20 Best Toys Affiliate Programs and Networks [2024]

Toys are not only great when you have a kid at home and you want to keep them entertained. They are also great for making money. You might ask how, and we would say that affiliate marketing is the way. Nobody is unfamiliar with all the popular toy brands, and those exact brands provide us an opportunity to promote them and earn some money.

Toy affiliate programs and networks are a great way to once again get back to the world of toys and this time, make real cash not just plastic ones. In this guide, we will go through some of the information about toy affiliate programs and networks, how you can promote these offers, and the best tips and tricks to gain more audience.

What Are Toy Affiliate Programs and Networks

Toy affiliate programs and networks connect you to businesses that make, sell, or distribute toys. They allow you to promote certain toy products to parents and children, and earn some cash on the side by simply driving traffic to them.

Just like many other affiliate programs, all you have to do is get people to purchase a toy and wait for the transaction to complete successfully. Then, you’ll get to enjoy your reward.

What Can You Promote

The real question here is who can you promote these toys to? You should acknowledge the fact that in this day and age, not only do kids play with toys, but they’re also toys, specific for adults and teenagers. As a matter of fact, there are lots of toys and accessories related to movies and games that only a specific audience can relate to and purchase. So let’s see all the different types of products you can promote to different ages and genders among your audience.

• Babies. They might not immediately start playing with toys after birth, but they would want to play with something a few months later on. There are lots of toys out there but not all of them are suitable for babies up to the age of three. Toys should have certain characteristics to be absolutely safe for this age, therefore, there are lots of businesses that you can promote for parents who want to give their babies safe entertainment.
• Children. And for this age, you have a variety of toys available in the market that people in this age can play with. For example, mind games, computer games, dolls, plushies, balls, and all the other types of toys provide a fun experience for kids. These can be toys from their favorite cartoons or movies or stuffed animals and sports-related accessories, like baseball bats and bicycles.
• Teenagers. During the era of teenagehood, everybody wants to play with toys that are trendy or popular. For some time, fidget spinners were very famous, and nowadays, there are many different varieties of trendy toys that go viral on TikTok and everybody wants to have them. Action figures and limited edition toys related to games and movies are also super popular in this age.
• Young adults. Just as mentioned before about teenagers, young adults can often get very interested in video games and movie-related toys, such as figurines, accessories, etc. After this age, all the games and toys, like Rubik's cubes, chess boards, etc. are also popular.

As you can see, there is a wide variety of products that you can promote in this niche. So it’s just a matter of choosing the type of product and age.

Payment Models in Toy Affiliate Programs

Toys can be both one-time purchases or subscription-based ones that keep sending kids the latest games in the form of packages. However, there are only two common payment models in these programs, including revenue share and cost per sale.

Revenue Share

Revenue share is the most common model. The toy affiliate programs will choose to pay you. This is because the type of products in this niche are mostly physical and one-time purchase products that come in different prices, so a percentage of the price of the product seems like the best model to pay you by. Companies will usually choose to pay you anything between 4 to 20% of the product price in these affiliate programs. Sometimes these commission rates, Michael, are even higher if the brand is a new-found one and they are trying to get more customers.

Cost per Sale (CPS)

Sometimes a business only has one type of product, and in that case, they will choose to pay you a flat rate for every sale you help them make. This does not necessarily mean that you don’t have a chance to earn a lot of money, because the flat rate that they set for the product is often a fair rate. The difference here with revenue share is that you will get anything from $5 to $100 for selling a single product. It is worth noting that these types of programs are less common than the programs that choose to pay you via a revenue share.

How to Choose the Best Toy Affiliate Programs

You must’ve already seen that there are many different types of toy affiliate programs out there, and choosing one really depends on a couple of factors. Since you are trying to sell products for kids, choosing the best business that will leave a good memory in the parents’ and the kids’ mind is important. So take a look at the factors we are sharing with you in this section and decide on the best program out of the ones listed here.

Commission Rate

First and foremost, you should pay attention to the rate by which the program wants to pay you. Keep in mind that the programs that choose to share the highest commission rate with you are not necessarily the best ones. There are lots of programs with lower quality that you do not want to be associated with. There are also lots of programs that have products that are very hard to sell, and obviously, those are also out of the discussion. So, even though the commission rates might be attractive, you should double-check the type of products they’re selling, and how easy they are to sell as well.

Cookie Duration

Cookies are the data saved from the customers’ visits to a website or a browser. When a potential customer you refer to a toy affiliate program decides that they don’t want to purchase something for the first time visit, and returns after a while, these cookies are going to help you earn your commission because the website remembers that the customer has first entered the website for your affiliate link. In the case of toys, there are lots of parents who may purchase a product for their kids and decide later on that they want to purchase more.

Programs that offer the longest cookie durations give you the opportunity to maximize your earning by reminding the website that you referred those customers to them. However, you should definitely check out the specific terms of each program for how they use these cookies to pay you. Most programs have their cookie durations set at 30 days, however, some can be shorter, meaning only one day, and some others can be longer, such as lifetime or 365 days.

Minimum Payout

And in case you’re a fan of getting your money blocked by the program, because of not reaching the minimum cash-out threshold, you should definitely check for the program's terms on how much money you need to earn before you can request a payout. Some programs may set the threshold at $25, some $50, and some others even up to $500. There are also some great programs in the middle that offer instant cashout based on their own schedule without the need for you to reach a certain balance. You want to aim for those ones, however, if a great opportunity comes up, keep in mind that the program reserves the right to hold your money until it reaches the amount they state.

Payment Frequency

Just like the minimum payout, programs have certain schedules for paying their affiliates. Some of them choose to pay monthly or biweekly. Some others might allow you to order cash out whenever you want without reaching a certain balance. There are also some programs that ask for you to wait for about two months just to make sure that the customer will not request a refund or a return. Generally, keep an eye on these programs. Just so you know, there are a lot of programs that automatically send out your income on a monthly basis. So compare the standards and make a decision.

Average Order Value

We are dealing with toys here, and as far as imagination goes, the prices for toys can increase as well. There are some toys that cost only five dollars, and there are some others that cost up to $10,000. It really depends on what type of product and what age you are targeting. But keep in mind that the opportunities in this niche are infinite, and you always have the chance to make a lot of money given your commission rate is high as well. For example, a program with a commission rate of 10% on an average order of value of $100, can earn you $10 on an average order.

Target Audience and Market

Hey, you might not really be a person who can relate to parents or kids, but you might really relate to teenagers and young adults in the type of toys they are interested in. Or you might just be the exact opposite. Depending on your own preferences, look for the programs that allow you to sell products in the market you are more familiar with. Not every retailer or manufacturer makes toys for all age ranges, so you need to know who to target when promoting the program. As an example, if you are not good with kids, you can promote toys for teenagers, and if you don’t have any experience selling toys related to movies and games, you can always sell trendy toys on social media.

Remember that age is not the only factor that determines what type of toys you want to promote, gender is also an important factor. For example, you should know whether the program has any toys for boys or girls or both.

Affiliate Trackers

You can’t always go on with your marketing activity blindly, and you always need some insight into your sales and performance. Some programs might give you the ability to track your performance, either using their own built-in trackers or the trackers provided by the network they are partnered with. You should automatically look for these types of programs, but if you notice that a program doesn’t really provide you with a way to track your performance, you can either rule them out or use third-party affiliate trackers.

Resources and Marketing Materials

What are the great things about call operating with an affiliate program or affiliate network is that you can benefit from their library of resources and product feeds. These resources enable you to do your marketing without having to worry about visuals, banners, ad materials, etc. Not that it is a necessity, but having these resources at hand just shows how much the program really cares about its affiliates. Promotions and deals are also important for you to incentivize your audience at different times of the year, so check out whether the program provides you with those as well.

Top Traffic Sources for Toys Affiliate Programs

In this section, we will go through some of the top traffic sources for promoting Toy affiliate offers. Since the products in this niche are more visual, most of the traffic sources related to it are also visual content targeted at the young audience.

Social Media

Social media is the first place you should head to if you want to promote toys. Nowadays, toys are often one of the most popular items you can see online being promoted by both teenagers and adults. What are the best things you can do is create a social media account that allows you to post visual content. You should know that your target audience is mainly young people, and they use social media, like Instagram, Twitter, etc. Twitter might not really be the best place to promote toy affiliate offers, so one of the only options left in the category of social media is definitely Instagram.

You can simply open up a toy Instagram page and post short video clips showcasing, different toys, posting ASMR videos with toys, unboxing toys, etc. You want to appeal to kids, so simply playing with the toys in a short video is tempting enough for them to ask their parents to buy a certain toy for them. They can be as simple as you want them to be in this niche.

What are the greatest examples of people promoting toys on Instagram include accounts that posted videos of slimes or stress balls. This type of content is super attractive and you can do it with all the trendy products in the niche. Just look out for the latest videos of people playing with certain toys, and if you can find a pattern, you’ve just found a new trend that you can feed.

It goes without saying that you should always have the link to your affiliate website or personal page where you keep your affiliate links always on your Instagram bio. Once in a while, you can post some promotions or advertisements linking to your website or personal link.

If you plan to choose any other social media, first, do some research to learn more about the type of people who use social media, and then you can start creating content.

Entertainment Platforms

Entertainment platforms are not quite like social media platforms. We don’t need to explain the difference between TikTok and YouTube with Instagram and Facebook to you. The reason why you should go on YouTube and TikTok is exactly their name: entertainment platforms. That is exactly where kids go to watch more about toys.

If you want to go with YouTube, you can simply start a YouTube channel and post long-form or short videos that feature certain toys, unboxing them, playing with them, reading them, and giving people some information about toys. If you want to do shorts or videos, make sure to make them as aesthetic, attractive, and interesting to the young audience as possible.

If you want to go with TikTok, you have to post short clips that feature certain toys, exactly like you would do on YouTube. The only difference here is that you can reach your audience much faster. People will usually check out your page and almost all your videos if you have a lot of content related to toys. If your content is attractive and trendy, you will find a lot of potential customers on your page who would want to have the exact toy you are playing with.

One of the best tips for quickly becoming more popular on entertainment platforms is to keep your consistency and schedule very disciplined. Toy-related videos are recently becoming very addictive, to the point that even some adults would want to purchase them. You can carefully pick the toys you want your audience to buy, and review them in a way that makes your audience want to try that toy themselves.

Promotions are even easier on content-sharing platforms than on social media. You can simply use certain toys, and that would count as a promotion for you. What are the benefits of having to promote toys for the young audience is that you never have to explain anything to them to convince them that they need a toy, but rather make the toy look super fun and interesting.

If you are a parent, you can introduce certain toys, games, accessories, etc. that other parents can buy for their own kids. Generally, adding some of your own experience to your content will really go a long way.

Website Content

Now, having a website might not be the best way to promote toys for a younger audience, but it is definitely a good traffic source to keep in mind just to promote certain toys and games to parents. On your website, you can always let parents know about some games that could help their kids get more creative, playful, and communicative.

Parents are one of the best ways to communicate with children. Parents are always curious about the best toys they could not only keep their kids entertained but informed and challenged as well. If you have experience with parenthood, you could always write some articles and let parents know how to handle curious and playful kids. You can share some information about the types of games that could help kids at a young age and the benefits of gamification in a kid's life.

When you’re writing content about toys on your website, remember that you should find the latest keywords and trends, as well. You can use keywords evenly throughout your content to let parents find you through search engines. In a later section, we are going to cover the type of content. You can post on your website how you can benefit from it to drive more traffic to your affiliate offers.

Paid Ads

I paid ads are actually one of the greatest traffic sources in the toy niche. But in this niche, unlike the other ones, when we talk about paid ads, we are not talking about Facebook ads or Google ads, but mobile ads and push notifications.

In this day and age, the younger audience spends most of its time online, playing games on their phones or tablets. So what better time to target them than when they are playing games or browsing the Internet? You can always use Google Play ads to target children playing simple mobile games.

You have a limited time to appeal to the young audience through these mobile game ads, so you need to make it a quick animation or video about the toys you are promoting. Just make a quick video about how fun it is to play with those toys, how they’re missing out on them, and how all their friends are playing with the same toys. Even if you are not actually sending them directly to your affiliate links, you can send them to your affiliate website, and they can easily find your links there. If you have a quick list of links available, they can click on and purchase the toy.

Running paid ads is actually a great way to drive traffic because of how profitable it is. Nowadays, you can simply bid for the number of clicks or actions on mobile ads. Therefore, every click you gain might count towards you earning a lot of money, while only paying one or two dollars for the ad itself.

You should also consider push notifications to target certain GEOs or certain ages for toys. Just remember that for kids younger than 10, this is probably not the best method.

How to Promote Toy Affiliate Offers More Effectively

Now that you know the top traffic sources for promoting toy affiliate offers, check out these tips and tricks to stay in the loop and attract more people to your offers.

Target the Right Audience

We’ve talked about this before, but let’s take a moment to acknowledge how important and vast the toy niche is. Toys are not just meant for babies or kids. Toys can get very sophisticated, especially if they are related to a certain fandom. Toys range from different categories of educational toys, board games, card games, puzzles, figurines, action figures, etc. Each of these categories needs its own target audience targeted. So if you are on TikTok, making the same style of videos that you’d make for children but promoting board games, you’re probably not going to have a successful campaign.

Keep your target audience in mind and make content specifically for them. Look for the best trends for the generation you’re targeting. If necessary, make memes and edits, to attract a younger audience.

Jump on the Hype Train

We cannot emphasize the importance of trends when it comes to toys. Just go on TikTok and search for toys, and look for all the different types of content related to choice. You can find content from ASMR videos all the way to unboxing videos. Every year there is at least one toy that is super, famous, and almost everybody’s playing with it. You should also make content with those exact same types of toys.

Remember the hype that fidgets spinners, slimes, or pop-its and plushies brought with them? Well, you are in luck because every single year one of these toys is super famous. Recently, Barbies and magic toys are super famous and you can make ASMR content with them. Kids nowadays really dig into these.

If you are one of those pop culture enthusiasts, you can unbox figurines and limited edition toys. If you are a parent, you can follow some of the latest struggles and challenges that parents are going through with kids, and suggest toys or games for them.

You can literally just look at the patterns and trends going on on each entertainment and social media platform to match yourself with them and gain some attention.

Write Blog Posts

On your website or blog, you want to have several types of articles: guides for parents, lists of best toys, and toy reviews. You can also try out certain toys and leave your experience on your blog. As mentioned before, these blogs are mostly for parents or young adults.

In the articles, where you list some toys, you can include basic information about the toy, the pricing, some highlights, durability, and the target age for it. If you have any pictures with the toy, you can also add them to create a sense of trust.

You should also include some guides about parents and kids, and let parents know about some of the best ways to keep their kids entertained by educating them, keeping them creative, and challenging them. Simple psychology lessons can always be helpful and drive a lot of traffic to your website from Google.

Another great benefit of having a website is the seasonal promotions. There are always times during the year when everybody wants to buy the kids in their family something. That is exactly your time to shine. Before Christmas comes, you can prepare some content with the titles of “best Christmas gifts for boys”, “best educational toys for girls”, etc. In these articles, you can include some of your Ophelia products and tell people about why these toys are great. If you have any promo codes, you can pop some of those in there as well to encourage your readers.

Keep Affiliate Links Updated

Some people who choose to promote toys and social media have their own personal page on a website like Linktree. You should never forget to update the links on your link tree page. Give them attractive titles, encourage people to click on them, and give them new promos and discount codes every once in a while.

Post Regularly

One of the most important factors in becoming successful in the toy niche is posting every day and constantly so you keep your younger audience involved every single day. Post different types of toys, make your posts into two or three parts, and generally keep your audience entertained and curious to follow the rest of your story about a certain toy. Some content creators might introduce new toys and post their adventures with them. Some others might do some experiments with a magic toy and leave out the rest for part two of the video. It’s generally not good to keep your audience waiting, so make sure you post regularly and interact with your audience.

Conclusion

Toys are great products for affiliates, because they cover a range of products, and categories, and target various age groups of audiences. You can always relate to parents, kids, young adults, and even babies. Make sure you have the budget and resources necessary to post content about toys, because, unlike digital products, the way to appeal to your audience in this niche is to actually own those products and record videos of them. So just keep your consistency going and you can make a lot of money quickly.