20 Best Watch Affiliate Programs and Networks [2024]

Watches have become some of the most important components in our lives today. There is hardly anything we do without timing ourselves and so far, this trait has proven effective in the major decisions we have taken in life which results in more people getting more watches. Keeping up with the demand for watches in the market today can be difficult. Thankfully, the world of affiliate marketing is big enough for the watch niche as well.

Statistics show the staggering revenue generated from the watch market alone as of 2022. The competition is quite high because the demand for watches tends to increase yearly. And guess what, the market is expected to grow by 6.90% annually, which means more profit for affiliates. Regardless of the competition, it is a good time to be an affiliate marketer in this niche and this article will prepare you for the competition ahead.

What are Watch Affiliate Programs and How Do They Work

The watch affiliate market has been the solution to countering the demands of watches by customers in the world today. It has made marketing quite easy. All you need to make a luxury watch shopping trip in the comfort of your house is data and some money on your credit card. The way this affiliate program works is simple. As an affiliate in this niche, you sell products to customers in demand and you earn a commission that is regulated by the affiliate program you are affiliated with.

All you need to get started as an affiliate in the watch niche is to sign-up on some affiliate programs and networks, find the best affiliate offers within those affiliate networks and programs, and promote those offers using your traffic or better still, the best way you know how to and in turn, you get paid commissions for each sale you conduct and in some cases, for any action taken through your unique affiliate link. The watch niche has new products coming in every day leaving you with enough options on offers to promote. Luckily, there are numerous ways you can promote watches, some of which we will be looking at in this article.

Payment Models in Watch Affiliate Programs

Every niche in the affiliate market today has a unique payment model it uses to pay out commissions to its affiliates and the case is the same with the watch niche. Payment models serve as motivation to affiliates and can also determine how you promote products in this niche.

Revenue Share

In the watch niche, we will be looking at revenue share which is the only payment model affiliate programs in this niche make use of to pay affiliates. Revenue share is a payment model that affiliate programs use to determine how much percentage of the sale they share with affiliates. The commission rate in this payment model can range between 2% to 27% with 10% to 20% being the average. As an affiliate in this niche, Revshare can set you up for life if you promote the right products while having serious customers that are willing to look into any offer you bring their way.

You must understand how this payment model works because your chances of earning good income a month are not based on what percentage the affiliate program is offering, but on how much the products cost. Watches can range in price from $100 to $100 000. Consider this when choosing a product in this niche.

What to Consider When Choosing a Watch Affiliate Program

The watch niche is big and is expected to grow bigger in the next 5 years. As a hardworking affiliate, you are capable of earning a lot of money, but only if you choose the right program. Here are some tips on how to choose the best program in this niche.

Commission Rate

Commission rates in this niche differ based on the affiliate program you are affiliated with. In the search for a better affiliate program in this niche, you will come across some programs with higher rates. While it’s true that the higher the commission rate, the better, it’s important to choose a program that has easy-to-sell products. As stated earlier, your chances of making a good income are not dependent on the commission rate, but also on the price tag of the products that the program sells. The way you interchange the two can have a significant impact on what your account balance reads by the end of the cycle.

Program/Product Credibility

Another thing to take into serious consideration is the credibility of the affiliate program and the products that the program is offering. The best way to know how credible an affiliate program is is to contact affiliates that have, or are still working with the program because they stand in a better position to tell you all you need to know. Good places to start looking for those opinions are affiliate forums and communities. Also, to know how credible a product is, check the reviews made by people who have used it. The popularity of the product among users matters as well, it will make your work much easier while marketing.

Cookie Duration

At the beginning of this article, we talked about how important time is and how much effect it has in our lives, and even more so, now that the niche is about time and watches. Before choosing an affiliate program in this niche, consider the cookie duration because this holds the time that your referrals will remain active before you get paid. Some affiliate programs in this niche offer a 90-day cookie duration, while others offer way less than that, like 24 hours. For your advantage, make yourself familiar with the cookie duration of any affiliate program you choose so that you will have enough time to be paid for every referral you perform.

Payment Frequency

The payment frequency determines how long it will take until you get paid your earned commissions. It might be weekly, biweekly, and to some extent, monthly. Also, some of the affiliate programs in this niche have a fixed withdrawal balance that you must reach before you can withdraw your earnings. This is something you should put into serious consideration whether you have things to do with money along the line, or not. At least, your money should be accessible to you at the time you need it most.

Affiliate Trackers

Affiliate trackers function almost the same way cookies do but even better in some aspects. They allow you to keep track of how many referrals you have successively sent to the affiliate program website you are marketing for. It gets even better from here because these trackers allow you to record how many referrals made purchases on your end, and how much traffic you are directing towards the affiliate site in general. This strengthens the trust between programs and affiliates so if the affiliate program you are looking at does not have these, then you should reconsider your option. Trackers also provide valuable insight to help you sell more products or change your methods.

Traffic Sources for Watch Offers

Affiliates in this niche have it easy in regards to generating traffic to affiliate sites. There are numerous ways you can generate traffic, some of which we will look at in this part. Luckily, there isn't any internet rule that is stopping you from the way you market watches online to potential customers.

Social Media

The most common sources of traffic for watch affiliate sites have undoubtedly remained social media platforms. This is because they are easy to navigate and the fact that they are the homes of 4.7B people today makes them the best and ideal digital marketplace.

Facebook, for instance, is one of the user-friendly social media platforms that you can use to promote your affiliate links through Facebook Ads and generate recurring traffic to your affiliate site. You can make a descriptive post about a certain luxury watch, and include your affiliate link in the comment section for interested members to make a purchase.

Affiliate marketing on TikTok turns out to be even better than Facebook in the sense that you can generate thousands of views within hours of posting a video. All you need to do is make a review video of a particular watch and also include your referral link in the video description so that viewers can make a purchase. With TikTok, you can easily create a community where you flex one or more watches and advise viewers to get them at a discounted price through your affiliate link.

Instagram is one such place where you can maintain a flashy lifestyle and let that be the only content you create which will undoubtedly lead to you making more sales through your affiliate link. You don't have to go the extra mile on Instagram, keeping it classy and encouraging your followers to get any watch you have on through your affiliate link is all you have to do.

Youtube remains the best marketplace for affiliates of all kinds and affiliates in the watch niche are not lagging. With short review videos, you can get a lot of leads if you just include your affiliate link in the video description and encourage viewers to check out what you reviewed.

Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a trade-by-barter form of affiliate marketing. This form of traffic sourcing is when you exchange something beneficial with your potential customers, and in turn, they leave something of importance to you. The most basic term to define this for instance is when you offer visitors on your site a guide to selecting the best watches or something else, a free ebook, Etc. and in turn, you ask for their email address so that you can keep sending them important updates about watches. When you have access to their email address, you can easily initiate email marketing which has proven to be effective in today’s world of affiliate marketing.

There are so many ways you can initiate lead magnets and there are also some important things you need to consider while initiating a lead magnet as this will entail the number of leads you get. To take away, make sure what you are offering will add great value to them. For instance, imagine giving a user a guide on how to fix their watch if it gets soaked in water, or how to change the batteries of their watches. At this point, visitors who you are offering this will not hesitate to leave their email addresses especially if they feel your guide was truly helpful.

From there, you can send them affiliate offers and they won’t hesitate to check out what you are offering for the fact that you’ve helped them solve an issue from the free guide you gave them initially. Above all, users are becoming tired of receiving unnecessary emails that add no value to their interests. You will have to make them believe you can add positive value to their interest if they will give you their email address.

Website Content and Product Reviews

Website content and product reviews are great ways to have recurring referrals through your affiliate link. With good content and product reviews, you can just relax while the website does the work for you. The key to creating highly converting website content and product reviews is research. A lot of affiliate marketers these days are either lazy or not capable of putting the time and effort into creating the best website, let alone the best content, hence why they stick to simple traffic sources like social media platforms, etc.

Aside from the complexity of creating a website for watch affiliate marketing, website content gives you enough room to gradually convert users into potential buyers, an opportunity you do not always get with other traffic sources. With website content, you can go in-depth with any watch product you are trying to sell. Be it watch parts or anything related to watches. You can answer any question users may have in a single throw, satisfying them once and for all, that all that is left is for them to purchase through your affiliate link.

You can also have a long list of products all in one content and discuss their pros and cons, an act that will make users trust your offers the most. Let's talk about product reviews and how it has lured a lot of users into making unplanned purchases online simply because of how the webmaster compared two or more products.

One good thing about websites for affiliate marketing is that your options on how you market products are limitless. One of the highly converting techniques in this niche is to review products and include your affiliate link so that users can make purchases after going through the review. It’s also worth mentioning that you don’t need to create or purchase a domain to make a website. You can simply do affiliate marketing without a website, and write your affiliate content on content-sharing platforms and expect the same results.

Tips to Promote Watch Affiliate Offers Successfully

We have looked at the traffic sources for watch offers, and we will be looking at some of the best ways you can promote watch affiliate offers successfully. Keep in mind that your ways of promoting watch offers are not limited to these, even though these are of significant effect.

Keyword Targeting

Keyword targeting is one of the best ways to promote affiliate offers. The advantage attached to keywords is that you can use them anywhere including social media posts. Keywords are those specific words included in posts description and website contents that enable users to find them easily. They can be anything and also written in different forms but most importantly, the keyword used has to denote what is being offered so that users can easily find it if they use any of the words used in the keyword while searching.

There are different ways you can come up with a keyword. One of the most productive ways is to write your keyword in long-tail form. Even though it needs more precision, it will only bring users who are really in need of what you are offering and this will make conversion quite easy.

Here's a list of keywords good for targeting in the Watch niche.

Create a Watch Blog/Website

In the previous part of this article where we discussed traffic sources for watch offers, we showed you how effective a watch website can be and if you utilize your website well and upload quality content, the return will be worth it. But owning a good website does not cut it. Uploading good content also matters. It is safe to say that both of these work together even though the kind of content you upload plays a greater role in the kind of leads you get.

The leads you get depend on the kind of content you create and if you have no idea how to go about it, we will give you an idea of where to begin. As an affiliate in this niche, you can create good content without going through complex steps. Thankfully, watch companies always give a detailed description of each model they make. You can include these descriptions in the product reviews you make and capture the reader's attention.

Speaking of blog posts, keeping potential customers up to date with recent developments or models is a great way to go about it. You can always answer some of the frequently asked questions that customers come up with and recommend the best solutions to their problems. You can even recommend some of the best watches to match a specific outfit or a watch that works fine in any kind of weather.

Focus on SEO

SEO is what makes your website to be seen by users on the internet. As an affiliate in this niche, you need to be able to optimize your site using SEO because it is free and the best source of traffic. It allows your website to rank high in search engines which means you get more visitors on your affiliate site and that is basically what you need to earn more commissions. The way SEO works is simple, we will give you the basics that you can build on so that your affiliate sites will be optimized as well.

With SEO in play, there are 5 things you need to have in mind. these are;

• keyword research
• Content Creation
• On-Page Seo
• Link Building
• Technical SEO

All these listed above will help optimize your website for search engines and in turn, help you generate organic traffic which is the best.

Engage with Your Community

One of the easiest ways to engage with your community is by being active on social media. You can create posts that will prompt your community members to leave their opinions on a particular topic that is related to what you are marketing. An easy way to get the opinions of users is to put up polls and include options to see which they prefer between 2 or more products. You can even go to the extent of offering them free packages like ebooks or guides through a giveaway price or even free of charge if they participate in any activity you are hosting online. Friendship is one of the major ways to succeed.

Make Watch-related Content on Social Media

Social media gives you a lot of options on how to promote your affiliate products with ease. And there are different ways you can do that. If you don’t intend to make things too complex, you can make videos of yourself talking about watches and which ones you prefer, and also why you prefer them. You don't have to make it look like you are marketing, rather let it look like you are simply showing your audience what you wear and why. Your followers won’t hesitate to get what you wear especially if you have a good relationship with them.

TikTok and Instagram are some of the social media platforms you can use to generate recurring traffic to your affiliate sites in a matter of minutes since it gets to a lot of people in no time. and you can be direct and just include your referral link in the post description since nothing is stopping you from doing that.

Case Studies

In this section we'll go through some of the most successful affiliates in the watch niche and check how they earn money and in what ways they drive traffic to watch affiliate programs and networks.

Case #1: Gear Patrol

The first case on this list is the Gear Patrol. Gear Patrol is one of the most famous websites when it comes to anything fashionable and luxurious, including watches. They are featured on many other watch-related websites, and a lot of shops actually recommend them for their reviews of watches.

That being said, Gear Patrol talks about all types of fashionable products such as clothing, home, fitness, style, etc. Watches are only one of the topics they focus on, and they still have a lot of different subjects on watches, including watch reviews, buying guides, and knowledge bases.

Something that truly makes Gear Patrol special in the niche of watches is that they talk about every single type of possible search query that can be related to watches. What we mean by this is that if you search any Long tail keyword related to watches you will find them on the top of the results. They write about all types of possible searches, such as watches under $500, watches under $1 000, watches under $2 500, watches for men, watches for women, watches to buy this holiday, travel watches, sport watches, and so much more.

Most of their income comes from their product reviews and buying guides, which include affiliate links, obviously. They also choose some of the most credible brands out there such as Casio, Hugo Boss, Rolex, G-Shock, etc.

They also mentioned the fact that they work with affiliate programs at the beginning of the articles that include affiliate links.

It's true that Gear Patrol has a lot of ads going on their website, and obviously, a lot of revenue through ads. However, we cannot ignore the fact that their affiliate products and affiliate commissions make up the majority of their income. Thanks to affiliate marketing, Gear Patrol has been making $10M to $15M annually.

Case #2: Ben’s Watch Club

The second case on our list is a YouTuber, who might not be the biggest but definitely comes up on the search results in the first 10. Ben’s watch club has some of the most interesting reviews of watches and experiments. As you can see on his playlist he has some content related to best watches, beginner watch guides, watches for a certain audience, favorite watches, and some other watch brand reviews.

Something that has been the key to the success of Ben is how he makes his videos funny and interesting using some experiments and skits. It's worth mentioning that Ben doesn't make all of his income through affiliate marketing and YouTube ads definitely are a huge part of it. However, You can see that he includes affiliate links clearly in the description of his videos.

It's interesting that Ben gets a lot of comments on these review videos thanking him for his review and how they actually ended up purchasing some products because of his recommendations. Something that makes his reviews unique is how he is completely honest about them and how he mentions that he purchases the watches with his own money.

It's been only two years that Ben has launched his YouTube channel but in this short amount of time he has been making more than $100 000 a year from YouTube and affiliate marketing.

Interestingly, Ben also has a blog where he reviews watches and posts watch guides there as well which contributes to the amount of traffic that he drives to the watch networks and programs that he's a part of.

You might have noticed that he kind of posts the same content that he posts on YouTube on his blog which helps him get double traffic on the same subject. Posting your YouTube content in the form of a blog post on your website has a great impact on the amount of traffic you can drive because a lot of people would also love to have the text somewhere where they can read and compare different watches and conveniently move on to the shop and make a purchase.

However, you need to pay attention that in order to turn your YouTube or social media content into a blog post, you shouldn't just take the transcription and post it on the blog. You need to give it a couple of headings, make proper paragraphs, and search engine optimizes it.

Conclusion

The secret to making great commissions in the watch affiliate market is first choosing the right affiliate program and promoting its products with the whole of your heart. We have shown you the best ways to promote watch affiliate offers, and have listed some of the things you should consider before choosing any program in this niche. Regardless of the competition in the market, things won't have to be complex for you if you follow the instructions in this article.

For takeaway, consider mastering the art of creating quality watch content on social media and your affiliate sites too, and also try to utilize lead magnets as well. If you can capture their attention, selling to them will be very easy. The popularity of the products matters a great deal too. If you choose the right affiliate program, promoting products from that program will be extremely easy for you as you won't find it difficult to convert users into potential buyers.