Website - How to refer users to travel hacking credit cards & make referral fee

[PVkcin]

Background:
My family member has run his own business now for 15 years. It's an internet-based website so it's entirely online. The business is in the travel industry, mostly helping professionals who happen to travel all around the U.S. and the world, find work. I'm thinking that many of the members of the site would benefit from travel hacking credit card rewards benefits (I'm sure a lot of them already do this), since in their industry many times they put expenses on their own card and then are reimbursed by their employers.

Question:
How do blogs/websites make money when they refer somebody to a certain credit card? Wondering if any of you business/website owners have used this before. Just like MMM himself has a credit card section (https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/credit-cards/), and then he gets some fee/revenue when somebody decides to sign up for a card he recommends.  I'm pretty new to all this so if anybody has any basic information on getting started with this, that'd be great!

I'm guessing many of the users of his site would benefit from proper travel hacking, as long as we do a good write up of the basics (like being out of debt first, paying off the card each month, etc).

[A Fella from Stella]

this might help

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/refer-friends-earn-miles-points-or-cash/

[BigMoneyJim]

Referrals are for customers referring people they know. What OP is after is called affiliate marketing. Check with individual card issuers for affiliate programs, and there are probably affiliate programs that serve many different providers.

You might will find other travel-related affiliate marketing opportunities, too, even if it's as simple as having an Amazon affiliate link to a travel pillow or international plug adapter. But Expedia, for example, has an affiliate program: https://www.expedia.com/p/network-affiliate .

https://www.google.com/search?q=reward+card+affiliates

As far as "how", look at the link in MMM's article: http://www.cardratings.com/advisors/mrmoneymustache?SRC=636824 . See the question mark followed by SRC=636824 ? The question mark is the end of the proper url and the beginning of parameters. 636824 is probably MMM's affiliate partner ID, so cardratings.com knows the inbound link came from MMM, and it puts a cookie in the user's browser. If the user generates revenue in a certain period of time with MMM's cookie, MMM gets his cut.

https://www.cardratings.com/affiliate.html

Edit: Heh, I guess in this case the "mrmoneymustache" in the url is also a dead giveaway. But usually it's one of the parameters in an affiliate link that identifies the affiliate partner to get the commission.

[Michael in ABQ]

Affiliate marketing is what you're looking for. Anything financial is usually pretty lucrative - $50-200 per credit card sign up. Amazon affiliate marketing is typically about 4-8% of whatever someone buys after clicking through a link on your website. It depends on the category. An additional plus is if you have an affiliate link to a $30 travel pillow but then that person buys a $400 luggage set at the same time you get a commission on their whole order, not just the item you had a link to.

Here's some good information from someone that has made quite a bit from affiliate marketing over the years.
https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/affiliate-marketing-smart-way/

Some affiliate programs will accept anyone, others may have more rigorous requirements. i.e. they will only accept you if your website has X number of unique visitors per month or you have a certain audience size whether through YouTube, email list, Facebook, podcast subscribers, etc.

[BigMoneyJim]

FYI, Amazon has become much stingier in recent months with their affiliate commissions.

https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+affiliate+changes

But I'd probably start there for travel products and investigate other affiliates later.