Low Ticket vs. High Ticket Affiliate Offers

Getting into affiliate marketing is like deciding if you want to land a single, impressive fish or use a net to fill your bucket with many little ones. It’s kind of similar to selling luxury boutique clothes versus more affordable mass-market ones. That’s why some affiliates prefer to chase big-ticket sales that promise large rewards, while others focus on quantity, making money on low-cost but fast-moving offers that are easier to land.

But it doesn’t only go down to how much you’ll potentially make per sale. It’s not a “pasta” or “rice” decision, as the two have various audiences, promotion tactics, and hidden agendas. To do it right, you need to know how to sell each type of product and what matches your strengths better.

On this page, we’ll go over the low- and high ticket affiliate marketing meaning, explain the major differences between the two approaches, and give recommendations to help you choose a path.

Key Takeaways:

• High-ticket products offer substantial commissions per sale but require more marketing effort and patience with longer sales cycles.
• Low-ticket products appeal to a wider audience, they provide smaller commissions but convert more easily.
• A mixed strategy can help balance quick wins with long-term gains, diversify your audience, and create a more resilient affiliate income stream.

What Is High Ticket Affiliate Marketing?

High-ticket affiliate marketing involves promoting products with a high value in return for a bigger commission. Although there isn’t a set price to define a high ticket offer, products ranging between $100 and $500 can be regarded as such, but many of them cost a lot more.

How does high ticket affiliate marketing work? For example, when you promote a $2,000 coaching program with an 11% commission, you’ll earn $220 for each successful referral. Examples of high-ticket affiliate niches include expensive goods like jewellery, fancy fitness equipment, health products, luxury travel, online education, and premium SaaS.

Advantages of High Ticket Affiliate Offers

What makes high ticket offers attractive to marketers looking for bigger returns on their efforts? Let’s take a closer look at some key characteristics of such offers and a few things that make these programs stand out.

High Commissions

The most immediate advantage you’ll notice with high-ticket affiliate marketing is the substantial commission from each successful conversion. Instead of earning $1-$20 per sale, you can earn hundreds or even thousands from a single customer’s transaction.

The rates typically range around 10% of the sale price, though they can climb even higher depending on the product. Nonetheless, a small offered percentage isn’t a red flag, if the product or service has a big price tag (say a $8,000 luxury travel package to the Maldives), sometimes even a 1-5% commission structure could result in substantial income. Flat-rate commissions are also common, and you can make $500 and up for a sale in such cases.

Fewer Sales Needed

Another great point is that you need a lower sales volume to reach your target income goals. For example, if you aim to earn $2,000 per month by promoting a $2,500 business coaching program with a 10% commission ($250 per sale), you need 8 sales. To reach the same income by promoting a $7 ebook with a 20% commission ($1.40 per sale), you’d need about 1400 sales. Therefore, you don’t have to chase large volumes.

Potential for Recurring Commissions

Many high-ticket offers have a recurring commission structure that can bring stable income. Instead of a one-time payout, some may also pay recurring commissions for a specific period (such as 12 months).

For example, if a client signs up for an intricate SaaS platform or tool, the affiliate may earn a percentage of the customer’s subscription fee for as long as they renew the subscription or remain active. This way, the affiliate will consistently get passive income month after month without extra effort, even if the ongoing share is smaller than the first one-time payment.

Longer Cookie Duration

The duration of a tracking cookie is how long it stays active after a person clicks on an affiliate link. Say, if it’s a week, then the affiliate will earn a commission if the user completes a purchase within this 7-day period (as opposed to right away).

Most of the high-ticket offers have cookie durations ranging between 30 and 180 days due to the longer sales cycle. For instance, affiliates for SaaS with a 90-day cookie duration could get credit for a sale made up to three months after the buyer clicks the referral link. This is great, because many high-end products have a slow buying process and require more time for making such considered purchases.

Less Competition

Although the high ticket affiliate market is harder to qualify for, those who meet the requirements can benefit from a smaller competition compared to low-ticket offers. With fewer marketers promoting the premium product and targeting the same audience, there’s a bigger chance of making the sale and getting the generous commission as a reward.

Disadvantages of High Ticket Affiliate Offers

While it comes with bigger commissions, expect a few obstacles along the way when promoting these products. For starters, to make a profit, you’ll need to know how to do high ticket affiliate marketing the right way. Here are some challenges you might encounter.

Stricter Application Requirements

Many high-ticket affiliate programs have a more rigorous application process, so it’ll take time before you can start promoting the product and earning money. Approval often takes anywhere from a few day to several weeks, so you’ll likely have to wait for managers to review your application. Some criteria include:

• established online presence (e.g., a professional website, blog, or social media channels);
• an engaged audience (e.g., a minimum number of followers, subscribers, or traffic);
• credible, high-quality, authoritative, and topically relevant expert content that aligns with the niche;
• previously successful affiliate promotions to prove that you could be a valuable partner.

So unlike low-ticket programs that are commonly open-entry, high-ticket ones tend to set stricter eligibility standards. These measures protect the brand’s reputation and make sure that each selected affiliate is capable of driving quality leads and generating meaningful results.

Longer Sales Cycle

High-ticket rarely delivers instant results. Customers often take more time to research a product or service before making any kind of purchase because of the higher price tag. The path from the initial spark of interest to the purchase is usually lengthy. It’s kind of unsurprising, as not everyone is ready to pay for a $5,000 annual plan or buy a $10,000 luxury item from sheer boredom.

They need time before they decide to make a commitment, so they do research, compare offers, and read reviews. This customarily means that affiliates need to invest time and effort in creating many touchpoints, including objection-addressing and detailed content, email follow-ups, retargeting ads, and other actions to educate and convince the prospects.

Requires More Marketing Effort

As follows from above, guiding potential customers through a more complex decision-making journey isn’t a piece of cake. This is all because customers are hesitant to commit to such a purchase, and the content you create will help convince them.

You’ll have to understand the product and its unique selling points in detail and create more than one type of content around the product to make a sale. You need to provide evidence, excite, educate, and persuade to convert leads. As you can guess, this demands a higher level of marketing effort and expertise.

Risks of Refunds

Another possible downside is that these products frequently come with 30-90 day money-back guarantees. This can be a reassuring point for buyers, but it creates some uncertainty for affiliates. If customers request refunds within the period, it’s very likely that the earnings for converting them and securing the referral will have to be returned.

Affiliates are also closely tied to the reputation of the company and the quality of its product or service. If customers fail to experience its value, are dissatisfied, and cancel their subscription, you’ll not only lose your expected commissions but may also lose the customer’s trust.

Examples of High Ticket Affiliate Offers

There are plenty of high ticket affiliate marketing offers that you can consider. Here are a few examples of products with which you can earn high commissions:

• Kinsta – a WordPress hosting provider with only a 2% churn rate, offering a one-time bonus of up to $500 plus a 10% monthly lifetime commission for every referral.
• Thinkific – a platform allowing creators to sell online courses and build communities, its cookie duration is 90 days, and it provides a 30% lifetime recurring commission on all plans, letting affiliates earn up to $1,800 per referral per year.
• Hubspot – an all-in-one CRM with marketing, sales, and service software that provides a 30% recurring commission for one year with the potential to earn up to $1,000+ per sale and a cookie duration of 180 days.
• Authority Hacker – offers online courses that help marketers improve their craft with affiliate commissions of up to $1,500 per sale.
• Semrush – an SEO and content marketing platform that offers affiliates $200 per sale and $10 for every free trial.

How to Promote High Ticket Affiliate Products

Customers need a little more convincing and should be shown that the product is worth their money. This is why you’ll have to put more time into marketing these products.

Having authoritative content that shows you are an expert is key when promoting high-ticket affiliate products. Your audience needs to trust you before they buy anything based on your advice. So, instead of simply directing traffic to the vendor’s sales page, you must produce your own value-adding supplementary resources to improve the buyer’s journey and show your expertise in the field. The following can move prospects closer to buying:

• catchy affiliate prelanders;
• detailed product demonstrations;
• comparison guides;
• case studies;
• personalized recommendations;
• email chains;
• customized ads.

Additionally, you could make YouTube videos, put together a free email course sharing niche insights, write guides addressing common pain points, or host a podcast interviewing experts in your field. There are lots of channels and content formats that may be leveraged. The produced content is also conventionally promoted through ads on Facebook, Google, and other platforms to reach more people, but it could get costly if you don’t use ad trackers to get a better understanding of what works.

What Is Low Ticket Affiliate Marketing?

This involves promoting affordable products and services that normally range between $1 to $100 for a commission. Low-ticket affiliate marketing focuses on the potential for easier but frequent and consistent sales.

These are the kinds of products that people often purchase on impulse, which could be books, everyday essentials, accessories, or some basic subscriptions. There are plenty of categories to choose from, and since such products appeal to a broad audience, you don’t need to spend too much time convincing them to make a purchase.

How does it work? For example, when you promote a $37 cooking gadget where you earn a 4% commission, you’ll make $1.48 per transaction. As you can imagine, you’ll have to rely on a high volume of sales to get significant income since every individual commission is quite small. Yet quick purchasing decisions without extensive research make the sales cycles much shorter, often resulting in a steady cash flow.

Advantages of Low Ticket Affiliate Offers

Accessibility, broad appeal, accelerated sales cycles, and potential for frequent sales are all factors that make low-ticket offers so appealing to affiliates. Let’s take a look at the possible gains in detail.

Suitable for Beginners

It’s rather easy to join low-ticket programs as they’re widely available, are often open to anyone, and usually don’t have strict application terms. Such well-known programs as Amazon Associates, for example, make the entry barrier much lower, allowing almost anyone to sign up and become an affiliate.

In many cases, you won’t even be expected to have a huge following on social media or have a hyped-up website, which is a solid point for many affiliate marketing beginners. Plus, it could be a great starting point and training ground to experiment with various niches and products and gain experience before moving on to programs with higher competition or to high ticket offers.

Requires Simple Marketing

As a rule, you don’t need a complex sales funnel to promote affordable services and products, as customers don’t need that much convincing to make a purchase. Because aggressive persuasion is usually unnecessary, lots of straightforward marketing tactics could work, such as recording an unboxing with honest reviews on a product and posting them on a YouTube blog or TikTok. If you manage to drive high traffic and engage a broad audience, you’ll get your “bingo”.

Faster Sales Cycle and Higher Conversion Rates

Many of these items are priced for impulse purchasing, so buyers are less hesitant to get these products and services. Lower prices also encourage quick, low-risk decisions and require less financial commitment from buyers.

And since customers are more willing to spend their money on these products and don’t spend lots of time on extensive research, the conversion rates are usually higher. It’s sort of self-explanatory, as it’s easier to persuade someone to spend a small amount on something like a useful gadget than to make a major investment.

Topping that, some low-ticket programs even have Cost Per Action deals, allowing affiliates to get commissions for simpler actions like user sign-ups, free trial registrations, or form fill-outs. This way, the results could be visible to affiliates even faster.

Wider Target Audience

These products have a big potential customer base because of the lower product prices. It’s natural that they appeal to a much broader range of consumers. Affordable price points mean that the commitment is smaller and it’s more accessible to people with different budgets.

Hence, the potential customer base can be quite extensive. Not to mention that a diverse group of potential buyers with a wider demographic can lead to increased reach.

Disadvantages of Low Ticket Affiliate Offers

However, lots of things in low-ticket affiliate marketing can impact your long-term motivation and ability to earn. Here are several main drawbacks to weigh before committing to such a strategy.

Lower Commission Per Sale

The most obvious limitation is the small commission amount you earn from each conversion. For example, when promoting a $25 product with a 12% commission rate, you’ll make just $3 per sale. Sure, amounts can add up over time, but you’ll need a big sales volume either way if you aim to reach a meaningful income level. This could be challenging to get a stable monthly income, especially keeping in mind the competitive landscape.

Your profit margins might also shrink when you factor in the cost of acquisition, especially when you run paid ads and include other marketing expenses like content production or paying for tools. The overhead costs are lower, but they have to be included to assess what you’re getting in return.

Volume Over Individual Commission Size

Quantity over quality directly leads to the fact that more sales are needed to make a significant income with affiliate marketing. Because of the lower commissions you earn, you’ll need to sell more of these products to make a profit. Since the commissions per sale are smaller, it only becomes possible to obtain meaningful earnings if you have frequent sales and steady payouts. Obviously, this cumulative effect usually happens over time.

Shorter Cookie Durations

Because the buying decisions happen quickly, cookie durations are typically much shorter, often spanning 24 hours to a few days. This can affect your earning potential since longer cookie windows and durations can boost your chances of getting credit for a sale. At the same time, it may mean that the competition is tougher.

More Competition from Other Affiliates

Speaking of which, a simpler entry threshold equals many competitors. It’s easier for affiliates to promote these products because customers are more willing to make these low-cost purchases. But this also means that it’s a crowded market with lots of competition from other affiliates who try to capture the same audience as you. This is why really standing out is fundamental for success.

Requires Consistency

As we’ve mentioned, low-ticket items can’t be considered your magic beans that’ll deliver you a fortune overnight. It’s also a “slow and steady wins the race” kind of effort, which implies constant input, discipline, and creativity.

It has a fast pace that can lead to burnout, as the ongoing necessity to create content and promote products is a lot of work that has to be done on a regular basis. And since it might not bring back immediate results in terms of tons of money due to small commissions, it commonly lowers motivation.

Examples of Low Ticket Offers for Affiliates

There are countless low-ticket affiliate marketing offers available, you’ll find no shortage of categories and accessible offers to promote. Here are a few examples of such products and services:

• Amazon Associates – Amazon has millions of products across different categories, their commissions range between 1% and 10%, depending on the category.
• TripAdvisor – offers up to 50% of the commission the platform receives from its partners on qualified bookings.
• eBay Partner Network – the commissions are 1% and 4% based on the category, but earning caps apply per transaction.
• Skillshare – you may earn a 40% commission and up to $67 per customer when promoting their courses, the cookie duration is 30 days.
• Grammarly – has a 90-day cookie duration and pays $0.20 for every free registered user and $20 for every customer who purchases the pro plan.

How to Promote Low Ticket Affiliate Offers

Promoting low-ticket affiliate products is all about leveraging high-traffic channels. But a lot of it goes down to creating content.

Many affiliates write “versus” or “best” articles that compare products to attract readers with purchase intent. These pages have to be SEO optimized so that they can rank well on Google and get people to click the affiliate links. Similarly, dedicated and evergreen resource pages that are often updated on a website also work. It could be a listing of all items an affiliate recommends.

Video content works wonders to encourage people to make the purchase as well. And the best part is that it doesn’t have to be an in-depth 1-hour YouTube video, you can leverage short-form videos on Instagram, TikTok (two of the largest social media platforms that Gen Z users use to purchase products), as well as other social media.

What is more, targeted paid ads on platforms like Facebook or Instagram are also very effective. They can function as a small nudge to convert hesitant buyers. Finally, cross-promotions or bundle offers in combination with other affiliates or influencers in the niche might bring great results as well.

High Ticket Affiliate Offers vs. Low Ticket Affiliate Offers

While it might be easier to categorize products as either high ticket or low ticket offers simply by their price, it goes beyond that. The audiences have different buying habits, and the promotion tactics vary too. In this section, we’ll overview both and give you a better understanding of the peculiarities of each affiliate marketing program kind. Here’s a quick comparison table to recap.

Characteristic	High ticket offers	Low ticket offers
Product price range	$100-$500+ (and a lot higher)	$1-$100
Commission rates	Around 10% (can be higher)	5-50%
Commission per sale	Higher (often $100+ per sale)	Lower ($1-$50 per sale)
Application process	Strict, often requires approval	Easy, usually instant approval
Cookie duration	30-180 days	24 hours to a few weeks
Sales cycle	Longer, requires nurturing	Shorter, more impulse-driven
Payment models	Often includes one-time, recurring, or hybrid	Typically one-time payments
Example products	Premium SaaS, luxury items, online education, luxury travel	Ebooks, small consumer products, entry-level courses

Choosing Between Low and High Ticket Offers

How do you decide what suits you best, low or high ticket affiliated marketing? There are certain instances where one is better than the other. But the truth is that you can combine both and increase your earning potential.

When to Go for High Ticket Affiliate Marketing

Here are a few cases when high ticket affiliate marketing works best.

1. Have an Established Audience

Say, if you’ve been running a YouTube channel, blog, or podcast and have many followers, readers, or subscribers, you can consider this option. Many start of by offering free value-first content, and then build up on that. People are more likely to follow your recommendations because you’ve built credibility with them for a while. They trust you and are less hesitant to spend their money on expensive products.

2. Are an Expert in Your Niche

Authority and expertise in a field make it easier to justify bigger price tags, and it becomes simpler to convince buyers if the recommendation is coming from someone who knows the ins and outs. For example, if you’re a beauty expert, tech reviewer, certified coach, or something along these lines, high-ticket affiliate marketing may be great.

3. Have the Persistence for Longer Sales Cycles

High-ticket products typically require a lot of nurturing, so you have to be prepared to invest your time into making educational content and following up with the prospects before making a sale. The upfront effort is big. In this case, in-depth guides, live demos, tutorials, testimonials, or even webinars can be required to market such products. So it is best to contact the product team of the service or item you’re promoting to get more insider knowledge on its highlights.

When to Opt for Low Ticket Affiliate Marketing

These are the scenarios when low ticket affiliate marketing is typically a better option.

1. Starting Out with Affiliate Marketing

The entry barriers are much lower with such programs, so they’ll be easier to join. Moreover, beginner-friendly programs are simpler to start working with and learning the ropes with less risk. The same goes for testing out a new niche, audiences, or content formats, as it’s safer to start with something easier and with a smaller price tag.

2. Plan to Target Broad Consumer Niches

Low-ticket means that you should be ready to work with affordable products and in consumer niches with a wide target audience. This could be anything from e-books and gadgets to beauty items or other daily products that a wide range of people can make use of. The key here is to know how to create “universally applicable” content for different age groups and audience segments. This could be evergreen topics like “Top gifts for X” and trending topics that may be quickly used to your benefit.

3. Have Mastered SEO or SMM

Volume is king for low-ticket offers. If you excel at driving traffic and converting potential buyers quickly using SEO, social media, email, paid ads, or other marketing channels, you have higher chances of making meaningful income with affiliate marketing. As such, many switch focus to seasonal offerings to drive clicks.

How to Combine High and Low Ticket Affiliate Marketing

But you are more than welcome to market both types of products simultaneously. This way, you’ll try to get quick wins from impulse buyers and nurture long-term relationships with those who can invest in premium solutions. Plus, the effort you put into marketing one product can be used to market the other. Here’s how you can combine this:

• Cross-sell and upsell – Recommend a low-ticket product as you primarily market a high-ticket product. For example, you might promote a $300 one-on-one fitness coaching program, but as you market it, you could feature a $30 yoga mat. This approach puts the low-ticket product as a complementary addition to the high-ticket offer.
• Retargeting campaigns – You could also retarget customers who have interacted with content about your low-cost offer with ads featuring related high-ticket products. For example, if someone clicks your affiliate link to a $25 meal planning guide, you might show them retargeting ads for a $500 comprehensive nutrition package. You could then use automation for affiliates to distribute traffic between the funnels.

Final Thoughts on Low and High Ticket Affiliate Marketing

High-ticket affiliate products often have big commissions per sale, but they require more effort to sell, as customers take longer to make a purchase. That’s why some marketers choose to promote low-ticket offers, which bring in lower commissions but convert much more easily, thus focusing on quantity to obtain frequent commissions.

But you don’t have to limit yourself to one approach, you can promote both types of products. For instance, you could build a funnel where you capture leads with ads to low-ticket products, then follow up with high-ticket offers through email sequences and in-depth content.

To make the most of your marketing efforts, you have to know for sure which channels and ad campaigns work best. This way, you won’t be wasting time and resources on what doesn’t bring much value, refocusing your strategy on the channels and tactics that do.

Redtrack lets you manage multiple ad accounts, assists with automatic traffic distribution, and provides lots of insights, unifying all the data in one place. So if you use multiple channels and run several affiliate programs at the same time, you’ll have a single source of truth for your performance data. You’ll have proof of what really drives ROI since you’ll track every click, conversion, and revenue event, letting you optimize campaigns. Feel free to take it for a spin during the free trial to see the gains for yourself!