The Best Forex Affiliate Programs of 2024

Combine your marketing prowess with the world’s largest financial market – and you’ll have the most dynamic marketing combo around. If you’re looking for the next big thing in marketing, you can’t look much further than foreign exchange (or forex) affiliate marketing. 

In this guide, we’ll take you through everything you need to know, from the top performing forex affiliate programmes, brokers, and CPA’s, to what you need to think about before getting started.

Why promote forex brokers?

Open 24 hours a day, five-and-a-half days a week, the foreign exchange market never sleeps – it’s active all day and all night, all around the world (apart from weekends). It also happens to be the world’s biggest and most liquid financial market, with a gigantic daily turnover of $5.3 trillion.

Accessible to all with none of the elitism of other financial markets; internet-based for the newest generation of tech-savvy investors; and the fact that it’s still a relatively new product all means that forex trading is a popular and growing market.

For the smart affiliate marketer, this diverse global market offers opportunities like no other. Consider:

• High customer value – forex customers continue to deposit funds to trade and invest rather than just performing one-off transactions.
• Extended customer lifetime – traders are unlikely to deposit money and never return: they’re more likely to deposit money over a long period of time.
• Accessibility – internet-based trading means investors and traders from all over the world can access the forex market, opening up an entire world of potential customers (literally).
• Prestige – the forex market is well known, respected and trusted, which means it’s appealing in its mainstream nature and isn’t a tough sell.
• Worldwide recognition – alongside oil and gas, metals and stock, forex is a well-recognised trading product. Recently its popularity has increased rapidly, and this growth is expected to continue.
• Increasing potential customers – which leads onto the fact that more and more online users are learning about the forex market, representing a huge pool of new potential customers ready and waiting for you to attract.
• High commissions – and the financial rewards for you aren’t bad either.

Convinced? Let’s take a closer look at how forex affiliate marketing works.

What is forex affiliate marketing?

Forex affiliate marketing is the same as affiliate marketing – so that means you’ll receive a commission when you refer someone to a forex broker, and they begin to trade with that broker.

Essentially there are no major differences between forex affiliate marketing and traditional affiliate marketing – both are commonly performed online (though not exclusively) with referrals being generated via web banners or links placed on your website.

The typical forex affiliate marketing process looks like this:

Affiliate is an internet type of what’s known as an Introducing Broker (IB) – but with forex, you’re not expected to have sales staff or even an office and your referral will be through websites. Usually, forex affiliates are private individuals with large volumes of web traffic rather than a formal company.

It’s also pretty straightforward and easy to become a forex affiliate, with becoming an affiliate for some brokers taking less than five minutes.

Now you know the basics of forex affiliate marketing, let’s move onto the good stuff: the types of commissions.

Types of commissions

If you’re including links on your websites to forex brokers, you’re probably not doing it solely out of the goodness of your heart – you’re probably looking to be compensated for your efforts. Luckily forex affiliate programmes offer a range of commissions, including:

CPA

The basis of most internet marketing commissions, CPA stands for Cost Per Acquisition. This means you’ll get paid when your referral signs up for an account, deposits their first funds, or completes their first trade. Be really careful when signing up for CPA that you truly understand when you’ll receive your commission – nuances matter. As a rough guide, the industry standard is US $150 – $250 per client but can go much higher, depending on the deposit amount.

CPL

Or Cost Per Lead. With CPL, you’ll get paid when the person you refer enters your details on the broker’s landing page when signing up for their account or for a free demo. The broker gains invaluable details from your referral (like their name, email address and phone number) and you gain your paycheck. Nice all round.

Revenue sharing

Also known as the most interesting commission type. Brokers typically make their money from the spread , however they also profit from some of their clients’ losses. Some affiliate programmes may offer you part of their ‘revenues’ from clients. Which means part of their clients’ losses. Consider how you feel about this, before accepting revenue sharing as your commission type.

Hybrid

Pretty self-explanatory, hybrid commission is a combination of any of the above commission types. For example, you may get CPA and revenue sharing.

Sub-affiliates

Also known as second tier (because referring a trader is considered first tier), this programme means that, as a forex affiliate, if you successfully refer another forex affiliate to the forex affiliate programme, you get a share of that affiliate’s revenues. It’s either a fixed amount, or a percentage of their overall revenue. Understandably, forex brokers don’t really like this type of commission as it means they have to pay twice. It’s also hard to track, so you won’t find many brokers offering this.

Things to consider when choosing a forex affiliate program

Ok, you now understand what forex affiliate marketing is, how it works and importantly, how you’ll make money. Now it’s time to focus on things to consider before becoming a forex affiliate.

Real time reporting tools and performance tracking

Online marketing relies on immediacy – you need to be able to see what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to tweak it as necessary on an ongoing basis. So it’s really important to ensure that the forex broker you choose provides software access that allows you to track your performance in real time.

You need to know immediately how many clients signed up using your links – knowing this at the end of the month is pretty useless. You also need to be provided with the details of your successful referrals when your broker pays you – without these details, you can’t be sure you’re being paid the right amount.

Choose a trustworthy forex broker

Sounds pretty obvious, but with the high-worth clients and potential to earn some ready money, it’s easy to get caught up in the forex buzz without doing the necessary homework. Before becoming a forex marketing affiliate, make sure you thoroughly research the forex brokers out there to find reputable, trustworthy ones. There are plenty of considerations to take into account so we’re narrowing it down to:

• Regulatory compliance – make sure the forex broker is regulated to operate in their country. This should be really obvious to see on their website: they should list their affiliations on the about page, at the very least.
• Get the low-down – find out their history, and how long they’ve been operating. Ask around to see if anyone has had dealings with them, and what they think about them. Decide how big and well-known the broker is – the bigger and more established the broker, the better the conversion rates and better experience you’ll have as an affiliate.
• Think like your clients – how competitive is the broker’s offering (think their spreads, currency pairs offered, etc.)? Because that’s what your clients are going to be checking out – and if the broker is attractive to them, it’s going to be an easier sell.
• Global accessibility – if the broker offers multi-lingual support and a good range of accounts and platforms that means you’ve got a much bigger, global potential client base.
• The right feeling – this one is all down to you. Talking to the broker’s affiliate manager will give you a good indication of your potential business partner. Too slick? Trying too hard? Too rude? Give them a miss.

A good range of marketing tools

As any good internet marketer knows, you need a few tricks up your sleeves to convert those possible traders into actual ones. So make sure that your forex broker offers you a great range of marketing tools to help you convert prospects. This could include:

• Advertising banners – you’ll want access to all shapes and sizes to fit your website’s needs and to avoid a repetitive look across your website.
• Emails – take advantage of your forex broker’s experienced marketing department and see if they have any template emails you can send out to your database.
• Widgets – enhance your website with some free widgets that’ll provide relevant, valuable information to your clients and have the added bonus of constantly up to date information on your website. Widgets could be currency convertors or live currency rate tables.
• E-books – give your clients even more valuable information with PDF e-books. Bump up your website content by putting it on your site, or email it to your clients for a more personal touch.
• Content – with some brokers there’s no need for you to produce in-depth documents all about forex trading – they have them ready for you. Think blog articles, enticing text links to encourage clicks, or daily or weekly market outlooks.
• Videos – embrace the digital age by embedding brokers’ videos into your site. It breaks up dense text and gives your clients an easy to digest insight into forex trading.
• Landing pages – make it really easy for your clients to sign up by using your broker’s landing pages. They help your conversion efforts by giving visitors easy access to registration.

Commission payment and withdrawal methods

Firstly, you’ll want to know when you can expect to be paid – weekly? Fortnightly? Monthly? Ask the question.

Secondly, you’ll want to think about payment and withdrawal methods – both from your perspective and your clients. If there are a lot of payment methods offered for clients, that makes it easy for them to deposit money – and the more money they deposit, the more conversions for you. From your perspective, make sure it’s straightforward to withdraw your commission, electronic bank transfers for instance. You’ll want to avoid being paid by cheque, which takes a long time to clear. Watch out for fees too. Your broker may say they don’t charge fees, but you may find that their bank charges them fees for transfers, which they’ll nicely pass onto you.

Your audience

Don’t forget the most critical thing to any marketer – your audience. How well does the broker fit with your (intended) audience? Is your audience going to be DIY traders, or novice traders? DIY traders will prefer a different type of forex broker compared to novice investors who’d rather the trading was done for them.

Make sure you keep your audience in the forefront of your mind when choosing a broker, and ensure the broker fits your audience’s needs.

Getting started

You know what forex trading is. You know how forex affiliate marketing works. You understand the good stuff – commission types. You’ve got a handle on what to look for in a forex broker. Now it’s time to get stuck in.

See our round-up of current forex affiliate programmes, ready for you to dive in, research and possibly join in. Good luck out there – let us know how you get on.