Credit Cards are one of the areas which are often targeted by ambitious affiliates – but do take care. They can be a lot of hard work because there is SO much competition out there. That’s not the only problem either: as long ago as 2005 cards by Accucard, Lloyds TSB and Goldfish (which has now been bought by Barclays) all had their affiliate programs pulled from the market. M&S’s More Than card, CitiBank’s cards and other credit cards soon followed. A year earlier still, Barclays had pulled all their cards from affiliate programs too!

This has made running affiliate websites for UK cards substantially harder but there are far more products worth promoting for clients across the pond. However, if you want to stick to UK cards and focus on this market some UK credit card companies are still interested in you. Various MBNA cards are looking to get some promotion and some good pre-pay cards are still looking for affiliates too. Then there are Virgin credit cards and Vanquis who aim their products at people who need to build positive credit ratings.

Vanquis
Vanquis charge customers a huge amount of interest but they justify this by saying that the amounts they lend are low and that their purpose is to build a better credit rating, not for splurging on purchases. They also point out that their customers are of a ‘higher risk’ than many other borrowers and that the interest fees they charge reflect that. Their program is available through Affiliate Window.

MBNA
There is a long list of cards which you can promote with MBNA, there’s the MBNA Business Card, and then there are cards associated with football clubs such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, West Ham, Aston Villa and Tottenham. They also produce the Breakthrough Breast Cancer card, National Trust Credit Card and some other specialist products. Several of the bank’s charity cards are available on the Buy.at Network. Affiliates who promote their WWF, National Trust, British Heart Foundation or Breast Cancer Breakthrough cards get £8.50 per customer application.

Virgin
Virgin offers £10 per submitted application for a Virgin Credit Card and it’s worth noting that the Virgin card is actually also an MBNA product. The network running this program is OMG and this card currently has the longest interest free period on the market which could mean that with the right marketing content this card could sell itself.

Pre-pays
Pre-pay cards are more popular than ever because they are especially useful when travelling, like a credit card you can use them anywhere, but unlike a credit card your bank won’t detect imaginary ‘fraud’ and freeze your account when you’re halfway through a tequila session in Mexico. So, what cards are worth promoting?

FairFX are top of the moneysupermarket.com pre-paid card lists because they charge no monthly fees and only reasonable withdrawal fees from bank cash machines. There are also no additional charges for using them too, unlike with other pre-paid cards. You could make £7.50 per customer application with FairFX. Their cards come in US or Euro formats but they can be used anywhere in the world in any currency and the funds are simply transferred into the correct (local) currency at the time of purchase or withdrawal. You can join their affiliate program through the affiliate network Profitistic.

Splash pre-paid is another popular pre-paid card and ran by Maestro, with this card you can earn £5 per application and you can join their affiliate program through Affiliate Window or Webgains. There are a number of other pre-paid cards out there which offer affiliates similar deals.

Specialist Networks
There are also a number of specialist networks out there which are eager to sign you up to their selection of credit card affiliate programs. Many of them also offer to help you make websites – which some people might consider lazy, risky from an SEO perspective or unethical but its an option for those intimidated by the initial site build process. Other credit card affiliate networks will even offer you content too. How you use these networks is up to you but you might consider that you can see what companies they’re promoting and go directly to that company yourself.

In some cases this will make a big difference in the commission you receive as it will have nothing ’skimmed’ off by your specialist ‘network.’ Cardoffers.com provides plenty of resources to credit card affiliates free of charge, so does Cardcommission.com. Prepaidcardaffiliate.com is similar too but you’ll find more UK pre-paid credit card info on there.

Checking out what the price comparators and high profile finance sites are saying about given cards and trying to track down an affiliate program for them might be a good route in to finding desirable credit cards. It’ll also give you chance to check out the competition which is essential!

Good luck!

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