Are you new to the affiliate marketing world? Confused between Amazon vs Flipkart affiliate program and trying to figure out which one will be more profitable for your business? Then you have reached the right place.

In this post, we’ll compare Amazon vs Flipkart affiliate program along with their commission rates and make an attempt to answer which one is better for Indian online entrepreneurs.

First of all, if you do not know how affiliate marketing works, check out this post- The Go-Getter’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers

Affiliate marketing is one of the best passive ways to make money online. The requirements to become an affiliate for the majority of the popular websites in India is quite simple. All you need to get started is a blog/ website with a decent traffic (or social media profiles like the Facebook page, YouTube channel etc. with good followership).

Moreover, becoming an affiliate in the e-commerce industry, which has boomed a lot in the last few years, is an amazing opportunity for online marketers. Today, there are a lot of big companies like Amazon, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Jabong, Myntra, Homeshop18 etc. which are offering successful affiliate programs in India. Nonetheless, two of the leading e-commerce affiliate programs in India are Amazon and Flipkart affiliate program.

Amazon vs Flipkart affiliate program

1. Amazon affiliate program

Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce in the world and offers wide diversified products in its affiliate program with excellent commission rates. The commission can be as high as 12% -depending on the product category.

The best part of Amazon affiliate program is its transparency. The affiliates can track all the important metrics like orders, ships, clicks etc in their dashboards which gets updated daily. After becoming an Amazon affiliate, you can track the shipped, delivered items and your overall commission daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly and more.

Amazon affiliate commission rates

Here is a quick snapshot of the Amazon affiliate commission rates in India based on different categories (as of October 2018.

(Source: Amazon Affiliate Program)

From the above table, you can notice that you can get a commission up to 12% for different products.

Besides, one of the most important factor while deciding the effectiveness of an affiliate program is the conversion rate. It simply means how many people are converting (i.e. ordering the product) after clicking on your affiliate link. (You can create multiple links for the different products that you’re promoting using the Amazon affiliate link generator inside the affiliate dashboard).

For my blog, the conversion rate for the Amazon affiliate program is 4.50%. In general, the higher the conversion rate, the more are the earnings. However, I’m not very aggressive in my affiliate marketing campaign as I’m promoting and selling my own digital products. Nonetheless, you can have a better conversion rate if you follow a few effective amazon marketing tricks like promoting the right products in relevant contents, catchy headlines etc.

Regarding payment, Amazon affiliate program will pay you approximately 60 days following the end of each calendar month. But they may accrue and withhold advertising fees until the total amount due to you is at least INR1000 in case of NEFT transfers.

Additional tip: Amazon has a worldwide audience and brand recognition. If your blog/website is getting a majority of traffic from outside India and you are planning to sell to your international audience, better to sign up with Amazon affiliate programs. Amazon is a global brand and your international audience will prefer buying from a known brand.

Also read: How to Earn Passive Income With Amazon Associates?

2. Flipkart Affiliate Program

Similar to Amazon, Flipkart also offers an amazing affiliate marketing program. One of the biggest benefits of getting started with Flipkart Affiliate program is that it is simple, straightforward and fast. Unlike Amazon, the affiliate account gets approved instantly once you’ve submitted your account details.

How to get started with Flipkart affiliate program?

To open your Flipkart affiliate program, go to the Flipkart affiliate page (here’s a link to the Flipkart affiliate marketing sign in page), fill your details and register for a free account. The account will get approved instantly if you’ve entered the right details.

Flipkart affiliate Commission rates

After joining the Flipkart affiliate program, you can promote the products available on Flipkart. You can generate an affiliate link for the product that you’re planning to promote using Flipkart affiliate link generator in your dashboard, where you can also find an extensive range of available tools, ranging from simple banners & widgets to APIs, for listing Flipkart deals/products on your own website.

Apart from products, you can also promote the Flipkart mobile app and earn Rs 10 per app install. (Earlier this app install commission was higher (Rs 40-60), but they reduced this over time). Here is a snapshot of Flipkart affiliate app install commission rate:

(Source: Flipkart Affiliate Program)

Further, here is a quick snapshot of Flipkart affiliate products commission rate:

(Source: Flipkart Affiliate Program)

A little concern with Flipkart affiliate program is that it doesn’t track the reports daily, rather update it weekly, monthly and quarterly.  However, if your total income is not dependent on Flipkart affiliate program, then it is okay to not track the daily earnings, but review it weekly or monthly.

After every month, the commission amount is sent either via eGift Voucher or Electronic Fund Transfer(EFT). If affiliates select payment via gift voucher, Flipkart will accrue and withhold referral fees until the total amount due is at least Rs 2500.00. If affiliates select payment via EFT, Flipkart will accrue and withhold referral fees until the total amount due is at least Rs 5000.00. (Source)

An interesting point to mention here is that in the past, the conversion rate for Flipkart used to be little higher compared to Amazon because Indians trusted national brand ‘flipkart’ over Amazon. However, with time, the conversion rate of Amazon in India has matched (moreover surpassed) that of Flipkart. Besides, after the launch of Amazon Prime, the conversion rate of Amazon is getting even better and better every month.

Few additional points regarding for Amazon and Flipkart affiliate programs:

1. Not following the terms and conditions of either of Amazon or Flipkart affiliate program will lead your account to get banned. So please read them carefully before you start promoting affiliate links.
2. For the Amazon affiliate program, if you do not get your first sale within the 90 days of signup, Amazon will cancel your affiliate account. Therefore, apply for the account only when you are ready to promote products and get sells.
3. Few products are exclusive on Flipkart and Amazon website. If you do not want to miss out any such products, it’s better to sign up for both the programs.

Final thoughts

If you want to get the best result from your affiliate marketing, it would be best if you first sign up for both and try out which one is working better for you. For example, you can place a few affiliate links from both Amazon and Flipkart on your website for a few months and test out which one has a higher conversion rate.

Anyways, currently, Amazon affiliate program looks like a better alternative over Flipkart because of its excellent affiliate facilities. Flipkart needs a little improvement in transparency, tracking and reflecting commission reports.