Are you in real estate and searching for ways to make passive income while working with brands you love? Getting into affiliate marketing is the right move for you. No matter where you’re at in your real estate journey, leveraging trusted affiliate programs will not only add value to your business and clients with exclusive offers and recommendations, but will also generate affiliate payouts in return for your referrals.
Once mastered, affiliate marketing can be an easy way to bring in steady income. However, getting to that point might take a little bit of upfront investment, especially if you’re in the outreach phase of determining which brands to work with. Below we dive into some of the most lucrative and comprehensive affiliate programs on the market.
TurboTenant
TurboTenant is the all-in-one property management solution for independent real estate investors. TurboTenant offers all the tools needed to smoothly manage rental properties, from finding a tenant to day-to-day management. TurboTenant is a freemium software, meaning landlords can sign up for free and start using their property management tools instantly.
TurboTenant pays affiliates based on customer conversions, meaning you get paid any time a landlord uses a paid feature within their product. Although their platform is free for landlords, a customer conversion can come from a tenant payout (rental applications, rent collection, tenant screening, etc) or from a landlord purchasing an upgraded Premium subscription ($129 per year).
TurboTenant offers a library of marketing collateral for affiliate partners to make it easy to promote their brand, as well as personalized branded landing pages complete with your logo and brand name. In addition, TurboTenant offers incentives for high-performing affiliates.
With a low barrier of entry for landlords and the opportunity to share a leading platform, TurboTenant’s affiliate program is guaranteed to bring your side hustle to new heights.
- Commission: $30 per customer conversion
- Cookie Duration: 120 days
- Payment Method: Direct deposit or check
- Platform: ShareASale or Impact
- Perfect for you if: You work with residential real estate investors, own a financial blog or review site, host landlord education and resources, or have an audience of real estate investors.
Carrot
Carrot is software made for real estate professionals to easily create their own lead generation website. Carrot offers website templates, search engine optimization (SEO) support, customer relationship management (CRM), education, and more. Carrot serves as an all-in-one marketing solution to help real estate professionals boost their bottom line; from content and design tools to helpful integrations.
Carrot has a customizable plan for users to pick and choose what features are impactful to their business. Their SEO, content, design, and integration tools each sit at $29/month while a standard membership is $89/month. For Premium support, which includes 1-on-1 strategy reviews, customers will pay an additional $69/month. Carrot also provides a “build your own” package option if you reach out to their sales team for more information. Affiliates earn 25% on recurring base subscriptions plus 25% for add-ons.
Carrot hosts their own affiliate program through their domain, meaning you’ll create an account when you apply for their program. Payouts and marketing collateral can be managed through your Carrot affiliate account. One downside to this is if you’re working with other companies who host their affiliate programs elsewhere – juggling multiple other logins can be a time-consuming challenge.
- Commission: 25% on subscription packages + 50% on education upsells
- Cookie Duration: Forever
- Payment Method: PayPal
- Platform: Self-hosted
- Perfect for you if: You work with a variety of real estate professionals, own a real estate blog or review site, consult real estate professionals, or have a platform where you’re promoting marketing resources for a network of real estate professionals.
BiggerPockets
BiggerPockets is the resource for real estate investors, whether you’re a veteran and newbie investor. They offer just about every type of education and community tool you can want as an investor, from podcasts, webinars, bootcamps, and conferences, to community forums, calculators, industry referrals, and more. BiggerPockets has a cult following of more than two million real estate investors, ready to share their investor knowledge and grow their portfolios.
BiggerPockets offers three pricing tiers: a free subscription focused on community and connecting with other investors, an $8.33/month subscription complete with unlimited ad-free podcasts and the entire BiggerPockets audiobook collection, and a $32.50/month subscription that comes with rental analysis calculator and tools, off-market deal finding software, and more exclusive benefits.
BiggerPockets hosts their affiliate program through Impact Radius, which is a user-friendly affiliate marketing software that hosts a large number of fintech affiliate marketing programs. When you create an Impact login, you can easily seek out more brands to work with and manage your performance across multiple brands under one login.
- Commission: $75 per pro membership, $40 per real estate lead (FAMA), $40 per lender lead
- Cookie Duration: 90 days
- Payment Method: Paypal or Direct Transfer
- Platform: Impactf
- Perfect for you if: Know any first-time landlords, have a blog or website focused on passive income, are an influencer specializing in passive income, or provide resources to a network of real estate investors.
Corporate Housing By Owner
Corporate Housing By Owner is a rental listing site for traveling professionals to locate furnished, mid-term housing. Rental property owners can easily upload their personalized property to the site to be viewed by potential tenants in their area. Corporate Housing By Owner serves as a middle man to traveling professionals and landlords alike.
Corporate Housing By Owner has four different pricing packages ranging from $339 a year to $975 a year per live listing. Each package includes a range of benefits spanning from basic listing features to an included professional photo shoot and YouTube video for your rental listing. If a user has five or more properties, they are deferred to the sales team to build a Bulk Package. There is no public pricing structure available for the bulk package option. Affiliates earn a percentage of each purchase from their referrals.
Corporate Housing By Owner hosts their affiliate program through ShareASale, which is a popular affiliate network with a diverse marketplace. Joining ShareASale can open up opportunities to leverage their marketplace to find other companies to work with.
- Commission: 15%
- Cookie Duration: 45 days
- Payment Method: Direct Transfer or Check
- Platform: ShareASale
- Perfect for you if: You provide recommendations for a network of mid-term rental owners, own a blog that guides rental marketing strategy, are a real estate professional working with mid-term or corporate housing investors, or educate an audience of owners who are looking for qualified mid-term tenants.
Nolo
Nolo is a popular legal advice network that advises people with everything from divorce to buying an investment property. Some of Nolo’s real estate specific products include manuals on selling a house, navigating foreclosure, home repair forms, buying your first home, and more. Nolo even offers state-specific guides for real estate professionals of all niches. Their products range in price, expanding the opportunity for affiliates to earn commission.
Although Nolo’s products sit in the $15 to $30 range, their affiliate program offers generous commissions because of the fact that you can earn on each individual sale. If you refer a customer and they purchase $1000 worth of products from Nolo, your affiliate commission would be $250. That’s not too bad for an easy side hustle.
Nolo hosts their affiliate program through CJ, which is one of the largest global affiliate networks. Once you create your CJ login, you can begin networking with other companies and exploring the marketplace to grow your affiliate marketing business under the same login. CJ sets itself apart from other networks because of their large global reach.
- Commission: 25%
- Cookie duration: 120 Days
- Payment Method: Direct Deposit or Check
- Platform: CJ
- Perfect for you if: You know first time home-buyers or sellers, are working with anyone who might need legal advice, have a website or platform dedicated to providing helpful resources to your audience, or are an influencer with a platform geared towards real estate education.
Conclusion
Real estate affiliate marketing programs offer lucrative opportunities to provide additional resources to your audience. It’s important to only work with brands that you believe are a good fit for you and your audience. The more you support a brand, the easier it will be to promote them and generate affiliate payouts! While these companies aren’t the only real estate brands that you can work with as an affiliate marketer, we hope we were able to provide insight into what to look for in an ideal partnership.