Earn money online Flipkart Affiliate Program
What do I need to become their affiliate?
How Much Money can you Make?
How to Redeem Flipkart e-gift Voucher ?
Flipkart, a popular Indian eCommerce website that sells everything from low price books to expensive television sets. And like many other eCommerce giants, they also have an affiliate program. But is it worth it?
First you will have to sign up for their affiliate program and you will get a unique tracking id. Use this to refer visitors from your website to flipkart website. And when the visitor makes a purchase from your link, you get a commission.
To join flipkart affiliate program you need to have a website and a bank account number.
However, if you do not have PAN card or a bank account, then you can choose gift voucher. And if you don’t have a website yet, then you can start by making a free website on ‘blogspot’ domain or even a semi build website will work.
Join Flipkart affiliate program now www.flipkart.com/affiliate
Obviously Flipkart affiliate program is not among the highest paying affiliate programs. Unlike hosting referral programs that offer up to 75% commission per sale, on Flipkart you get around 5% commission.
Frankly speaking, most people don’t make much money from this Flipkart affiliate program either, but it does act as a complementary source of income.
People who make good money from affiliates are professionals and are doing it for years. So if you are beginner then you may or may not make a living out of it, but you can definitely make some side income easily.
Related: Snapdeal Affiliate Program?
Having said that, let’s talk numbers. The money that you make depends on the type of product you promote. Lower cost items let say a pen drive worth 500 INR, can get you commission no more than 25 Rs.
But if you promote a big television set or smartphone worth rs 30,000, then you can easily make somewhere around Rs 1500. 3000 times more than a pen drive.
Second thing that matter is your niche, for instance I promote electronic and gadgets from Flipkart which offer low rate of commission (4-5%) whereas if you promote books, consumer goods or clothing etc then you can get 10% commission.
Although the commission rate changes every month, following screenshot will give you a rough idea.
Advantages of joining Flipkart affiliate program
Easy to join: Anyone having a simple website can join the program and start promoting products within 15 min.
Reputable and trusted company: Flipkart is not only popular but also a reliable eCommerce industry in the market. Customer support, quick replacement policies, reviews etc. make it easy for affiliates to trust them.
Payout is on time : Since they have 30 days replacement guarantee, they pay their affiliates after one month of sale. But until now, I have received all the payment right on time.
Tons of product to promote: This eCommerce giant sell everything and anything, it is easy to find stuff that you want to promote which convert well.
Decent commission rate: If not high, when compare to other affiliates like Snapdeal and amazon, Flipkart does offer decent commission.
Disadvantage
Like everything useful, Flipkart affiliate program has some shortcoming as well. Few worth mentioning are –
Poor implementation of code: As you know, Flipkart is still in it’s early stages when you compared it to international eCommerce giants like Amazon. And from my personal experience I have seen this difference reflecting in the code implementation and site maintenance.
Tight rules: This is my personal experience though. Every time I have to remind the affiliate team for payment. Even when I switch from gift vouchers to EFT, I have to fill a long form, attach scan copies of my pan card and bank pass book. Now I have been with many affiliates and Flipkart were to first to ask that. It looks like Indian govt is hard on them.
Update 1
Another example of poor coding structure was seen recently when Flipkart announces “Affiliate Tracking live on all Flipkart Mobile Apps (Android/ iOS/ Windows)“. To get this work, you will have to replace to suffix the /dl parameter in the affiliate link. For example. [source]
https://www.flipkart.com/offers?affid=test (old, works on desktop only)
https://dl.flipkart.com/dl/offers?affid=test (new, works on mobile and desktop)
This is bad is because, as affiliate market you have to place links in many place, most of them you don’t even remember. So going back and digging out the old links and update them is a tedious process. The developers should have provided a better solution.
Update 2
On 9 Dec 2014, when I checked ‘my Flipkart affiliates link’, I was shocked to see that they are not working. Some problems that I found-
1. Flipkart’s url shorten tool, that can be found in Flipkart affiliate’s dashboard do not work well. The link shorten through this tool, do not load any webpage or app.
2. When I click on smart url using Chrome browser on an Android device, it opens Flipkart webpage on chrome browser, instead of launching in the app. Later I found out, it was exception mention of Flipkart website. Like I said, Poor implementation of code.
Flipkart offers 2 mode of payment. First is the traditional EFT where money is wired directly to your bank account that you have chosen at the time of registration.
Second you can choose e-gift vouchers. Flipkart affiliate team will send you a mail containing your pin number of your e-gift voucher. This e-gift voucher are valid for 1 year and can be redeemed directly when you make payment by choosing the e-Gift card option.
Flipkart Affiliate minimum payout is Rs 250 for e-gift voucher and Rs 1000 for EFT. And cookie duration is 24 hours which is same as Amazon affiliate.
Bonus Tips
Capture visitors when they are in buying mood. For instance in festival season like Diwali people are looking to buy stuff and Flipkart is made big billion sale. So this is time for affiliates to make some real money.
Pick up a niche that you are really interested in and review products associated with your niche. For instance if you are interested in smartphones that make a review video or write an article about it, leaving your affiliate link at the end of the article or in the video description.
Similarly if you are into books than start a book review series in your blog and ask people and leave a link to your affiliate there.
One mistake that beginners make is spamming social media with their affiliate links or asking their friends to buy through them. Take it from a guy who ‘ have been there and done that’ and trust me, it doesn’t work. Instead try to provide value to your visitors and it will convert better.
Conclusion
Being a Flipkart affiliate for a long time now, I can say that it is one of the top affiliate programs in India. But don’t think that you can make tons of money from it. But yes, this affiliate program can give you decent passive income over the years if you play your cards right.
Personally I choose Amazon India affiliate over Flipkart as they offer more commissions and their service is better than Flipkart.
Update 1
How to make passive income from affiliate marketing?
I am no expert in affiliate marketing, but I do manage to make small yet passive income from amazon and Flipkart affiliate program. How ?
Off course there is no secret trick involve however there is one tried and tested method that usually work, ie. I review stuff, that I have personally used. It goes without saying, that conversion rate from video is higher than display ads on websites.
Update 2
After Jan 2015, Flipkart Tax polices has changed. Apparently 10% TDS is deducted for both gift card and NEFT payment. You will need a PAN card to receive your payment. However if you don’t have PAN card yet, then you can still select the gift voucher option but then your TDS deduction will become 20%.
