Baking affiliate programs leverage our love for cakes, breads, cookies, sweets, and other baked and pastry goodies. More importantly, they allow affiliates to earn extra income on something people love.
Nearly three-quarters (74%) of US and Canadian families love bakery items. Although most Americans are sweet-toothed (Canadians prefer savory pastries), two out of three people consider bakery products essential for family cohesiveness.
That’s how important baking is to many people!
And you can leverage this by promoting baking resources. But which program should you join?
Here are 11 of the best to give you a headstart as a baking affiliate.
Baking Affiliate Programs: Top 11 Best Offers to Get Extra Income
Amazon Associates
With nearly 400 million products, Amazon continues to lead other ecommerce platforms as we head into the 2030s.
Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, Amazon amazes 21st-century consumers with its wide range of offerings. Over 300 million online shoppers use the platform for various purchases, driving Amazon’s $1.4 billion average daily revenues.
Although we’re unsure how many pastry chefs and home bakers shop on Amazon for their baking needs, the target audience should be substantial.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon Associates is a favorite of aspiring and seasoned digital marketers. Its impressive offerings allow affiliates to promote as many products as “humanly” possible without sacrificing audience experience.
Amazon has several product categories which baking affiliates can leverage in their campaigns. It’s worth noting these classification also spells out how much commission affiliates can earn.
For instance, selling baking cookbooks can earn you a 4.5% share, while fresh ingredients (on Amazon Fresh) nets you a 1% commission. Kitchen tools and appliances can get you a 3% commission.
Despite its ultra-short 24-hour cookies, Amazon Associates remains an excellent choice over wannabe Amazone affiliate programs.
We rest our case!
- Commission: 1% to 4.5%, depending on product category
- Cookie Duration: 24 hours
KitchenAid
Baking requires precision, unlike cooking savory dishes where chefs and home cooks can rely on “gut” feel and measurement estimates. And that’s why bakers and pastry chefs demand only the best kitchen appliances for their baking requirements.
KitchenAid is one of the leaders in kitchen technologies, morphing from a simple electric stand mixer brand model in 1915 to an innovator of high quality kitchen tools in the 21st century.
As of 1986, KitchenAid is a wholly-owned Whirlpool subsidiary, further solidifying its standing in the food industry by offering consumers more exciting kitchen products (including baking items).
This company offers mixers, blenders, food processors, ovens, warming drawers, refrigerators, cooktops, and more. Aspiring bakers will have all the equipment they need from KitchenAid to harness their baking prowess.
And get this!
KitchenAid also carries other kitchen brands under the Whirlpool umbrella, including Amana and Maytag.
And that increases your chances of earning more by promoting additional brands that appeal more to some home bakers and pastry chefs.
Moreover, KitchenAid’s 6% commission and 30-day cookies are more encouraging than Amazon’s.
What do you think?
- Commission: 6% per sale, single-tier
- Cookie Duration: 30 days
CakeFlix
CakeFlix is one of the most celebrated cake decoration experts in the baking world.
And why not?
Its founder, Paul Bradford, dished fabulous cakes for Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Albert of Monaco, now-King Charles, and other A-listers. We can only imagine the wow factor in these masterpieces – truly fit for the royalty!
Unsurprisingly, learning from one of the greatest cake decorators makes perfect sense for the aspiring pastry chef. And they can get that with CakeFlix’s online courses – over 900 of them.
It goes without saying that affiliating with CakeFlix is an excellent choice, although application requires a 72-hour wait for affiliate managers to evaluate your suitability to the program.
Once in, CakeFlix offers three ways to earn a hefty commission, although one requires a bit of creativity.
You can drive traffic to CakeFlix and pray your referral buys a baking tutorial video or subscribes to an annual membership. These activities net you 30%.
Meanwhile, if you’re a baking enthusiast with a self-made video tutorial, you can sell that on CakeFlix. You’ll get a whopping 50% commission for every customer who buys your tutorial.
Now, that’s “impressive!”
- Commission: 30% to 50%
- Cookie Duration: 30 days
Cake Stackers
A pastry chef’s worst nightmare is when people ruin a wedding or anniversary cake by not stacking them properly. It’s a messy affair undermining the celebration’s joyous nature.
Cake Stackers to the rescue!
Established in 2009, CakeStackers is an ingenious cake support system empowering anyone to assemble cakes with the versatility of a professional cake decorator.
It offers cake boards, plates, and stands. CakeStackers even has stunning hanging chandelier cake stands to give the illusion of a levitating pastry creation. That should be a talking piece in any wedding or once-in-a-lifetime occasion.
Like CakeFlix, CakeStackers manages its affiliate platform without any third-party network. It’s advantageous for you as an affiliate because you’ll take home the full commission value.
Surprisingly, this program has one of the longest cookie lifespans on our list at four months. That should give your audiences enough time to decide and still credit the sale to your name.
Its minimum payout threshold is also lower than most at $25, although it would’ve been better if there’s none.
Still, CakeStackers remains an excellent affiliate’s choice this year!
- Commission: 10%
- Cookie Duration: 120 days
Gourmet Food World
Bakers and pastry chefs are artists! Although they specialize in sweets, it’s not uncommon for some to experiment with savory cakes. The question is, where to get the finest ingredients to go into such pastries?
Enter Gourmet Food World (GFW)!
Founded in 2011, GourmetFoodWorld is a modern chef’s haven for premium-quality, difficult-to-source ingredients for dishes with unquestionable wow factor (including cakes and pastries).
This online platform offers a variety of baking ingredients from leading brands, such as Pastry 1, Vairhoma, Noel, MEC3, and Guittard. Bakers and cake enthusiasts will find almond pastes, baking chocolates, pralines, verrines, gold & silver flakes, baking extracts & flavors, and more.
And the real gem is GFW delivers these ingredients to the customer’s front door.
Thanks to GFW’s impressive lineup, including gourmet ingredients, affiliating with this company is perfect for those in the cooking niche.
Yes! You can promote GFW’s three other platforms – Gourmet Food Store, Gourmet Wholesaler, and Steaks And Game. It should boost your income potential.
Once in, GFW sends you a custom discount code to entice your audiences to try GFW’s products. It also has an affiliate dashboard for managing campaigns.
- Commission: 10%
- Cookie Duration: 60 days
Yeners Way
The baking niche is a competitive industry, thanks to our love of sweets!
Unsurprisingly, many home cooks want to explore the world of baking by creating simple recipes before embarking on more adventurous creations.
Although Yeners Way has cake recipes (i.e., homemade fondant, vanilla sponge, lemon yogurt, and more), it focuses on cake design and decorations. It empowers home bakers to whip out their imaginations and create a stunning cake worthy of display at a bakeshop.
Yeners Way uses Refersion as its affiliate network partner, allowing affiliates to join and manage their campaigns once accepted.
This program is perfect for affiliates looking for generous commissions.
Its 90-day sales period is long enough to ensure you get at least AU$2,000 or US$1,295 worth of sales to earn 60% commission. Even if you sell less than AU$500 over 90 days, Yeners Way will still pay you a decent 30%.
However, note that Yeners Way only pays through PayPal.
- Commission: 30% to 60%, multi-tiered, volume-based
- Cookie Duration: 60 days
The Prepared Pantry
As the name suggests, The Prepared Pantry gets homeowners and families to fill their storage rooms with only the best staples and ingredients to create cakes and pastries.
It has baking mixes, so you’ll never worry about mixing the correct ratio of ingredients. Simply dump the product into a bowl, add your personal favorites, and whip it up to create a dough ready for the oven.
And if you love chocolates, The Prepared Pantry also has the finest chocolate-making ingredients and tools. You can become your family’s Willy Wonka, creating magical chocolates for kids and their friends to enjoy.
That makes this company also suitable for affiliates in the parenting niche. It empowers mom and dad followers to fill the pantry with only the best items to create exciting sweets for kids.
Affiliates can monitor their performance on The Prepared Pantry’s real-time user dashboard. You can check the traffic, sales, and commissions on this platform.
- Commission: 10% per sale
- Cookie Duration: 90 days
LearnCakeDecoratingOnline
Learn Cake Decorating Online (LCDO) is a favorite of affiliate marketers because of its handsome commissions and lifetime cookies.
It has a beginner’s course to cake-making, eBooks, and video tutorials for decorating cakes. LCDO is a popular platform for aspiring pastry chefs and home bakers looking to wow loved ones, potential customers, and prospective chef employers.
While most affiliate programs limit their cookies to several days to a few months, LCDO beats them with its “lifetime” cookies.
But there’s a catch!
Referrals mustn’t delete the cookies from their browsers. Earning LCDO’s generous commission rates between 30% and 50% should be easy.
And here’s another kicker!
LCDO doesn’t pay you only one time. It has monthly recurring commissions to keep its affiliates highly motivated.
If you drive a hundred subscribers to LCDO, you can get $798 monthly. And you’ll receive this amount every month for as long as your referrals stay with the program.
Now, imagine driving a thousand home bakers to LCDO. That’s nearly $8,000 monthly!
That’s unbeatable!
- Commission: 30% to 50%, monthly recurring
- Cookie Duration: Lifetime
How To Cake It
Over 15 million Gen Zers continue to discover the joys of creating a wide variety of cakes, thanks to How To Cake It’s ingenious online baking education program.
So, how does HTCI differ from LCDO?
First, HTCI’s focus is not only cake decorating but all other aspects of sweets, cakes, and pastries creation. The company relies on its team of “Avengers of Baking” – baking experts, influences, and culinary artists – to produce stunning and easy-to-follow baking courses, videos, and books.
Making a custom cake is a cinch, even for a first-time baker.
Second, although HTCI’s 15% commission is commendable, LCDO’s multi-tiered commission scheme is unbeatable. Moreover, How To Cake It only offers a one-time payment, while LCDO is recurring.
Third, HTCI’s cookies only last 30 days, while LCDO has a lifetime cookie (provided referrals don’t delete their browsers’ cookies).
Although How To Cake It can hardly beat LCDO in commissions and cookies, its well-rounded baking education is commendable.
And that’s worth driving home to your audiences.
- Commission: 15%
- Cookie Duration: 30 days
Kitchen Universe
Unlike other baking affiliate programs focusing on skills (i.e., cake art and decorating), Kitchen Universe emphasizes the tools necessary for whipping out mouth watering sweets and tantalizing pastries.
It’s like KitchnAid, except KitchenUniverse offers thousands of cooking utensils and small appliances across tens of brands.
Established in 2003, KitchenUniverse carries notable kitchen brands, such as Mauviel, Peugeot, Rosle, Georg Jensem Michel Bras, Le Creuset, and more.
For home bakers and aspiring patisserie chefs, KitchenUniverse offers high-quality baking dishes, casseroles, baking sheets, bread & cake molds, jelly rolls, silicone molds, pastry & baking tools, mini cocottes, ramekins, and stoneware.
Stand mixers, ovens, toasters, and other small kitchen appliances are also available.
True to its name, KitchenUniverse has all the right tools in one place to create magnificent cakes, pastries, and sweets.
And you can leverage these offerings by becoming a KitchenUniverse affiliate.
Although ShareASale only provides 6% commission, its average order size of $150 should still net you $9 per sale. Ten successful referrals gets you $90.
You can still earn a thousand dollars every month with this program if you persevere.
- Commission: 6%
- Cookie Duration: 60 days
ThermoWorks
Temperature control and management is crucial in cooking, especially baking. You’ll want a nice golden brown color on a crisp crust, while enjoying the full flavors of the ingredients dancing in your mouth.
Thankfully, ThermoWorks has the correct gadget for the job.
The ThermaPen ONE ensures the Maillard reaction more than guesswork. It’s an ingenious device that displays the food’s internal temperature in one second.
And if you think you’ll only do affiliate marketing for a single product, ThermoWorks has other offerings you can promote.
It has WiFi-enabled cooking alarms, ThermoPop 2, TimeStack, and other best-in-class culinary timers and thermometers.
What’s more is that you’ll get updates on innovative technologies-in-the-making. It should help you drive interest from your tech-savvy audiences.
Joining ThermoWorks is easy and financially-rewarding because it doesn’t have to pay a third-party affiliate network. You’ll receive the commission in its entirety.
So, create meaningful blogs, embed the affiliate link, and start earning today.
- Commission: 10% per sale
- Cookie Duration: 30 days
What Makes Baking Affiliate Programs a Great Choice?
Alt-text: Image of a baker sliding a dough into an oven by DDP on Unsplash.
Baking affiliate programs aren’t at the top of the list of some affiliates, but they should. The following reasons help explain why such programs are excellent money-making schemes.
A huge and growing market
The baking industry is one of the world’s most valuable markets, registering a robust $416.36 billion value in 2021.
And if we look forward to 2028, experts predict the industry will balloon to $590.64 billion if it continues on its 5.12% compound annual growth rate.
These figures translate to an evergreen opportunity for affiliates, allowing them to leverage a booming industry to earn extra for many years.
Increasing number of home bakers
Did you know that at least three in ten individuals (31%) baked weekly at home in 2022? Meanwhile, about a quarter of Americans buy baking products for their bimonthly or monthly home baking adventures.
Baking Business says these figures improved the 2021 data. It suggests an increasing number of home bakers, which you can leverage as an affiliate.
Massive offerings to promote
Looking at your kitchen, you’ll see many items, including knives, spoons, spatulas, pots, pans, and electric appliances. Now, add a baker’s tools and resources to the mix, and you have a variety of products to promote.
And don’t forget baking lessons, mixes, and staples. These products boost the likelihood of earning more.
Tips to Promote Baking Affiliate Programs Effectively
Alt-text: Image of a pastry chef sprinkling confectioner’s sugar over baked goods by Elevate on Unsplash.
Marketing baking services and products is easy if you’ve been with many brands for several years. Unfortunately, first-timers often find it challenging. Heed the following advice, and you should be okay.
Focus on the audience, not the commission
A mistake of some newbies is letting the commission dictate their campaigns. They don’t realize that audiences (or potential customers) bring sales. Hence, affiliates must focus their attention on building relationships with audiences.
Write heart-warming stories about baking (i.e., how a simple cake or cookie recipe brightens someone’s day). Create articles that inform or add knowledge to home bakers and pastry chefs, boosting their baking skills.
It’s the same trick for other digital content. You put your audiences first.
And if your referrals buy baking items, don’t stop nurturing the relationship. Keep providing useful information, adding more value to their experiences. Such tactics build a trustworthy relationship, with your audiences becoming ambassadors of your channel.
Use links in different channels
Build affiliate websites to accommodate engaging content for your audiences. It’s worth remembering that blogging remains a vital affiliate tool for driving traffic.
Post meaningful stories on your social media account, or create exciting videos on YouTube, TikTok, and other video sharing platforms. Don’t forget to email promos, product updates, and valuable information to your subscribers.
And if you have a webinar or podcast, use these channels as well. Some baking companies allow traditional marketing and SMS marketing. Learn all the methods you can to become a successful affiliate.
Seek affiliate support
Super-affiliates reached the pinnacle of digital marketing through adequate support mechanisms. And beginners should too.
Baking companies provide a variety of banner, link, and creative resources necessary to mount an effective marketing campaign. After all, they want you to succeed because your performance drives traffic and sales.
Alt-text: Image of cakes and pastries on a stand by zeno Aras on Unsplash.
Conclusion
Joining any of these 11 baking affiliate programs is one of the most significant decisions you’ll ever make and never regret. After all, nearly three out of four people worldwide eat bread, cakes, cookies, and other baked items. And that’s an impressive market.
Your job is to create high-value content to continue fueling people’s desires for high-quality baked products. And if you do that, earning a hefty commission will be easy.
So, don’t wait! Sign up with these baking programs today.
