price (I’ve seen the one that is available on Coursera, and it is nowhere as detailed and useful – for the same price as mine).
