The Mega Guide To The iTunes Affiliate Program [With Income Proof]

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iTunes Affiliate Program
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Do you have a tech blog? Or a music blog? Or a book reading blog? Have you been struggling to find a suitable affiliate program to work with?

Did you know that Apple has an affiliate program for iTunes, the App Store, iBooks, and the Mac App Store?

It’s true. Keep reading.

Earlier I have talked about VigLink, which is one smart way to monetize all your existing commercial links. If you don’t know about it, you should read this review & also check out an exclusive case-study here. If you are using VigLink to create affiliate links to the Apple App Store, I recommend you directly signup for Apple’s affiliate program and stop paying extra money to VigLink or any other 3rd party affiliate networks.

Let’s take a look at some features of Apple’s affiliate program, and below I will share one trick which you can use right away to “affilitize” all your Apple links.

iTunes Affiliate Program Details & Features:

The iTunes Affiliate program is open for everybody.

Once you apply for the program, it takes about five days to get approval. To ensure you get approval, add your working blog link. If you don’t have a blog/website, your application will be rejected.

Once your application is approved, you can log in to your Apple affiliate dashboard.

Here is what the dashboard looks like:

iTunes Affiliate program dashboard
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If you are inside your affiliate dashboard for the first time, make sure to click on Settings > Payment Method, and add your payment details. In most countries, Apple makes payment via direct bank transfer.

In Tracked Currency select “All Countries” & in Paid Currency select your country’s currency. Don’t forget to check the box which says “Auto Selfbill/Payment Required.”

Apple Affiliate Payment
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Note: In the above screenshot I forgot to add a threshold limit, which you should add. Once your affiliate commission reaches that limit, they will send you payment automatically.

Click on “Tools” at the top of your dashboard and you will find various options to create affiliate links.

Here is a screenshot:

iTunes Affiliate link maker
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You can use any of the methods listed to monetize your blog.

Here are my recommendations…

Auto Link Maker:

This is recommended for those blogs which are old and have a few (or tons of) links to the App Store or other Apple products on the official Apple site.

You need to add a few lines of Javascript code to your blog and it will automatically convert them into affiliate links. This saves a lot of time because you don’t have to edit all the links manually. Also, if you use this, you don’t have to manually create affiliate links for future posts.

You can use the Google Tag Manager or edit your theme to add the JS snippet on your blog.

RSS Feed Generator:

This could potentially increase your revenue substantially as you can create an RSS link to Apple’s list of top products, music, books, apps, and more

Simply place it as a widget in your blog’s sidebar and let the money flow in.

This works great on specific niche sites which need to provide readers with the latest information and products.

Link Maker:

iTunes Affiliate Link maker
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This is useful when you need to generate an affiliate link for an individual product.

You can also use this to create affiliate links in bulk.

Tip: If your page is popular, you can use Link Maker to make an affiliate link for an app and promote it on your social media pages.

Widget Builder: 

I’m not a personal fan of this, but it could be useful for you.

With Widget Builder, you can create a widget for a single app and embed it within your blog post. Your readers can read the description and click on the widget to install the app.

(App Developers can take advantage of Apple’s search API to show apps with their unique affiliate link.)

Quickest way to create an affiliate link:

At the top of your “Affiliate Dashboard”, you can find your unique affiliate ID. In the above screenshot (“Affiliate Dashboard” top right), note my id is 10lMjr. Similarly, there you will also find your ID. Whenever you want to link to any app or product from App Store, iBooks, and the Mac App Store, suffix it with ?at=XXXX (replace XXXX with your unique affiliate ID).

Example:

Simple! Right?

Important Facts About Apple’s Affiliate Program:

  • Cookie period is 24 hours. That means if a user clicks on your affiliate link & makes a purchase within 24 hours, you will get a commission.
  • You get a commission of 7% of iTunes products (apps & other content).
  • You should also link to free stuff with your affiliate links. The reason is that you will get paid for ANY purchase a user makes within the 24-hour cookie period.
  • Download the Blink app on your iPhone. Use it to generate affiliate links quickly on your iOS device. Highly recommended.
  • Payments will be available to cash out after 90 days of the sale.
  • Links to the Apple Online Store’s products do not earn commissions on the iTunes affiliate program.
  • Links to iTunes Gifts on a desktop or within iOS, however, are eligible for affiliate commission.
  • Resource: Advanced Affiliate Linking

Tracking Income from the iOS App:

You can download the ExactView app on your iPhone to keep track of your earnings.

Update:

It’s been almost half a year since I have started using the iTunes affiliate program & let me quickly share my earnings report with you.

I have received 2 payments so far from the Apple affiliate program. I was surprised to see earnings in all different currencies on my dashboard. Including all currencies, I have earned:

  • $8,391

Note: Earlier I made the mistake of adding payment in USD. Today I have rectified this mistake & also updated the article accordingly.

Itunes Affiliate program earning
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The iTunes affiliate program could be a great addition for you as well, and I suggest you start using it right away. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me via the comments.

Also check out the following affiliate programs:

Do consider sharing this information about the iTunes affiliate program with other bloggers on your Facebook page, Facebook group, Twitter friends, and G+ peers. Or if you like, you can send this resource via WhatsApp.

Let me know your experiences with the iTunes affiliate program in the comments below.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

58 thoughts on “The Mega Guide To The iTunes Affiliate Program [With Income Proof]”

  1. Michael

    Good Job Mr. Harsh.
    Is there no other affiliate that one can earn tangible commissions from apart from iTunes affiliate? reason been that my country of resident, just few among others do buy from iTunes.

    Thanks

  2. Farhan Khan

    This is what I was missing in my plan. Have started a blog on iPhone apps. Thank you so much, you can give me suggestions how can I populate more traffic to my blog, I’m a kid in this field

    1. Stephen

      You could run Facebook adverts to your website. Target iPhone users.

      You could also install the Facebook pixels to retarget people that come to read articles on your blog because definitely, they would be iPhone users.

  3. Manish Arora

    Hi Harsh,

    Is there similar affiliate program for Goole Play Store as well?

    Regards,
    Manish

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Manish
      Not at this moment.

  4. Vincent

    Hi Harsh,

    I was joined the iTunes Affiliate Program 2 months ago.

    I made 835 clicks and 17 ordered items. But I did not see any Revenue, Commission in my account. Till now more than 60 days, there are nothing show.

    I do not know how much I have earned !

    I try to contact them about this issue. But there are not response also !

    Do you have any experience about my issue?

    Thanks!

  5. Soham Pratap

    Hey, Harsh, You have replied to many of my comments from this blog and also on Youtube. I’m a huge follower of you. In fact, I spend almost an hour reading your blog.

    Further about this post, Could you tell me about your website which is using iTunes affiliate. I would be grateful to have look at it.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Soham,

      Thank you for reading ShoutMeLoud. Well, I use iTunes affiliate at ShoutMeLoud itself.

  6. Aitzaz

    Hi Harsh,

    Great piece of information you shared here. I just want to know how can we promote iTunes affiliate products through Facebook page to generate sales. I remember that you mentioned somewhere that you also promote them through Facebook. So can you please guide me too.
    Thank you.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Aitzaz
      I will try to write a post on it in the coming days.

      1. Aitzaz

        Thank you so much. I will wait for it..

      2. Aitzaz

        Hi Harsh,

        I am still waiting for your post on sharing the method for using iTunes affiliate program on Facebook page and about generating sales through it?

        Regards,
        Aitzaz

  7. Aitzaz

    Hi Harsh,
    Nice article. I have a question that why it is wrong to add payment in USD? Could you please tell me about that?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Aitzaz
      Since you will be earning fro other geo’s you need to accept payment in other currencies also.

  8. akhil sharma

    I think its a quite slow process affiliating through itunes.but I will definitly give it a try. Thanks

  9. Samuel

    Hi,
    thank you for this article!
    But, I couldn’t find anywhere an answer for one of my questions:
    if I’m choosing one currency on the “tracked currency” field, it means that all sales from all countries (currencies) will be automatically converted to that one currency or it means that sales from other countries other than USA (let’s say I choose only USD on the “tracked currency”) will be ignored and not tracked and I will not be paid for those sales? I saw you also have not tracked all currencies.
    Thank you for your answer.

  10. Michelle

    Do you know how it works if I link to an App that offers a free trial week? Do I get the commission if they then pay for the app after the first week?
    As a separate question, is it worth it to link to free apps? Does it work like Amazon where as long as they purchase anything, you still get a fee.
    Also, I’m not sure if my links are going through. When I first wrote my post, I followed your directions. To be honest, I sort of forgot about my iTunes affiliation. I just re-read your post and my links look correct but I don’t think they are going through. One of the products I link to on Amazon requires you to use an iTunes app. So, I’m pretty sure they are downloading the app. Waiting for Apple to respond and check it out. Is there another way to see if it is working? My numbers all indicate zero sales which is surprising, unless the free week makes it zero. Or, I’m linking wrong.

  11. Martin

    Hi @HARSH,

    Thanks for sharing this info, it is very helpful. I’m starting to apply for the program and maybe you can guide my better and see if I understand correctly.

    1- To avoid the rejection, you set that is better to have a blog from the beginning – Right?

    a- This blog shall have some traffic?
    b- It can do focus only on one niche? like games?

    2- The commissions are also for in-app purchases?

    3- Do you have any experience with “Enterprise Partner Feed Relational”? – I’ll create some kind of “app store” or “app directory” but using different criteria to rank the apps –

    Sorry to make many different questions –

    Thanks in advance.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      1- To avoid the rejection, you set that is better to have a blog from the beginning – Right? : Yes

      a- This blog shall have some traffic? “Should look professional with content”
      b- It can do focus only on one niche? like games? “You can focus on any niche”

      2- The commissions are also for in-app purchases? “Yes

      3- Do you have any experience with “Enterprise Partner Feed Relational”? – I’ll create some kind of “app store” or “app directory” but using different criteria to rank the apps – “I don’t have experience with is as I haven’t created something like this, but yes you can use it for skyrocketing your earning 🙂

      Best of luck!

  12. Arman

    Comment:Hello sir i want a e-mail account on icloud ! How to create a account on icloud without credit card ?

  13. Christian Boyce

    Great article. Thank you. I wonder how to implement the RSS feed. I am using WordPress and the feed looks like this:

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/toppaidmacapps/limit=10/xml

    If I put that exact code into a widget it displays as blank. If I put the code into a post, it’s still blank. I thought maybe wrapping it with would work, but it doesn’t. Still blank. What should I be doing?

    Finally, the RSS feed does not appear to be tied to my affiliate token. If I do get it to work, and someone clicks a link, I don’t see how it’s going to credit me. I must be doing something else wrong too!

    Can you help?

  14. Christopher

    Wow!!! This is cool. I will implement it on my blog immediately.

  15. skoob

    Hi, can you enlighten me if Itunes made an update on their payment system. Earlier i try to update my payment details which i have filled with my country bank account and swift code ect, however when i try to save it, it gave me an error ‘this payment method is no longer active’. Do they not support direct deposit to non-us country anymore? If you could find out anything about this, that would be a great help. Thank You.

  16. Stella George

    Hi Harsh, Great post again, Looking for more quality affiliate programs.

    Thanks alot.

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