Home Depo Affiliate Program (2024)
The Home Depot affiliate program allows you to promote thousands of Home Depot products.
Home Depot has over 2300 stores and is currently the world's biggest home-improvement retailer.
If you have a website in the home improvement niche, you may be interested in joining Home Depot's affiliate program.
In this review, you will learn everything you need about the program to decide whether becoming a Home Depot affiliate is worthwhile.
Home Depot Affiliate Program Overview
Commission: 1-8%
Cookie Duration: 24 hours
Where to Join: Impact
Payment Options: PayPal, Electronic Funds Transfer
Most stores are in the USA, but the Home Depot also operates in Canada and Mexico.
This review will cover everything for the US Home Depot affiliate program (promoting products on the homedepot.com website).
Table of Contents
- Home Depot Affiliate Program
- What Can Home Depot Affiliates Promote?
- Home Depot Affiliate Program Commission
- Can You Make $1000 a Month as a Home Depot Affiliate?
- How to Make Money with the Home Depot Affiliate Program?
- What Are the Home Depot Affiliate Program Alternatives?
- Summary: Pros & Cons
- Should You Join the Home Depot Affiliate Program?
Home Depot Affiliate Program
The Home Depo affiliate program can be joined on Impact Radius. If you already have an Impact Radius account, you can find the program on the Impact Radius platform and join it from there.
The only requirement to join the program is to have a website. The Home Depot states that their program is open to websites from various niches, but preferably you should have a website related to home improvement.
The cookie duration is only 24 hours, and it works on the last-click attribution model. This means that if someone clicks on your affiliate link and does not buy and then makes a purchase through someone else’s affiliate link, you will not receive the commission.
Home Depot affiliates are provided with banners of various sizes. The Home Depot affiliate program allows deep linking so you can create an affiliate link to any product page you want.
Unfortunately, Home Depot currently has no tool for creating affiliate links from a browser window while browsing homedepot.com.
The Ebay affiliate program has such a tool, making promoting their products much easier. Walmart affiliates used to have the same tool in the form of a Chrome extension.
It would be helpful if Home Depot added some tools as they don’t only make promotion easier but often also more profitable.
For example, the Walmart SDK tool allows you to embed a "Buy Now" button that redirects a visitor to their website and also adds a product to cart. This makes the purchasing process easier and faster, which results in bigger conversations and more affiliate commissions.
Hopefully, Home Depot will add some tools in the foreseeable future.
What Can Home Depot Affiliates Promote?
The Home Depot does not limit its affiliate program to certain categories. Any product you find on their online store can earn you a commission.
The products are divided into 17 different categories. Each category is then divided into many subcategories.
The Home Depot claims that their brick-and-mortar stores have around 40.000 products. However, as a Home Depot affiliate who promotes products only from their online store, you can promote more than 1 million products.
That’s a lot. If you want to promote specific products related to home improvement, you will surely find them on the Home Depot online store.
However, even though you can promote any product from the Home Depot online store, the affiliate commission is not the same for all products.
Home Depot Affiliate Program Commission
The commission rate for Home Depot's affiliate program varies between 1% and 8%, depending on the product category.
Most products have a low 1% commission (it used to be 2%).
Home Depot affiliates can earn 8% on select home décor products.
The word "select" products is important. Not all products from the home décor category have the higher 8% commission.
Verifying whether the SKU of your desired product is listed in the table for an 8% commission would require checking, but this can be challenging since Impact only displays 150 products at a time.
Nevertheless, according to Home Depot support, most products in the home décor category are eligible for the 8% commission.
It would be much better if they listed the products that are not eligible for an 8% commission instead of the ones that are.
Affiliates cannot earn commission on all Home Depot gift cards, custom-created products, and in-store purchases.
Gift cards
If someone purchases with a voucher, you will not earn anything.
Installation services
Home Depot customers can pay for installation services on many products, but affiliate commissions are calculated solely based on the product price and do not include any additional service fees.
Custom created products
A product not listed on the Home Depot online store is not eligible for commission.
In-store purchases
This one is obvious. If someone clicks on your affiliate link and decides to buy from a bricks and mortar store instead of the online store, you will not earn any commission. It’s impossible to track the referral when the purchase does not happen online.
However, you earn a commission if someone purchases online and then goes to the store to pick it up. You are always eligible for a commission if the customer buys online and not in-store.
Since the Home Depot affiliate program is hosted on the Impact Radius platform, you can withdraw via PayPal, check, wire transfer, or direct deposit.
The minimum payout via checks is $100, and for direct deposits $50. For PayPal, the payout threshold is just $10.
Due to the Home Depot return policy, you have to wait 90 days till you can withdraw your commission.
Can You Make $1000 a Month as a Home Depot Affiliate?
Let's do a hypothetical example of how hard it would be to earn $1.000 with the Home Depot affiliate program.
We will select a product that is eligible for the 8% commission.
This decorative wall shelf sells for $195.
The product costs $195, so with an 8% commission, you would earn $16.
To earn $1000 with this one product, you would need to generate 63 sales.
Let's assume that your conversion rate would be 1%.
To achieve 63 monthly sales at a conversion rate of 1%, your content would need to be viewed by approximately 6300 people per month.
How to Make Money with the Home Depot Affiliate Program?
If you decide to join the Home Depot affiliate program, you should take the time to choose the right products to promote.
What do I mean by the right products?
I mean products people don’t need to see or try in a store before buying.
You only earn commissions on purchases from the Home Depot online store. If people read your review and then go to the store to see the product, you will not earn anything.
For instance, patio chairs would not be great products to promote. Most people would want to try the chairs before buying to ensure they are comfortable.
The home décor category has many subcategories, but I recommend choosing just one and building all your content around it.
This way, you can achieve topical authority and rank your content faster, even with a new website.
You will want to create both informational and transactional articles. Informational content should be your priority first. In general, informational content is less competitive. Once your website receives some traffic, start publishing transactional content as well.
Transactional articles are mainly lists of products that you compare. Preferably try to use the word "best." People searching for "best" products have a purchase intent.
Before you start creating your content, do proper keyword research. You don’t want to spend months creating content and later discover that the keywords you were trying to rank for have no search volume or are too competitive.
This is a common mistake for people new to affiliate marketing. They jump into writing content without planning and then quit a few weeks later when they don’t see any results.
Do keyword research first. Free SEO tools like Ubersuggest are sufficient if you are just starting out.
After you have your main keywords, use Surfer to discover keyword clusters and write optimized articles.
I also recommend leveraging social media. Pinterest works very well for home décor products.
The Home Depot affiliate program does not allow directly sending traffic to their online store, but you can link to your articles and from there to Home Depot with your affiliate links.
What Are the Home Depot Affiliate Program Alternatives?
How does the Home Depot affiliate program compare to similar programs?
Amazon Associates
The first alternative that comes to mind is obviously Amazon Associates.
Amazon Associates has a 3% commission for the home improvement category.
Both programs have a short 24-hour cookie duration. Nevertheless, Amazon extends the cookie duration to 90 days if a product is added to a cart.
Even though Home Depot specializes in home improvement, it does not seem to offer more home improvement products than Amazon.
Walmart
Walmart is another retailer that does not specialize in home improvement but still has a great selection of products.
I have written a detailed review of the Walmart affiliate program so you can check it out.
Walmart has a 3% commission for home décor and a longer 3-day cookie duration.
Just like the Home Depot affiliate program, it is hosted on Impact.
Wayfair
Wayfair specializes in home furnishings and décor items.
The Wayfair affiliate program has a 7-day referral period and a 5% commission on all products.
If you want to promote home furnishing or décor items, Wayfair is a better option than Home Depot.
It’s a specialized store like the Home Depot with a slightly smaller commission but a higher cookie duration.
A cookie that remains active for 7 days will result in more sales than a cookie that expires after just 24 hours.
You can join their program on CJ Affiliate.
Target
The Target affiliate program is also hosted on Impact.
Just like Wayfair, the cookie duration is 7 days.
The commission ranges from 5-8%, depending on your monthly sales.
For example, if you generate less than 10 sales a month, your commission is 5%.
If you generate more than 10.000 sales a month, your commission is 8%.
Even though Target sells home improvement products, it is not a specialized store like Home Depot or Wayfair.
Pros
- 8% commission on most home décor items
- Hosted on Impact. You can use PayPal for withdrawals
- A lot of products in the home décor category
- Well-known American home improvement retailer
Cons
- 24-hour cookie duration
- The default commission is just 1%
- No useful marketing tools
Even though the Home Depot affiliate program has a high 8% commission, it has a short 24-hour cookie duration.
Wayfair also specializes in home furnishings and décor items. Their commission rate is lower, at 7%, but they offer a significantly longer cookie duration of 7 days.
A cookie duration has a big impact on how many sales you generate so Wayfair is the clear winner despite the lower commission.
Unless you want to promote specific products that can be bought on Home Depot but not on Wayfair, I would recommend joining the Wayfair affiliate program.
The Home Depot affiliate program is decent, but there are better alternatives.
