The TopRanked.io Weekly Digest: What’s Hot in Affiliate Marketing [NordVPN Affiliate Program Review]

Quick Disclosure: We’re about to tell you how the NordVPN Affiliate Program is pretty great. And we really mean it. Just know that if you click on a NordVPN Affiliate Program link, we may earn a small commission. Your choice.

Go do a search for “YouTube Sponsors” on Google.

Go on. I dare you.

Now now look at the images.

Chance are, you’re probably going to see something like this.

Or this.

And with good reason — sponsored slots for the likes of NordVPN are literally everywhere, and they’re not going away.

Why?

Well, here’s one guess — clearly, people keep signing up.

And if that’s the case, then there’s probably something you should know.

You can sign some of those people up (and make a pretty penny while you’re at it), too!

All you need is a handy dandy affiliate link.

TopRanked.io Affiliate Partner Program of the Week — NordVPN Affiliate Program

Psst. Ever heard of the NordVPN Affiliate Program?

No?

Well, now you have.

And FYI: it’s the only thing you need to start earning the big bucks for signing people up to NordVPN.

Also, the whole YouTube social proof thing aside, it’s also a pretty great affiliate program.

NordVPN Affiliate Program — The Product

Look, I know you probably think you already know what the NordVPN affiliate program is all about. After all, the product’s in the NordVPN affiliate program name, right?

But here’s something them YouTubers rarely talk about. The NordVPN affiliate program actually has a bunch of security/privacy products on offer.

This means, if you sign up with the NordVPN affiliate program, you can sell everything from what’s on the tin (VPNs) through to stuff like encrypted cloud storage and password management products.

Sweet, right?

But the NordVPN affiliate program gets better. Let’s take a look at the commissions.

NordVPN Affiliate Program — Commissions + Other Useful Stuff

As far as affiliate program commissions go, the NordVPN affiliate program is pretty hard to top. And I’m not even talking about the VPN niche.

In general, the NordVPN affiliate program commissions are right up there with some of the highest rates in any niche. In fact, they’re even better than some iGaming affiliate programs.

Here, let me prove it to you — here’s the basic breakdown of what to expect from the NordVPN affiliate program.

Plan Type	First Sale Commission	Renewal Commission
1‑month	100 %	30 %
6‑month / 1‑year / 2‑year	40 %	30 %

And yes, those renewal commissions are for life — so long as your referral keeps their subscription active, the NordVPN affiliate program will keep on paying you a 30% commission on whatever their renewal prices are.

Also, as a nice little kicker, if you’re a half-decent affiliate and deliver some decent volume for the NordVPN affiliate program, negotiable custom rates are totally on the table.

Oh, and did I mention that the NordVPN affiliate program gives you a 30-day cookie life?

NordVPN Affiliate Program — Next Steps

Let’s be honest here for a second — you’re going to be hard pressed to find anything better than the NordVPN affiliate program.

The brand has a solid reputation.

The product is clearly still in demand.

And, the commissions are about as good as you’ll find anywhere, in any niche.

But hey, I get it. Maybe you’ve still got some questions you want answered before diving head first into a relationship with the NordVPN affiliate program. So, if this is you, then why not head on over to TopRanked.io and take a look at our in-depth NordVPN affiliate program review?

Or, if you know a good thing when it slaps you in the face, then simply head here to sign up with the NordVPN affiliate program today.

Affiliate News Takeaways

In the last week or so, there’s been a bunch of stories with a similar theme cropping up all over the place.

As for what that theme is, let’s start with this story as a hint — “Swiss petition against US F-35 fighter jets gathers 42,000 signatures.”

Now, for those of you who know anything about the F35, you’re probably thinking you know why 42,000 Swiss signed the petition — the F35’s not exactly what you’d call “value for money.”

But let’s be serious for a moment here.

Do you really think the Swiss are the sort of people who’d abandon a jet just becaue it’s a few dollars over budget?

No, of course not! They’re not penny pinchers.

The real reason for the petition, according to the petition itself, is “the dependence on the United States that we have contracted with the purchase of this jet; it is and remains indecent”.

Translation — the Swiss (or, at least, a bunch of them) no longer wanna do business with the US of A.

And they’re not the only ones.

In fact, there’s a growing “let’s break up with the USA” sentiment brewing in the EU.

Take this Politico article from just a few days ago, for instance, where EU pundits agonize over the possibility of Trump “pulling the plug” on their internet.

Or how about this one from the NYT that kicks off with that little episode where Karim Khan got his email cut off by Microsoft in the wake of Trump’s ICC sanctions EO.

Apparently, according to the article, “The episode has set off alarms across Europe about how dependent European governments, businesses and citizens are on American tech companies like Microsoft for essential digital infrastructure — and how hard it will be to disentangle themselves.”

Yeah, dependence is a tough thing to break — trust me, I know.

Anyway, this isn’t just confined to the whole political sphere, either, even if that’s what most of the news coverage has been about.

Increasingly, “de-USAing” is becoming a bigger and bigger thing with consumers, too.

Take the r/BuyFromEU subreddit, for instance.

It only got started a few months ago, and recently crossed over into the top 1% of subreddits on the platform (234k members as of this instant).

Now, granted. Maybe that growth was purely from EU patriots who wanna follow in Trump’s steps and make the EU great again.

And if that’s where the growth is — EU patriots — then calling this a US backlash would be misguided.

But, in many ways, EU consumers are more like their American counterparts than they’d probably like to admit. That is to say that, just as US “Consumers Prefer American-Made, But Aren’t Willing to Pay”, EU consumers typically aren’t, either.

If you want a good case in point here, go take a look at Tesla (which is still tanking in the EU, despite Musk and Trump officially having broken up).

Do you think all those Europeans ditching Tesla are proudly supporting VW now?

Of course they aren’t.

Instead, they’re all switching to Chinese brands. (Well, maybe not all of them are, but Chinese brands have been the biggest winners by a very, very long shot.)

Another thing to note as well is that this whole anti-US shift isn’t a “Big Tech” backlash, either, so this isn’t just limited to ditching Tesla/Google/etc.

Here’s one story of a product entirely devoid of any tech, courtesy of Carlsberg, the beer company, which also happens to be an EU bottler for a bunch of soft drinks.

One of those drinks is featured in the image below… see if you can guess what it is.

Yep, that’s a Coke bottle. And, apparently, Carlsberg’s shipping way fewer of ‘em in recent times.

And not in a “times are tough, so people are cutting back on sugary beverages” kinda way.

Rather, people are switching to rival, non-US brands.

And the damage doesn’t stop at US brands either — according to another story from a couple of weeks ago, “the decline in European tourists visiting the United States has reached alarming levels.” Apparently, big multi-national hotel operators are seeing “a 25% decrease in summer bookings” in the US, with those travellers instead opting to head to “alternative destinations such as Canada, Egypt, and Latin America over the United States.”

And I suspect there’s a bit more to that decline than Norwegians and their love for JD Vance memes…

Anyway, that’s enough of that by now. Hopefully we’re starting to get the picture — that there’s a growing body of EU citizens that are actively looking to reject the USA in just about every way possible.

What I really want to get to is what this has to do with us as affiliates. After all, cancelled F35 orders and declining Coca-Cola sales aren’t exactly relevant to us in affiliate land.

But you know what is?

The internet.

And here, on the internet, we’re starting to see some shifts.

Ecosia (an EU Google/Bing alternative), for instance, just posted a 27% bump in user numbers. (Not that that really amounts to anything earth shattering — the company now says it has 1% of the German market, so still a bit of catching up to do.)

Proton mail (a privacy-focussed Outlook/Gmail alternative) has also seen a recent double-digit bump in EU users. (Some of that might have come from the ICC after their little technical issue with Microsoft…)

And even PewDiePie, the original YouTube sheetposter, has been jumping on the bandwagon.

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And you know what else has been happening?

Remember that thing called the fediverse? We’ve spoken about it a few times in the past, like in our Seeking Alpha affiliate program review edition.

Well, guess what!?

It’s making a comeback!

Here’s an active users chart from Fediverse Observer.

Now, that chart aggregates users across a bunch of Fediverse apps (e.g., Mastodon, Lemi, etc.). And that of course means that some apps are winning way more than others.

One of the biggest winners has been Pixelfed — an Instagram alternative. Notice how the uptick kinda lines up with Zuck’s alignment with the US regime? Coincidence?

Now, I know what you’re thinking here — “nice charts, but we’re still talking low millions here, which is nothing at web scale.”

And yeah, I agree.

But so what!?

Do you really need to have access to every single person on the internet to make a dime?

No. Especially when every single other affiliate out there’s also doing TikTok/email/SEO/whatever marketing. 

Let me put it this way. What would you rather have — A) zero competition access to 1,000,000 people, or; B) a million competitors for a billion people?

Personally, I’m taking option A.

And that’s the option that’s still available to you in certain parts of the fediverse — zero (or very low) competition access to a bunch of highly-engaged users.

After all, do you think Kim Kardashian’s posting summer tips in the Fediverse yet?

I don’t think so.

But hey, let’s pretend for a moment that you’re more of an option B kinda guy/gal — why should you care about the Fediverse?

Well, that ironically brings us to the latest news from Meta — Threads is officially live in the Fediverse.

And here’s what tech journalist Casey Newton has to say about that: “I can understand anyone who greets this news with a hearty “who cares?” For the moment, there simply isn’t all that much to browse on the Fediverse… [but] at the same time, the Fediverse has lacked a lot of the basic infrastructure necessary for apps like Threads to surface interesting posts and accounts. The addition of a Fediverse feed is a meaningful step to… giving people a place they can follow and interact with individual publications… That’s the sort of thing the Fediverse was always meant to make possible, and it’s just now coming into view.”

He then goes on to say, “Visibility on Threads offers people one reason they may want to build in the Fediverse, as opposed to somewhere else. If enough of them do, it could begin to accelerate demand for other apps and services.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m far from the biggest Casey Newton fan for a number of reasons. But he makes a solid point here — this could be the sort of catalyst the Fediverse needs to really start catching on.

Now, when you couple it with the fact that the fediverse is already sorta catching on again, and the fact that there’s massive anti-US/Big Tech sentiment as our friends in the EU have demonstrated, then you kinda gotta wonder what might happen next.

Takeaway

Look, I admit it. All of the above was a lot of “look at this, now look at this” with a sudden “oh, and fediverse” pivot thrown in the middle. So let’s simplify it all:

• The EU is increasingly looking to break up with the US.
• At the consumer level, the result is a small movement looking to ditch US brands.
• Also, the Fediverse is looking like it might be a beneficiary of this de-USAing vibe, given the renewed interest.
• And, as ironic as it may be, Meta’s recent integration of the fediverse into Threads could be the catalyst that pushes the fediverse to new heights.

So, given that, there are probably a couple of takeaways here.

The first is that, particularly if you’re marketing to a certain subset of the EU population (and probably other countries… but we’re focussing on the EU here), promoting some good-ol anti-US stuff with a strong anti-US slant in your marketing could be a fruitful little venture.

And just in case you’re struggling to find some product ideas here, FYI, the NordVPN Affiliate Program comes from a company founded in Lithuania which later set up its headquarters in Amsterdam. Both of which are well and truly outside the borders of the USA and well within the borders of the EU.

Just saying.

As for the second takeaway, maybe, just maybe, it might be worth taking a first (or second) look at doing some marketing in the fediverse.

How you go about this exactly is up to you, of course. And it will probably depend on what corner of the fediverse you wanna test out.

Pixelfed might be a good one — it is, after all, the app that’s been showing some of the strongest growth. And hey, given the “early days” nature of the beast, you might even be able to just recycle some old Instagram “methods” from the Blackhat World archives.

In any case, whatever app you focus on, there’s one thing you should probably know.

The average fediverse user is highly likely to be way more privacy-conscious than the average Instagram/TikTok/whatever user.

Why am I telling you that?

Because that would make a little privacy-protecting something something from the NordVPN Affiliate Program a great product to try and sell to them!

Closing Thought

When I was reading through all the articles for this week’s news, there was a quote that caught my eye.

The quote comes from some random internet expert based in the UK (Maria Farrell). But the source isn’t important. Here’s the quote: “Ordinary people, the kind of people who would never have thought it was important they were using an American service are saying, ‘hang on!’”

Now, there’s nothing particularly inspiring about the quote in and of itself. But it did get me thinking — it’s funny how we get so complacent about the status quo, and never bother to question it until things “go wrong”.

And that brought me to this quote from former Intel CEO Andy Grove.

And this one from Pat Riley of Miami Heat fame.

Now, to be totally honest, I don’t know if I’m in full agreement with Andy’s “only the paranoid survive” thing.

After all, there are certain types of paranoia that won’t take you very far…

But, I do kinda like the general vibe of his quote — that getting too complacent ultimately ends up coming back to bite you in the ass.

And I also like the flipside offered by Pat Riley’s quote — that complacency is a hurdle standing in the way of greatness.

Now, of course, that’s not to say you should upend everything just because a bunch of successful people said complacency’s a bad thing.

What it is to say, however, is that sometimes, it’s probably worth questioning things.

“Am I satisfied with this?”

“Is there something better out there?”

“Maybe I should think about it another way!?”

You get the point.

And as for how you turn that into a concrete action you can take right now, here’s an idea.

Are you fully satisfied with the affiliate programs you’re currently promoting?

Maybe you want to try a new niche?

Or maybe you want to try a new affiliate program?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then maybe, just maybe, it might be worth taking a look at the NordVPN affiliate program.

Just saying.

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

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