The TopRanked.io Weekly Affiliate Marketing Digest [The Top VPN Affiliate Programs Roundup]

Hey there, affiliates.

Wanna see something you haven’t seen in over a decade?

Why am I showing you this?

That’s an easy one to answer.

This week’s affiliate news roundup is loooonnnng. But with good reason — ahead, we’ve got two opportunities:

• One you can (need to) take advantage of right now
• One you can work on for the future

Wanna know more?

Then read on (and check out what we’ve got to say about great VPN affiliate programs, too).

Best VPN Affiliate Program Roundup

Most weeks we cover an individual affiliate program. But this week’s top news story really calls for a VPN affiliate program monetization strategy.

And, if you look at our recent editions, we’ve already covered the only two VPN affiliate programs we recommend without hesitation.

So, wanting to give you a great VPN affiliate program to monetize the news with, but not wanting to repeat our recent VPN affiliate program reviews, this week we’re doing something different.

We’re simply giving you a quick rundown of where you can find the best VPN affiliate program reviews (TopRanked.io, duh!), and what you’ll find there.

The Only VPN Affiliate Programs We Recommend Without Hesitation

If you look at our recent editions, there’s little secret about our two favorite VPN affiliate programs.

They are, of course, NordVPN, and PureVPN.

Now, we’re not going to give you a rundown of each of these VPN affiliate programs here. Instead, here we’ll give you a couple of other options.

First, if you wanna see how these two VPN affiliate programs stack up against one another, you can always check out this NordVPN vs PureVPN VPN affiliate program comparison.

Alternatively, if you wanna check out individual reviews for these VPN affiliate programs, you also have our recent NordVPN Affiliate program review and PureVPN Affiliate program review editions, along with our official, in-depth TopRanked.io reviews.

Purevpn Affiliate Program | Earn 35% For Life

NordVpn Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 100% Per Sale

VPN Affiliate Programs That Are Still Worth a Look

Look, just because we lean heavily in favor of a couple of VPN affiliate programs, doesn’t mean they’re the only VPN affiliate programs that are worth your time.

There are plenty more, and we certainly cover them.

And who knows, once you apply your own selection criteria, maybe you’ll find some VPN affiliate programs that are better suited to your needs?

For instance, maybe you don’t care about the 90-day cookies like PureVPN has to offer. Maybe you’re perfectly happy with the 30-day cookies the ExpressVPN VPN affiliate program offers instead?

In that case, good for you. It’s a perfectly reasonable program in most other respects — so don’t let our VPN affiliate program preferences turn you off if you wanna sign up with them.

ExpressVPN Affiliate Program – Earn Up to $36 per Sale

Alternatively, maybe you don’t need the brand power of something like the NordVPN VPN affiliate program. And maybe you want a brand that focuses more on the “streaming” side of VPN usage, and less on the “privacy/security” side of VPN usage.

In that case, a great VPN affiliate program for you might just be the TrickByte VPN affiliate program.

Now, again, there are some minor downsides with this VPN affiliate program compared to our top picks (e.g., only 30-day cookies). But, if the marketing slant of TrickByte will help you get more conversions, then more power to you. The full review is here:

TrickByte Affiliate Program – Earn From 20% to 100% Commissions

In any case, and whatever your choice, the only thing you really need to know when it comes to selecting a great VPN affiliate program is this — you only need TopRanked.io to find the most in-depth VPN affiliate program reviews on the internet.

That, and maybe some idea of what it is you want out of a VPN affiliate program — but that bit’s up to you.

NordVpn Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 100% Per Sale

Affiliate News Takeaways

French Internet Just Died (And Now They’re Begging for Your VPN Affiliate Program Links)

It’s no secret by now that the basic motivation driving the invention and adoption of most technology is porn.

I mean, think about the internet — why else would Rule 34 have become a thing?

And before you dismiss Rule 34 as “just another 4chan fantasy”, think about this — Rule 34 didn’t appear until 2003.

And yet, if we dig into the news archives from pre-2003, we can still see serious journalists openly stating the same thing — tech adoption is basically driven by porn.

Internet.

3G.

Interactive web cams.

If you can name a technology, chances are, it only exists because of porn.

And the same still applies today.

Take Virtual Reality, for example.

Do you really think anyone bought a Meta Quest so they could hang out in Zuckytown?

If you believe that, then my best guess is that you’re either grossly misled… or maybe you just misread the Z in Zuckytown and thought it was an S.

Also, in case you’re still doubting just how much porn had to do with VR, go and Google the name “Palmer Luckey” and take a look at the photos.

Now ask yourself which of these two stories is more likely.

• Involuntarily celibate cave troll invents Oculus because he wants to pwn n00bs in 3D?
• Involuntarily celibate cave troll invents Oculus so he can finally see boobs in 3D?

And hey, even if we fast forward to today — like, literally today — we still find the same thing.

Just this week, news dropped that a16z-backed Civitai is, contrary to what it claims, mainly used for (yep, you guessed it) making porn.

So with that background out of the way, you should hopefully understand just how big the news this week is.

Here it is — France no longer has a reason to use the internet.

Now, don’t get me wrong here — French internet hasn’t suddenly developed some bug that prevents it from working with porn.

But, what has happened is that a new law has gone into effect that requires porn sites to verify French users’ ages.

And this is despite French President Emanuel Macron being a huge fan of the genre. In fact, he even awarded Mia Khalifa the Legion of Honour — the French equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

PS: That didn’t actually happen — the picture’s actually from some fake news circulating on TikTok a little while back… but hey, that still doesn’t rule out the possibility of the French president being a huge fan.

But I digress.

To get back on track, the new age verification law has officially come into force. And, in response, porn sites have just decided to block French users altogether.

Here’s what French users are now greeted with when they go to the world’s #1 site in the niche.

Translation — access has been suspended as of July 15.

Now, just to be clear, this law was already making waves in France before this week. In fact, it first went into effect way back in early June.

But, that only had a temporary effect.

Hammy Limited (the company behind Xhamster) mounted a court challenge. And, with that challenge, they scored a temporary suspension of the law until the court had a chance to hear arguments and make its final ruling.

Fast forward to today, and, obviously, that court challenge didn’t go quite as Hammy Limited had hoped. And so, this week, the law came back into effect.

Now, if you’re anything like me, there’s one thing you should be thinking right now.

There’s a big opportunity here.

If you don’t know what I mean, take a look at this.

Or how about this.

Notice how, all of a sudden, June search volume for certain terms basically doubled overnight?

And the best part is, there are plenty more keywords that spiked big time over June, too.

In fact, some did more than just double — just check out this search volume coming from the Élysée (the French White House).

See, I told you the French president was a huge fan.

Now, if you’re a regular reader, and you might think this opportunity sounds vaguely familiar, you’d be absolutely right — we covered a similar story back in our RevMasters Affiliates Review edition

The big difference is that time it was Texas.

This time it’s France.

Same story. Same play. Just a different country.

Takeaway

Look, there are obviously a couple of ways you can go about exploiting this opportunity.

One of those would be to start your own pr0n site, target French keywords, and profit.

But maybe you’re the type who’d feel a bit icky doing that — and that’s not a problem. There’s always the selling VPN route, which is a perfectly reasonable (and highly profitable) way to go.

And, you know what?

Doing some SEO targeting a few choice KWs might not be the worst idea. (See next story.)

Also, if you need a good program to get you started, here’s just one idea:

Purevpn Affiliate Program | Earn 35% For Life

Or, head on over to TopRanked.io for a full listing of the best VPN affiliate programs. We guarantee you’ll find a VPN affiliate program to suit your needs.

Flooding the Zone for Fun (and Reputational Abuse)

If you’ve been around in SEO circles at all in the last couple of years, then there’s no doubt you’ve heard about housefresh.com and their Google story.

For those who aren’t in the know, they’re basically one of the biggest voices complaining about how Google Search has become a flaming pile of caca and is hurting genuine sites like theirs.

Anyway, over time, they’ve published several studies that are somewhat interesting. Most recently, they published this one just last week.

Now, I’m not gonna recap the whole thing — it’s long, and there’s plenty of “Google broke the social contract” rhetoric to wade through.

What I will do, however, is highlight the basic finding — Google’s AI summaries, at least when it comes to product reviews, are bland, formulaic, and not to be trusted.

Basically, no matter what product you search, Google’s only got good things to say about it, whether it’s objectively the worst product in its category, or even a product that doesn’t exist.

Google just says, “oh yeah, it’s a good buy, trust me, bro.”

After that, the other main finding was the same thing we’ve been hearing for a while now — traffic from Google Searches is down.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

After looking at House Fresh’s latest blog, I took a look at their archives and took another look at their previous posts.

And then I was reminded of something interesting.

Here, take a look at this (it’s a traffic graph for Forbes’ “pet insurance” section):

And now take a look at this (it’s a traffic graph for Popular Science’s “gear” section):

So, why are these graphs interesting?

Well, while everyone’s talking about cratering traffic, these sites are experiencing anything but.

And there are plenty more examples where they came from.

Now, if you’re a regular reader, these sorts of charts might not come as the biggest surprise. After all, it was only a few months ago that we estimated the total hit to SEO traffic as a direct result of AI overviews was just 2.8%.

And no, I didn’t accidentally misplace the decimal point there — AI overviews have only dealt a 2.8% hit to SEO traffic. (See our Prowley Affiliates Review edition for the details on how we came up with that number.)

As for the rest of you, I imagine all you’ve read the last few months (years) is how Google/AI is killing internet traffic.

And, depending on who you talk to, things can certainly seem that way — plenty of sites are dying big time.

So, what exactly is going on here?

Let me explain it in two phrases that should be familiar to you.

1 — “Flood the zone.”

2 — “Site reputation abuse.”

Now, let me put those two concepts together — once I’ve done that, you might just see where a good chunk of your SEO traffic has disappeared to.

Let’s start with the second phrase — “site reputation abuse”.

It’s no secret that, over the last few years, “failing” legacy media brands have become popular targets for PE and “shadow media” company takeovers.

Why the sudden interest in “failing” media companies?

Well, if you take a look at any of these sites, whether it be Vice.com, Money.com, or whatever, you might have noticed a vibe shift.

Take Vice.com, for example.

Once upon a time, its pages used to be filled with stuff like, “We took acid with Ukrainian hackers in a Soviet-era bunker to build an AI that worships Lenin…”

Today, it’s more like, “Replace all your AA and AAA batteries with Eneloops and never throw out another battery again… and don’t forget to click on our GIANT EFFING AMAZON AFFILIATE LINK”

Same goes for Money.com.

Once upon a time, they used to be all like, “Beat the market using the strategy that made your dad rich in 1983.”

These days, they’re more like “Hey, here’s the best air fryers… for your money.”

And basically everyone’s doing it… from Vice to Forbes, all the big-name legacy brands are in on the act.

Are you starting to see what’s going on here?

No?

Here, let me spell it out for you.

The last few years have seen an explosion (and I really do mean explosion) of affiliate-driven content from big-name legacy brands.

And, surprise, surprise, that trend just so happened to accelerate into hyperdrive when AI appeared on the scene. (More on this later…)

In short, these mega sites are exploiting their reputation to dominate the SERPs.

And, no surprises here — that same reputation also gets them the clicks.

I mean, let’s say you’re not interested in SEO and you’re not an air purifier geek — do you think you’d have ever heard of House Fresh?

Absolutely not.

In fact, you’d probably just assume it’s another SEO spam farm, so you’d probably avoid it.

But what about that listicle from Forbes? Or Money? Or Vice?

Yeah, you’re probably gonna click on those — you know (think) you can trust those brands.

Thus, we have the great cratering that’s taking place as smaller sites watch their SEO traffic die.

And sadly, we’re also watching that old correlation/causation trap play out en masse — “traffic craters post-AI, therefore it must be AI…!!!”

So, that covers the first phrase — “Site reputation abuse.”

Now let’s talk about flooding the zone.

Here, the basic thought process looks like this:

• I’ve written a handful of articles about a topic… therefore, Google doesn’t think I’m an authority on the topic.
• Meanwhile, my competitor has dozens… maybe even hundreds of articles on that topic, therefore, Google thinks they’re an authority on the topic.
• Okay, maybe I’ll crank out 10000000000 articles on that topic… then Google will think I’m the authority on that topic.

And that’s basically what’s been happening.

Thousands of articles about the most mundane of topics have started to populate sites that previously had nothing to do with those topics.

Now, don’t get me wrong — this isn’t exactly a new SEO strategy. Some of the worst offenders (hello Forbes!) have been doing this for years.

But still, just because it’s an old strategy, doesn’t mean it’s no longer working.

And (no surprises here) since it’s still working, what do you think has happened since AI appeared?

That’s right — all those legacy media sites you’re competing against just flooded the zone so hard that even Steve Bannon decided to call it quits.

Well, maybe that last bit’s not true… but the rest is. And hopefully you get the point.

If not, here’s another example that should hammer the point home.

If I search Google for pet insurance articles on Forbes.com that were published in the last week, here’s what I get.

These sorts of results go on for ages.

And that’s literally just in the last 7 days.

Now take a look at what happens when I filter the results for the same week in 2021 — the year before AI really hit.

See a difference?

And you still think AI Overviews and whatnot are the only thing to blame for your cratering traffic?

Takeaway

Let’s go back to the start of the article.

With Google’s AI overviews being as bad as they are, it’s only a matter of time until people start to catch on.

And, when they do, at least a few will start looking for alternate ways to get their product reviews. (More on this soon)

Now, maybe Google will fix this. But, more than likely, they won’t — half the reason why it’s AI Overviews all follow the same “oh yeah, great product” formula is because Google can’t be bothered dealing with lawsuits.

Now combine this with the fact that most of the SERPs are getting increasingly littered with trash from legacy media brands.

See where this is going?

Hint — we already know where this is going. Go and read our Mate Affiliate Program review edition and read up on the Reddit hack. (tl;dr, when Google SERPs got overtaken by SEO spam, people turned to Reddit instead.)

Theoretically, the same effect is about to happen with AI Overviews… and that’s where there’s an opportunity.

And, no — I’m not about to tell you to go do the Reddit parasite SEO hack.

That’s already been done to death.

Also, there’s a big brouhahah on Reddit right now after mods got caught taking cash bribes to let certain content slip… so it goes without saying, the Reddit hack has lost its former punch.

Instead, what I am going to do is say that, while it’s not quite here yet, there’s an impending opportunity over the next year or two.

At some point, once people wake up to the one-sided nature of AI Overviews and find themselves left with no other alternative than the Forbes/Vice/Whatever hellscape they thought AI Overviews were saving them from, they’re gonna start looking for new “reddit hacks”.

And here’s where I think a smart affiliate could start planting some seeds.

For instance, maybe in the future, people won’t search for product reviews straight off the bat.

What do I mean?

Think of it like this.

Let’s say someone wanted to buy a “battery-operated boyfriend”. (wink wink)

Well, instead of searching for “PleasurePulse™ battery-operated boyfriend reviews” and getting hit with cheap listicles filled with Amazon affiliate links…

…they might first search for “trustworthy battery-operated boyfriend review sites”.

Now, that’s just one possible future… but it’s certainly not an impossible one.

But let’s say that particular future becomes reality.

What can you do to get ahead?

Well, here’s one idea — you can review the review sites.

Flood the zone with articles about “here’s why this review site is the most trustworthy of the bunch”, “don’t buy a battery operated boyfriend until you’ve seen this review site”, etc., etc.

And, the best part is, you might even score some easy backlinks by handing out “you won the internet awards” or whatever to other product review sites.

Anyway, once you get going with this and get a bit of reputation/authority built up, here comes the fun part — now you start heavily promoting the army of review sites you were quietly building at the same time.

Give yourself awards.

Give yourself glowing reviews.

And hopefully, if all goes well, you’ll score yourself a bunch of traffic to your review sites in the process.

Now, obviously this is just one idea (which might not even work).

However, there are a thousand ways to pull off a “Reddit hack 2.0” type of play like this (some of which will probably work). But I’ll leave it up to you to think of more ideas.

What I won’t leave up to you, however, is the burden of having to find great affiliate programs.

Instead, I’ll simply give you a link straight to a roundup of the best VPN affiliate programs (so you can help out our French friends find meaning in the internet again…)

Here’s just one of those VPN affiliate programs that you might like.

NordVpn Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 100% Per Sale

Closing Thought

We all know the saying — correlation does not imply causation.

And yet, we all fall into the trap all the time.

Now, sometimes this trap is easy to avoid.

For instance, let’s say someone said, “It has been shown that there’s a strong correlation between waking with a headache and waking up in yesterday’s clothes.”

It’s pretty easy to see that “yesterday’s clothes” probably aren’t the cause of the headache…

But sometimes, the correlation isn’t quite so absurd.

Kinda like the whole “AI/Google is killing internet traffic” thing we looked at above.

While there’s certainly a lot more to the story than first meets the eye, you kinda gotta go digging to find out what’s really happening.

So, instead, you just take what’s given to you and move on with your life. After all, if a million people are saying it, it must be true.

And you know what — that’s perfectly okay. There’s no way in the world you’re ever going to have time to get to the truth of every single thing someone tells you. Sometimes, you just gotta take things at face value and move on with your life.

So, why am I telling you this?

Well, maybe, just maybe, that’s where opportunity lies.

Think about it like this — if everyone’s acting the same way, the only way to stand out from them is to act differently.

Now, obviously this doesn’t work all the time — no point trying to sell perpetual energy machines. 

But if everyone else has somehow adopted a mistaken belief, that’s the exact moment when you have a chance to exploit the knowledge gap.

Looking for erroneous correlation/causation pairs is just one way you can find such opportunities.

And as for how you can free up the time to find such opportunities, here’s a hint — head on over to TopRanked.io, where you’ll find dozens and dozens of curated affiliate program reviews to help make your monetization decisions easy.

If you don’t know where to start, then why not take a look at our VPN affiliate program roundup? Here’s just one of the VPN affiliate program reviews you’ll find there.

NordVpn Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 100% Per Sale

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

DISCLAIMER: This article was written by a third party contributor and does not reflect the opinion of Born2Invest, its management, staff or its associates. Please review our disclaimer for more information.This article may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “estimate,” “become,” “plan,” “will,” and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks as well as uncertainties, including those discussed in the following cautionary statements and elsewhere in this article and on this site. Although the Company may believe that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, the actual results that the Company may achieve may differ materially from any forward-looking statements, which reflect the opinions of the management of the Company only as of the date hereof. Additionally, please make sure to read these important disclosures.