By industry · Investing & brokerage
Investing & Brokerage
Affiliate Programs
The Conversion Is Your Reader's Own Money Moving
A signup is not a conversion here. On most of this shelf the paying event is a funded account — which means verification, a minimum and several days sit between the click and anything you get paid for. Everything worth knowing about these campaigns follows from that one difference.
- Risk wording is supplied, not written
- Short, permission-led market lists
- Approval is per campaign
- Qualifying action
- Usually a funded account, not a registration
- Payout models
- CPA on funding, CPL on an introduction
- Before you write
- The advertiser's risk wording, republished as supplied
- The market list
- Wherever the advertiser can show its permissions
Start here
One word, two businesses
A trading app and a commercial property lender are both sold as investing, and they convert, screen and pay in completely different ways. Work out which half you publish for before you compare a single rate.
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Half one
Accounts and orders
Brokerage and trading platforms, investing apps, precious metals dealers, retirement and long-term savings. The reader signs up on their own and then moves their own money, and the paying event sits on that second step rather than the first.
Read the funding threshold before you read the rate.
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Half two
Introductions
Wealth management, advisory for larger clients, commercial loan broking and commercial real-estate finance. Nobody self-serves here: the conversion is an enquiry a person at the advertiser accepts, so volumes are small and each one is worth considerably more.
This half reads like a B2B lead brief with finance rules on top of it.
What is in this category
Twelve shapes, from a first deposit to a property loan
Find the shape your readers are actually deciding on. The line under each one is the thing that changes your terms, not a description of the product.
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Brokerage and trading platforms
An account has to be opened, verified and funded. Three separate steps, and the brief names which one pays.
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Investing apps and managed portfolios
Easy to open, which moves the entire question onto the deposit minimum and the checks behind it.
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Precious metals dealers
Gold and silver are an order, not an account. Prices move between the click and the checkout, so the brief has to say what the payout is measured against.
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Retirement and long-term savings
The product differs market by market more than anything else in this cluster, which makes the country list the first line to read.
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Wealth management and advisory
An introduction somebody accepts. Screening is human, the gap between enquiry and acceptance is long, and a rejection comes back with a reason.
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Commercial loan broking
A business borrower judged on the business. The enquiry has to match what that broker actually arranges, not just be a company with a funding need.
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Commercial real-estate finance
The same shape with a property behind it. Expect the longest distance on this page between a click and anything settling.
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Market data and research subscriptions
Sold by plan and by market. Whether renewals pay anything is a separate line from whether the first plan does.
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Portfolio tracking and tax tools
Software with a finance subject attached. In practice a subscription brief that also carries a disclosure block.
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Alternative and crowdfunding platforms
Permissions vary market by market, so the accepted country list is usually shorter than the audience that wants to read about it.
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Trading education and courses
Read under the education rules as well as these. Outcome claims are the quickest way to lose the placement and the conversions with it.
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Signals, screeners and indicator tools
Subscriptions with performance temptation built in. What may be said about results is the advertiser's to state, never yours to add.
Three of these are read under other rulebooks as well as this one: courses and cohort programmes on online course affiliate programs, tracking and tax software on SaaS and cloud campaigns, and a metals order as a physical purchase under e-commerce and retail. Everything else sits with the parent category, finance and fintech campaigns, whose rules apply to all twelve. What is open to applications right now is in the campaign index.
The line that decides the rest
A registration is not a conversion
Elsewhere in finance the conversion is a decision made about your reader — an issuer approves a card, an underwriter approves a loan. Here it is usually a decision your reader makes themselves, with their own money, some days after the click.
- 01
The paying event is money arriving
A registration is not a conversion here. The usual event is a funded account, and the brief names the minimum that counts — which is why two accounts opened on the same day can pay differently if one of them falls short of it.
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Verification sits between the signup and the payout
Identity and eligibility checks are an obligation on the advertiser, not a step in your funnel to smooth out. A share of the people who register will never reach the funding event, and that is the product working as intended rather than tracking failing.
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The gap is measured in days, not minutes
Somebody can open an account on Tuesday and move money on Friday. That stretches the distance between a click and a conversion, so the attribution window on the brief matters more here than it does on a retail campaign.
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Interest and readiness are different audiences
A large audience that enjoys reading about markets is not the same as an audience with money ready to move. Placements close to a decision are worth more than placements close to the subject, and that is the choice this vertical keeps asking you to make.
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The threshold decides whether your audience can convert at all
Before comparing two campaigns on what they pay, compare them on what they ask. A minimum your readers can clear is worth more than a higher figure they cannot, and no amount of traffic argues with that line.
The sibling page on this shelf is the exact mirror of row one: credit card affiliate programs, where a submitted application earns nothing because the decision belongs to an issuer rather than to your reader. Where a market list comes from, and why it is a permissions list rather than a targeting preference, stays with the parent category.
Qualifying actions
Five conversions, and what each one waits on
One cluster, five different paying events. The third column is the rule or the brief line that governs each — which makes it the list of things to look up before you apply.
| Kind of advertiser | What the reader does | What the conversion waits on |
|---|---|---|
| Brokerage or trading platform | Opens an account, passes verification, then funds it. | The funding event named on the brief, and the checks standing in front of it. |
| Investing app or managed portfolio | Signs up and makes a first deposit. | The deposit minimum, and whether the account clears verification afterwards. |
| Precious metals dealer | Places an order and pays for it. | The order completing, plus whatever cancellation or return window the brief states. |
| Advisory, wealth or loan broking | Submits an enquiry about a real requirement. | A person at the advertiser accepting it. A rejected enquiry comes back with its reason. |
| Research, tools or education | Starts a paid plan. | The plan activating, and the refund window before the conversion settles. |
Nothing in this table is a payout figure, and none is published here — the brief carries the amount, the minimum and the validation rules for the campaign in front of you. The checklist that applies to every vertical is on affiliate programs, compared.
What pays
Three models, read from a deposit
The brief names the model and the exact event it fires on. This is what each one means once the first thing that has to happen is somebody moving money.
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CPA
Paid on funding or on an order
Fixed amount, later trigger.
The dominant shape on the self-serve half. The amount is known in advance and the thing to plan around is what stands between the signup and the event: verification, a minimum, and a cancellation window where the product is an order rather than an account.
Suits comparison, review and how-it-works placements.
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CPL
Paid on an introduction accepted
A person decides afterwards.
The advisory and broking half. The brief defines what makes an enquiry valid — a contact the firm can reach, a requirement they actually arrange, a market they can act in — and their team accepts or rejects it, with the reason fed back so targeting can be fixed rather than guessed at.
Suits business audiences and specialist newsletters.
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RevShare
A share while a plan runs
Only where it is written down.
Research, data and tool subscriptions bill again on a cycle. Where a campaign pays across those cycles it states what the share is measured on and how many cycles it covers — never assume it from the fact that a product renews.
Suits subject-led audiences that stay subscribed.
Which model a campaign runs is the brief's to state, and this site publishes no inventory in its marketing pages, so nothing above should be read as a prevalence claim. The three are compared side by side on payout models, and what makes an enquiry valid is on CPL affiliate programs.
Creative
What a placement carries, and what voids it
This is the strictest creative rulebook on the network after health. The short version: describe the product in the advertiser's words, and never say anything about what a reader might make.
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Every placement carries
- The advertiser's own risk wording, republished exactly as supplied
- Claims taken from the campaign's approved creative pack, not rewritten
- Creatives cleared before the first click, where the campaign requires it
- A disclosure of the commercial relationship wherever the link appears
- A country list checked against the audience you actually reach
- Fees and minimums quoted from the advertiser's current published page
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What voids a placement
- Any promise, projection or suggestion of a return, gain or income
- Past results presented as what a reader should expect to happen
- Risk wording that has been shortened, edited or made more comfortable
- Urgency attached to a price move, a deadline or a market event
- Traffic from a source the brief does not name
- Incentivised signups on a campaign the advertiser has not tagged for them
Nothing on this page is financial advice, and none of it replaces the advertiser's own terms. The ladder after a breach runs in three rungs — the campaign is paused with a notice, the affected conversions are invalidated, and severe or repeated breaches end the account — set out on how approval works. The other vertical with a rulebook this tight is chronic and specialized health.
How it works
The order this vertical forces
Four steps, and step two is the parent's own instruction: on a finance brief, the disclosure block gets read before the headline gets written.
- 01
Register and declare your sources
Registration is free and a person reads the application, usually within a day or two. Name every channel you will post from with a link a reviewer can open — a source you did not declare is not covered by the approval you were given.
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Read the disclosure block before the rate
On a finance brief that block, the market list and the qualifying event decide whether the campaign is workable for you. The rate only decides whether a workable campaign is worth the effort.
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Get the creative cleared, then label the placement
Where a campaign requires creatives to be approved before the click, nothing goes live first. Once it is cleared, label the placement in the sub ID slots and fire a test conversion so the values come back the way you sent them.
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Publish, then read approved across the lag
Pending will look wrong for several days while accounts verify and deposits land. Judge the placement on approved conversions after the hold has run, not on the first week's dashboard.
What a reviewer opens, and what a held application means, is on how approval works. Link anatomy, the five sub ID slots and the test conversion are on tracking links, and the dates a cleared balance is paid on are on the payment schedule.
Questions
Investing campaign questions
What publishers ask before they put a finance campaign in front of an audience — including the one about whether any of this costs money to start.
What counts as a conversion on a brokerage affiliate program?
Usually a funded account rather than a registration. The brief names the event and the minimum that has to be met, and on some campaigns the account also has to clear verification before it counts. Read that line first: it is the difference between a campaign your audience can convert on and one it cannot.
Do I need to invest money to join an affiliate program?
No. Registration here is free, there is no deposit and no subscription, and you never fund an account to promote one. Treat any programme that asks you to deposit, buy a package or pay for access before you can earn as something other than an affiliate programme. What free does and does not cover is set out on free affiliate programs.
What are the best investing affiliate programs?
No ranking is published here, and a ranked list elsewhere is usually the list-maker's own affiliate links. Judge an investing campaign on five lines: the qualifying event, the minimum behind it, the markets the advertiser can operate in, what the creative rules allow you to say, and what validation takes back. A modest payout your readers can actually trigger beats a large one they cannot.
Are gold and silver programs the same as brokerage programs?
No, and it is worth separating them before you write. A precious metals campaign usually pays on a completed order — a physical purchase with a price that moves between the click and the checkout, and a cancellation or return window behind it. A brokerage campaign pays on an account that gets funded. Different events, different things that reverse them.
How do commercial loan broker programs pay?
On an introduction somebody accepts. The brief sets the bar — a contact the broker can reach, a requirement they actually arrange, a market they can work in — and a person at the advertiser accepts or rejects each enquiry, with the reason returned. Commercial real-estate finance behaves the same way with a longer gap behind it. The lead model in full is on CPL affiliate programs.
Can I talk about returns or past performance?
No. Nothing you publish may promise, project or imply a return, and past results may not be presented as what a reader should expect. Every claim about a product has to be the advertiser's own wording, and where risk wording is supplied it is republished exactly as given — edited risk wording can void the conversions the placement produced.
Which markets can I promote these in?
Only the ones on the campaign's list, and that list follows where the advertiser can show the permissions it needs rather than where the traffic is cheap. A conversion from a market the campaign does not list is rejected rather than paid at a lower rate, which costs more here than in most verticals because the unit values are high.
Why is my pending balance so far ahead of approved?
Because two clocks run before a conversion settles: verification on the advertiser's side, and the deposit or order itself, which can land days after the click. Add the campaign's hold period on top and the gap is normal rather than a tracking fault. The states are defined on payouts and the dates on the payment schedule.
Which traffic sources are accepted?
It is set per campaign and printed on the brief, and finance runs among the narrowest lists on the network — anything not marked allowed should be read as refused. Brand bidding is off unless the advertiser writes it into the brief, and incentivised traffic only counts where the campaign has been tagged for it. Ad platforms also apply their own rules to this subject on top of ours.
Do these campaigns suit a high-net-worth audience?
The introductions half of this cluster is built for exactly that: advisory, wealth and commercial broking pay on an enquiry a person accepts, so a small audience of the right readers outperforms a large general one. Expect low volume, human screening and long gaps between the enquiry and anything settling. Large order values in general are covered on high-ticket affiliate programs.
Keep reading
- Finance & fintech campaigns The parent: clearance, licensed markets and the finance brief
- Credit card programs The sibling: paid on approved applications, not submitted ones
- CPL affiliate programs The lead model: what makes an enquiry valid, and who accepts it
- High-ticket programs Large values: longer windows, fewer conversions, heavier checks
- Campaign guidelines Creative rules, allowed traffic and the enforcement ladder
- Payouts Pending, approved, held and paid, defined once
Read the threshold, then write the page
Create your publisher account, then apply to the campaigns whose markets, qualifying event and creative rules match the audience you already have.