In case you’ve missed one of our 1,000 posts on the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, it’s now live. I assume this card is paying a healthy commission to bloggers, so I thought I’d write a post explaining the different types of links. I’ve seen a little bit of talk on Twitter (and sites I love like Rapid Travel Chai) about affiliate links for credit cards. In case you didn’t know, we don’t use any sort of credit card affiliate links (0r bank account affiliate links). It means we can write posts like this one (and this one) without worrying about compliance or readers questioning why we write certain posts.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that there is more than one type of affiliate link and you might be able to help bloggers that you don’t realize. Here is a run down of the different types of affiliate links.
Contents
Direct Affiliate Links
These are pretty much restricted to the bigger bloggers in this space and even some of those have lost their links with certain card issuers. This is pretty simple, a blogger will directly link to a credit card if somebody is approved they will receive a commission. The commission they receive varies a lot, based on the type of card, the contract they have and volume.
For prime cards the commission is usually anywhere from $100-$300, business cards usually offer a higher commission than personal cards as well. Sub prime cards are usually around the $40-$60 mark. If you want to support a blogger with these types of links, simply apply for a card using their link and hope you’re approved. It’s usually easy to tell if it’s an affiliate link or not as there will be a long string in the URL. You can also always ask the blogger you want to support directly if they have these types of links and I’m sure they will be happy to send you the link and let you know if they get paid a commission.
Indirect Affiliate Links
These links are a little bit more different. Instead of directly linking to a credit card, they’ll link you to another site such as creditcards.com that’ll show a variety of cards. Usually these cards are in different categories (e.g travel, cash back, business etc) and you have to manually find the card you’re looking for. For example, this is what creditcards.com currently shows when clicking travel through one of these links and scrolling down:
Bloggers using these links will again receive a commission if you’re approved. The commission they receive is much less than direct links, although I’m unsure on exact numbers (if any bloggers using these links want to give me a range, e-mail me and I promise not to say that you gave me this information). Somebody that will remain nameless sent me some information on this, it looks like prime cards will award a commission of about $60-$170 – with most cards towards the $60 range than the $170 range.
Bloggers using these links aren’t able to say things like “if you click this link and go to page two, you’ll see <specific card>”. Most bloggers with these types of links will provide an easy to find link in their sidebar (see below for an example), but again feel free to contact them to ask. Links to cardmatch will also generate revenue if you’re pre-approved for an offer and are approved as well (view our full list of direct pre-approval checkers).
Indirect Direct Affiliate Links
This is something that is fairly new as far as I know. Basically how this works is that they will link directly to a specific card on a site such as cardbenefit.com that lists the features and benefits of a card and that site has direct affiliate links. I have no idea how this arrangement works and whether they are paid a flat monthly fee, per click or per approval or some combination (again feel free to share this information via e-mail).
I Don’t Want To Support Bloggers
As we all know, all bloggers are money hungry idiots that just kill deals so I understand that a lot of people don’t want to use their links. That doesn’t mean you should avoid these links at all costs, the team over at Saverocity have indirect links and they donate the full amount to charity. In 2015 they raised over $3,200 for four different charities (they will just be picking one for 2016).
My Thoughts
I always try to use an affiliate link if it’s the best offer available (and please make sure it is before applying and support bloggers that tell you the best offer even if it doesn’t pay them). I don’t have any great love for financial institutions, so anything that costs them a bit more money and helps somebody that provides value to me is a win in my book.
I usually keep a little notepad of posts that I really love when I read them, then when it comes to credit card applying time I’ll see if any of those sites have the best offer for the card I want to apply for. When a new offer comes out, usually the affiliate links lag behind a little bit so I’ll usually wait it out. Blogging is a huge waste use of time, so why not reward people if it doesn’t cost me anything.
