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Pet are an evergreen blogging niche. People spend billions on their pets and alog of affiliate marketers are keen to get in on the act. There are hundreds of great pet affiliate programs to choose from but there are few bigger and ore recognizable that PetSmart.
PetSmart made its name as a brick and mortar one stop shop for all things pets and they have a pretty impressive online presence as well.
So I wanted to take a look at the PetSmart affiliate program to see if it lives up to their solid reputation and see how well this partner program would benefit an affiliate marketer.
We will take a look at the commission and the best niches for this partner program as well as a look at what PetSmart has to offer in terms of their product variety and selection. Then we can determine if this affiliate is going to be something you can incorporate into your own online business.
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What Is The PetSmart Affiliate Program?
The PetSmart Affiliate Program is a referral program designed to allow content creators, like bloggers, to monetize their pet-related content with links to PetSmart. You can check out the PetSmart Affiliate program here.
When a potential customer uses these affiliate links and makes a purchase the affiliate marketer is rewarded for their promotion with a small percentage commission. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to start an online business for yourself.
The 2% Commission
Let’s start with the commission. It is not great. At only 2% you are going to nned solid conversion rates and a good flow of traffic to make PetSmart woth your time and energy when it comes to promoting them.
Amazon Associates is probably the biggest online competitor to PetSmart and they offer between 1%-3% on most of their purchases so the commissions are pretty close. The problem is Amazon is much more recognizable that PetSmart in terms of online stores.
This makes using PetSmart a tough sell, especially for beginner affiliate marketers. However, you should check out their partner program and their products and see if PetSmart is something you can incorporate into your affiliate business despite these low commissions.
One last thing I want to mention is that their tracking cookie is good for only “one action per click” this means that there are no return days as far as I can tell.
Normally most affiliate programs let you collect commissions for any purchase made for the duration of the tracking cookie but that does not seem to be the case for PetSmart.
It is not a great look and will end up costing you some commissions over time, it is still workable you just need to make sure your buyer intent content is top-notch to maximize this partner program.
What Does PetSmart Offer?
Everything under the sun. For pets anyway. Chances are if you want a product to promote on your niche site they will have mutliple options for you to choose from.
I always like to put a little product section in my affiliate reviews because the products you promote should be the most inportant thing you look for in an affiliate program.
The products are the consumer facing part of the affiliate program. Noone cares what your commission is, noone cares what the tracking cookie duration is. You audience casre that you have recommended a product and they have bought it. Thats it.
Fortunately the products are not something you need to worry about with PetSmart. They sell the most popular brand name pet products.
You will have no problem promoting what they have to offer and chances are most of your audience is already going to have an idea of what brands they want to purchase from them anyway.
This type of large affiliate partner is really good to add to any affiliate strategy you might have because it can act as a catch all for any product that a smaller more focused affiliate might not have.
That does put it in direct competition with Amazon Associates, however, so you will need to decide which one is better for your particular online business as they sell many of the same products.
Best Niches For PetSmart
The best niches for this affiliate program are pretty straight forward. Any pet niche or sub-niche is going to be a great place to promote PetSmart. They cover a huge swath of the pet niche and can be useful for general pets sites as well as micro-niche sites that focus on one species or even one breed.
They cover fish and aquariums all the way through reptiles and on into dogs and cats with just about everything in-between benefiting from their product lineup.
You can check out our list of 50 great pet micro-niches here. Any of these pet sub-niches is going to be a great place to start using PetSmart.
Closing Thoughts
- Affiliate Commission: 2%
- Tracking Cookie Duration: Not Listed
- Auto-Approval?: No
- Affiliate Niche: Pets
- Join The PetSmart Affiliate Program Here
I wish I had better news for you but this is a less than stellar affiliate program. The low commission makes it a difficult affiliate program to use for beginners.
They are a great store but the affiliate program doesn’t live up to their high standards. Even a 5% commission would do wonders for this partner. Here is a quick recap of what I feel are the most important parts of this review.
The Bottom Line TLDR
There are few better places to buy pet products than PetSmart. It is well known and very popular. Most pet owners have probably been to a local PetSmart to pick up some things for their pets.
But this article is not about PetSmart, it is about the PetSmart affiliate program. The store is great, the affiliate program leaves a lot to be desired. The 2% commission is a tough sell and the lack of information about the tracking cookie is a bit annoying.
This affiliate program is not for everyone. However, you can make good money with this affiliate and the low commission if you have a good conversion rate on higher priced items and a solid stream of traffic floweing through your niche site.
For that reason I would recommend this affiliate for more experienced affiliate marketers. For beginners int he pet niche, Amazon Associates miught make more sense. The commissions are similar but Amazon is a bit more popular for general pet supplies.
You can also find more specific pet affiliate programs that offer higher commission and may fit your specific niche better than PetSmart.
As always you will want to give it a try to see how well it performs for your specific audience. It’s free to join so all it costs is a little time to get approved and run some tests on your niche site.
With a little elbow grease and some solid content you should be able to get PetSmart working well for your niche blog, just don’t expect to much.
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