Known for its colorful pinwheel logo, Wayfair is a furniture and home decor retail giant founded in 2002. The company sells over 14 million products on five websites using a dropship model with 11,000 suppliers. In 2018, Wayfair sold nearly $7 billion worth of products! Even more surprising is Wayfair operates 100% online with no brick-and-mortar stores to speak of. Despite this fact, Wayfair today is the fastest-growing e-commerce retailer in the US and employs over 10,000 people. Wayfair also offers what many call one of the best affiliate programs in the retail space. If you're an affiliate marketer thinking about becoming a Wayfair affiliate, we have an in-depth review of their affiliate program below. How to get started, the best way to get approved as a Wayfair affiliate, the products you can promote, etc. Read on to find out more and decide whether Wayfair and its affiliate program are a good fit for you.
As with any affiliate program, the first thing you need to do to become a Wayfair affiliate is to fill in their application and provide all the information they ask for. You can do that by going to the "About Wayfair" page and clicking the "Affiliate Programs" link. Be aware that Wayfair runs its affiliate program through CJ Affiliate, and you can access the application directly on the CJ affiliate webpage.
Once you give Wayfair your basic information, you'll be taken to the CJ affiliate publisher agreements page, where you must agree to their publisher service agreement, software policy agreement, privacy policy agreement, and several other acknowledgments. Once you've done that, which takes about two minutes, you are then taken to an Onboarding Checklist page with six more vital steps you need to complete before your account is activated. Some of those steps include:
• Your user information, including your name, email, phone number, etc.
• Your network profile, including a detailed description of your affiliate promotional methods.
• Your promotional property is where and how you will promote wayfarers products. (Website, social media, etc.)
• Your company details and tax forms.
• Your payment information so that you can get paid when you make commissions.
• Several more questions about your network, how you plan to drive traffic to your website, whether you work for an agency or represent several publishers, and how you plan to advertise.
It's a lot of information, so be prepared with everything you need, especially the URL of your website, domain name, company name, etc.
When it comes to getting accepted as a Wayfair affiliate, one critically important fact is that they don't allow you to send traffic to their website directly from ads but only from a website or social media page. In other words, to start as a Wayfare affiliate, you will need a website and a social media page driving traffic to that website. One of the best to promote Wayfare is Pinterest, as they get millions of visitors every day looking for home decor ideas. Below are a few tips that will help you get approved as a Wayfair affiliate:
If you don't have a website yet, or it's brand new and hasn't gotten much traffic, you should hold off on applying to be a Wayfair affiliate. They're looking for websites that drive lots of traffic, and, frankly, you need a website with a lot of traffic to make a decent income stream. (No matter the affiliate program.)
Have you ever gone to a website overloaded with ads and other nonessential junk? If you have, that's exactly the opposite of what Wayfare is looking for. They want a nice, clean, uncluttered website that's easy to navigate and allows potential buyers to quickly find the information they need. As a Wayfair affiliate, you need that also because the easier it is for a customer to find the information they need, the higher chance they will click your link and make a purchase.
If you already have a website, you should have an email address attached to that website. A dead giveaway that you are brand new in the affiliate marketing arena is an email address connected to, for example, Gmail, Yahoo, or another third-party site.
Although last on this list, high-quality content is a definite must no matter what affiliate marketing program you decide to join. In the home decor space, exceptional written content is even more critical. Most searchers want as much information about a home decor product as possible before they make a purchase. Engaging, well-written, informative, and, when possible, entertaining content is the best way to convince them to click your link.
Wayfair has over 10 million products online and even more in their sister brands, including AllModern, Birch Lane, and Joss & Main. The 5 main categories you can promote as a Wayfair affiliate include:
• Indoor and outdoor furniture
• Bedding and Bath
• Rugs and Decor
• Lighting
• Appliances
Wayfair's basic affiliate commission structure is that you can earn between 5% and 7% commission on all purchases made via your affiliate link to their website. One critical factor to keep in mind is that you can only earn affiliate commissions via sales in the United States and Canada. If, for example, your website mainly gets traffic from Asia or Europe, Wayfair likely won't be a good fit for you.
Our research shows that a Wayfair affiliate's best way to build a steady income stream is via a niche website. As we've seen, Wayfare offers up to 7% commissions. They also state that their average order size is approximately $300. To make $1000 per Month, the numbers below are what you need to see via your website:
• Product ($300.00) x 7% Commission = $21.00 profit per sale.
• 48 Sales x $21.00 per sale = $1008.00
To generate 48 sales in a month, you would need 4,800 visitors to your website per Month and a 1% conversion rate.
• 4,800 visitors x 1% conversion rate = 48 sales x $21.00 commission per sale = $1008.00
If you had a 2% conversion rate, you could make the same $1008.00 commission but with only 2,400 visitors to your website.
• 2,400 visitors x 2% conversion rate = 48 sales x $21.00 commission per sale = $1008.00
Remember that, as with all affiliate marketing programs, it's a numbers game. The more traffic you have coming to your website, the higher your conversion rate will be and the more money you will earn in commissions. The best way to drive traffic to your website is to offer engaging, informative content and drive traffic to your website via social media channels like YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. In the retail space, especially home decor, high-quality content is the key to making a killing as an affiliate marketer.
• Higher commission than many other affiliate programs
• Thousands of products to promote, many of which are high-value.
• Excellent affiliate support
• It's free to join.
• CJ Affiliate has a very large network.
• A 7-day cookie. (Longer than the 1-day cookie many programs offer, including eBay and Amazon.)
• Even if they click your link, if a customer has a Wayfair Pro account, you don't earn a commission on their purchases.
• Wayfair only pays commission for sales made in the United States and Canada.
• No direct leaking to products from ads.
• The following States aren't eligible due to nexus tax laws: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, Tennessee, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming.
Home decor and furniture is a huge retail sector, and there are many players with several other excellent affiliate marketing programs. Some of the best include:
• eBay Affiliate
• Amara
• Freedom
• Brooklinen
• Frontgate
• Graham & Green
• Walmart
• Amazon
Since 2002 Wayfair has been growing like the proverbial weed and is now one of the leaders in the home furniture and decor space. With excellent online shopping best practices and a large and growing family of brands, signing up as an affiliate marketer for Wayfair is a terrific way to create a profitable income stream. While their commission rates are relatively low compared to some programs, the fact that Wayfair has an average of $300 per order means that your commission on every sale is larger than most. Partnering with Wayfair should thus be a profitable affair for established affiliate marketers in the home decor and retail space.