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Earning Bitcoins, Affiliates On The Rise

As more bitcoiners search for a way to earn money exclusively in bitcoin, Affiliate Marketer has become a promising new income source.

The career options for people who want to earn their living in bitcoin have been steadily growing alongside the digital currency. Once an ambition fit only for black marketeers and the occasional coder, these days all kinds of programmers, entrepreneurs, gamblers, e-commerce store owners, content producers, and even affiliate marketers have been increasingly earning bitcoins instead of the typical fiat paycheck.

There are many reasons why people would want to earn a bitcoin paycheck. Freedom seekers, technophiles, privacy advocates, and just plain old bitcoin supporters all see earning a bitcoin paycheck as advantageous. Earning bitcoins is now easier than ever, making billing and payments more convenient.

In the world of online affiliate programs, and the affiliates that market them, it’s easy to see why bitcoin makes such a great payment channel for affiliate program managers. Sending payments to their affiliates in bitcoin is getting really easy, and companies including Bitpay and Bitwage offer complete payroll solutions in bitcoin.

“In today’s competitive environment, affiliates are always looking to get paid for their efforts as quickly and as cheaply as possible. This allows them to re-invest their earnings faster and beat out their competitors.”
— – Steve Sauve, MaxBounty Co-owner

Simply using an everyday bitcoin wallet to send affiliates their paychecks would mean that payments get sent out faster than other payment method. The fees are also extremely competitive, so they can offer affiliates more money than the competition does on similar items. There would be no way for funds to be frozen ‘by the bank,’ which is a common problem that often arises using legacy systems, including Paypal. Signing up for a Bitcoin wallet is also quick and easy, identity requirements are non-existent, so it’s far easier to get affiliates up and running.

“Bitcoin payments get to affiliates faster than traditional payment methods like ACH or Wires and have zero fees. MaxBounty wants to provide affiliates with as many competitive advantages as possible to our affiliates, and Bitcoin provides exactly that.” – Sauve

Most affiliate programs today, that pay their affiliates in bitcoin, are naturally bitcoin-related services themselves. There are many websites that are packed full of links and descriptions to affiliate programs that pay in bitcoin, and you’ll quickly notice that most are for programs in the bitcoin services world, such as wallets, bitcoin lenders, mixers, and merchant services.

Coinbase, who runs one of the best known and widely used referral programs, now pays the equivalent of $25 USD to anyone that sends them a customer who buys at least $100 worth of bitcoins. This amount is up from a year ago, when they only offered $10 for the same customer, so it would seem these affiliate-driven users turn into profitable customers for Coinbase.

There are a surprising number of affiliate programs for bitcoin-related services already, especially considering that it is only a six-year-old industry. Perhaps this is a testament to how well-adapted bitcoin is for this specific use.

Niche programs for Web hosting, precious metals dealers, a vast array of gambling, pornography, and even wineries are all running affiliate programs that pay in bitcoin now. Over the past year a popular pay-for-performance affiliate network with many types of products, MaxBounty, has been paying out bitcoin payments to its users too.

MaxBounty is a pay-for-performance affiliate and advertising network, also called a Cost Per Action (CPA) network. They specialize in the types of ads that pay affiliates only when a web surfer takes some kind of action, including filling out surveys or subscribing to a service. Such networks typically offer the highest levels of earning for any type of affiliate program.

“Publishers are paid when the surfers they send complete pre-defined actions on the merchant’s websites, such as signup for a market research panel group, request an insurance quote or book travel.” Co-owner Steve Sauve told BraveNewCoin. “We manage relationships between 16000+ publishers and 200+ merchants.”

The type of programs they offer to promote widely vary. According to Sauve, “these publishers deliver search, social, email, contextual and website traffic to 800+ business-to-consumer campaigns owned by the merchants.” People with many different online marketing skillsets are likely to find work in such a marketplace.

Although the number of affiliates accepting their payouts in Bitcoin is not a large percentage of the whole, it’s already an encouraging number, one year into the program. “We currently have over 30 affiliates requesting payment in BTC.” Sauve explained that the paying in bitcoin also makes it easier for employers dealing with tax residents in the us, “as a Canadian corporation, tax reporting is left to affiliates. We do not need to provide the US (or any other government) yearly reports on affiliate earnings.”

While many benefits inherent to bitcoin are attractive to Sauve, he says his primary reason to opt for bitcoin affiliate payments is a reason that continues to compel him today, attracting new affiliates to his business.

“I would like to see the amount of payments we make in BTC increase by getting new affiliates into MaxBounty who might not have ever worked with a pay-for-performance (i.e. CPA) network in the past, or who might be working with competing CPA networks. These would be affiliates who are looking specifically for payments in BTC because they want to work exclusively in BTC.”
— – Sauve

Although the largest affiliate marketplaces, including Commission Junction and Linkshare, have yet to start using bitcoin for payouts, the many benefits it offers would suggest that it is only a matter of time until they do.

Note: As with all the articles on BraveNewCoin. Neither the author nor Brave New Coin owns or is a member of any of the affiliate programs or websites mentioned.


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