AWeber is touted as a miracle worker for small business owners, aiding more than one million businesses on the quest to take email marketing to the next level. After more than two decades in the industry, AWeber now offers a referral program — AWeber Advocate — to allow AWeber success stories to earn some much-deserved passive income.
The AWeber Affiliate program can be worth joining in some cases. You’ll earn a monthly 30% commission on all referrals. But, AWeber offers a “Free” subscription for companies with <500 subscribers. The Free version has no time limit, so small business owners likely won’t earn you a commission.
The AWeber Affiliate program can be “easy money,” but there are plenty of things you’ll want to think about before deciding to enroll.
To learn about the background of AWeber, what the referral program entails, the pros and cons of signing up, and whether it’s worth joining, keep reading!
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Everything You Need to Know About AWeber
It’d be hard to convince your online followers or email list to sign up for AWeber if you don’t know a thing about the company or its services. Learning about AWeber will help you to figure out if you have the right audience and how you can advertise the referral program to ensure success.
Here’s what you need to know about AWeber, its services, and who will benefit.
Why Over One Million Businesses Have Signed Up So Far
In the digital age, email marketing leads the way. Substantial research shows that more than 4% of traffic stemming from emails will make a purchase. And a company could draw in $44 in revenue for every $1 spent on email marketing tactics.
AWeber takes regular old email marketing and steps it up a notch.
The program will hand 90% of the work over to technology, giving business owners the time to focus on what’s important — running their business.
Some of the email marketing features that come with an AWeber subscription include:
- Automated email campaigns (with the ability to select a target audience)
- Emails personalized to address the recipient (a well-known tactic for higher open rates)
- Keeping emails in the inbox and out of the spam folder (CAN-SPAM Act approved)
- Analytical data about campaign success (open rates, click rates, and unsubscribers)
- Split-testing research (find out what a customer base prefers and drives sales)
- Email list organization & grouping (send the right emails to the right people)
- Email-ready sign-up forms (lead collection and appointment scheduling)
AWeber has expanded its features as the digital age of marketing continues to progress.
AWeber subscribers can now develop landing pages, helping business owners cut corners and costs by building an immediate web presence without needing a website. Users can also rely on AWeber to send out regular newsletters to email subscribers to draw traffic to blog posts.
The goals of AWeber are simple: Greater engagement, more web traffic, and — if everything goes according to plan — more revenue.
What Types of Plans Does AWeber Offer?
AWeber prioritizes the needs of small businesses in need of email marketing overhaul. This marketing platform comes in two plans: Free and Pro.
The Free plan by AWeber is mostly barebones access to the features of this marketing powerhouse. It supports email lists of up to 500 subscribers, permits 3,000 automated emails a month, and users can sign-up without needing to provide a credit card number.
And it’s free!
The Pro plan supported AWeber offers unlimited everything. Users can send as many emails as they’d like to an unlimited number of subscribers, gain access to email marketing analytics, and track eCommerce sales that stem from an AWeber email campaign.
This Pro version is all-inclusive and starts at $19 a month for up to 500 subscribers. Though, users can keep more cash in their pocket (nearly 15%) by billing annually.
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AWeber Affiliate Program Details
Now that you know what your referrals will get by signing up for AWeber, you want to figure out what you get out of the deal. In this section, we’ll be going over everything you need to know about “AWeber Advocate” and where you enter the picture.
Here’s a breakdown of AWeber Advocate.
Signing up for the AWeber customer referral program is simple. All you need to do is complete a simple form (phone number, email, website URL, PayPal log-in, etc.), and your application is well on its way to being approved. Once it’s formally approved, AWeber will give you an ID number.
You’ll add this number to the end of all AWeber links that you promote in the future to let the program connect a new visitor with your referral account.
When somebody on your email list clicks your referral link, AWeber will store a cookie on their computer or phone for up to 365 days (unless they delete their cookies). Any purchase that your referrals make within that year will earn you a 30% commission that continues for the lifespan of their AWeber account, whether that’s three months or three years.
You’ll receive your payments via PayPal when your referral fees reach $30 (for U.S. residents) or $50 (for residents of other countries). If all of your referrals are spending $30 or more combined within a month, you’ll be getting monthly commission checks from AWeber.
As an “Advocate” with AWeber, you’ll have access to a dashboard that shows a breakdown of your referrals, sales, and commission. This panel will also give you tips on how to grow your referrals and improve your monthly take-home.
Note: You’ll also have to follow the guidelines revealed in the Customer Referral Agreement.
The video below comes straight from AWeber.
In the clip, you’ll get a quick glimpse of what the AWeber Advocate program is about, including why business owners choose AWeber and the benefits of signing up for the referral program:
The Pros of the AWeber Affiliate Program
The AWeber Affiliate Program comes with plenty of benefits for current AWeber customers and anyone searching for supplemental income. In this section, we’ll talk about the two main reasons you should sign-up to be an AWeber Advocate.
Marketing Made Easy (Paid Search Ads & Premade Ads)
There’s always a learning curve when it comes to getting paying people interested in services and products. And unless you have any marketing or advertising experience under your belt, you might be playing a guessing game to see what works (and what doesn’t).
The AWeber Affiliate Program wants you to succeed, which is why the service makes advertising your link as simple as possible — even if you’ve never sold a thing in your life.
The first things we want to point out are the marketing tactics that AWeber helps simplify, and then we’ll talk about how they benefit you.
Take a look:
- The ability to use paid search ads (within limitations)
- Access to premade referral ads and banners
- Newsletters with tips for how to convert your subscribers to AWeber customers
Now, for what these mean for you.
Many businesses that offer referral programs completely reject paid search ads, such as those through Google or Bing. AWeber knows that these search engines can generate a ton of clicks, which is why they do allow Advocates to use them. You just have to make sure that you’re not using AWeber keywords, and you’ll be well on your way to colossal web traffic.
The premade ads and banners are more of a convenience feature, but they make it insanely easy to get your feet wet with this referral program. You can publish banner ads on your website or send out AWeber blog posts to your email subscribers. Both of these are mindless ways to send out your link, get customers interested in the service, and not do much behind the scenes.
And if it wasn’t clear that AWeber wants you to succeed, they also offer a ton of tips on their YouTube channel and regular newsletters. They’ll walk you through video marketing and other tactics to get referrals and money in your pocket.
There’s no way to fail with AWeber if you’re using the resources they provide
Earn Monthly Passive Income
The good news about the AWeber Affiliate Program is that you’re getting a massive 30% commission on any paying customers you refer to the service.
You can guarantee this paid commission if you can convince business owners that this service is 1) Worth paying for, or 2) A great email marketing platform for businesses with 500+ subscribers.
The precise amount of money you’ll make in commissions from this AWeber partner program is entirely dependent on how many users you refer.
In the chart below, we’ll review how much your referrals need to spend every month to make AWeber a reliable source of passive income.
| Total Monthly Spending By Aweber Referrals | Your Monthly Take-Home (30% Commission) | Your Annual Take-Home |
|---|---|---|
| $19 | $5.70 | $68.40 |
| $95 | $28.50 | $342.00 |
| $190 | $57.00 | $684.00 |
| $285 | $85.50 | $1,026 |
| $380 | $114.00 | $1,368 |
| $760 | $228.00 | $2,736 |
| $1,520 | $456.00 | $5,472 |
| $3,040 | $912.00 | $10,944 |
Any referral you make through AWeber will get you passive income. But it’s quantity over quality when the only difference between the company’s plans is the number of subscribers that the plan will cover (i.e., The size of the businesses you’re recruiting).
One referral for a <500 subscriber business will only generate $68.40 a year in commission. Considering there’s a minimum $30 balance needed to receive your payout, you won’t see a dime of that until six months after signing up. This total commission probably won’t even cover your electric bill for one month.
You’ll end the year with an extra $1,000+ in your bank account if you can get 15 business owners to sign up for AWeber through your affiliate link. Though, you can reduce the number of sign-ups if you encourage larger businesses to enroll. If that’s the case, you can pull in $44.70 a month for each referral where a company has 10,000+ subscribers.
Passive income is 100% possible if you know the right people, particularly owners of larger businesses or many people who need email marketing.
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The Cons of the AWeber Affiliate Program
No affiliate program comes without downsides, and that remains the case with the AWeber Affiliate Program. Below, you’ll find three reasons that being an AWeber Advocate may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
The Need for an Email List or the Right Audience
In the marketing world, knowing the “right” people is more important than knowing the “most” people. You want your ads to display for those who are most likely to invest in your products or services, not just throwing it against the wall to see what sticks.
As an AWeber affiliate, you assume the role of “marketer.” That’s both a pro and a con.
Having your very own email list with 5,000 subscribers is excellent on an average day! Yet, it won’t make a dent in your desire to generate referrals for AWeber if none of those subscribers are business owners. You’ll need to have an audience or a large number of followers looking to seriously up their email marketing tactics.
With that said, specific characteristics will make you a better fit for the AWeber Affiliate Program. This referral program will be most successful if you run a website with tons of organic traffic or if your social media follower count extends into the thousands. The ingrained trust that your web visitors or followers have in you will make referrals even more likely.
Considering most small businesses (and personal accounts) have only a few hundred followers, you probably won’t get more than one or two referrals.
Not All Referrals Will Choose the Pro Plan
The fact that AWeber offers a Free plan with no time limit is enough to encourage a lot of new business owners to try out the email marketing service. Unfortunately, this free service won’t benefit you like it helps AWeber’s Free plan users (especially small business owners).
In short: You won’t earn a commission on referrals that aren’t paying customers.
In the ideal world, your AWeber recruits will use this free plan to test the waters and see if the platform is right for their business. Hopefully, they’ll reap benefits (like a higher open rate for emails or automated campaigns) and understand that this program is worth $19 a month. Even better would be referring business owners with more than 500 subscribers right off the bat, who have no choice but to choose the Pro plan.
If you can’t capture Pro plan subscribers from the get-go, your job isn’t done as soon as they enroll. You’ll probably want to put forth the extra effort to excite the paid features of AWeber, ideally getting Free users to make the leap and subscribe. In a way, this isn’t just a set it and forget it type of referral program — you need to be willing to really sell the service’s promises.
AWeber might not be the best referral program if you don’t have the time to advertise actively.
Advertising Limitations
All referral programs have their limitations. AWeber has typical advertising and ethical guidelines, such as not sending malware with your referral links or posting inappropriate content with AWeber branding in tow. These rules make sense and are easy to assume from day one.
Though, you’ll have to take a close look at the Customer Referral Agreement to be sure that you’re following the rules to a “T.” Otherwise, you may lose your “Advocate” status for good.
Some of the limitations of getting referrals for AWeber include:
- Having inappropriate content on your website
- Offering incentives for those who enroll with your link
- Using AWeber-related keywords when using paid search ads (i.e., Google)
- Misrepresenting who you are or what AWeber offers users
- Spamming links to your referral page
- Violating the CAN-SPAM Act (sending unsolicited emails)
There are plenty of rules that aren’t entirely clear, so you might prefer to reach out to AWeber customer service to find out if your referral strategy meets AWeber standards. The sheer length of the customer referral agreement is enough to make most partners nervous about overstepping the boundaries.
AWeber Advocate wouldn’t be the best program if you planned to use a “get rich quick” strategy to get referrals and earn income.
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The Final Verdict
The AWeber Affiliate Program can be an efficient source of passive income, makes advertising simple thanks to premade banners and ads, and even permits the use of paid search ads to drive sales. You can earn a monthly commission of 30% for all referrals you bring to AWeber.
But it’s only useful if you know owners of medium-sized businesses (or those serious about taking their email marketing a step further). There’s no way to ensure that the referrals you bring will choose the Paid plan, meaning no commission on some referrals. The link advertising limitations also make generating sales a bit complicated.