In this Skyscanner affiliate program review, I’m going to discuss how this program works, its affiliate commission structure, and every other thing needed for you to decide if the program is worth joining or not.
Skyscanner is the travel search engine of the web. Its reach is extensive, and it has partnerships with various companies related to travel.
Within that last year, the travel industry still made trillions of dollars, despite many natural disasters occurring around the world.
The Skyscanner group facilitated many of these trips and had well over 400 million visits a day.
Skyscanner is, for all intents and purposes, an affiliate. It’s an affiliate of the companies, airlines, car rental companies, and hotels that it displays on its website.
It gathers traffic and directs them to these sites where travelers make purchases.
Then it collects its commission. It’s not that different from what you do, is it?
However, it still created the Skyscanner affiliate program. This program is basically Skyscanner paying its affiliates to generate even more traffic for its partner sites. In return, the commission is split.
But, is the Skyscanner affiliate program worth joining?
How Does Skyscanner Make Money?
Skyscanner is basically a colossal affiliate marketer. It has partners that allow it to post pictures and promote its services to Skyscanner’s huge audience. Of course, there are also “exit links.”
These links take the user away from Skyscanner’s website and to a partner website, where the user may or may not make a purchase.
If the user does make a purchase, then Skyscanner is entitled to a certain percentage of that payment. This is its commission. Depending on the partnership and the terms previously agreed upon, the agreed rate will have a specific range.
However, this percentage is usually minuscule. This means that Skyscanner has to host a lot of partner websites on its page before it can make a substantial amount of money. This is what it does.
At present, Skyscanner has thousands of partners with companies in many niches within the travel industry. They allow people to compare the cheapest accommodation and transportation to let them travel without breaking the bank.
Skyscanner has already helped over ten million people find the best way to travel, and with the help of the Skyscanner affiliate program, it’s looking to improve even more.
How Can You Make Money Off of Skyscanner?
With the Skyscanner affiliate program, of course.
Honestly, there’s no better way to make money off of this billion-dollar company.
Many travel affiliate programs like the TripAdvisor affiliate program and the Booking.com affiliate program rely on their well-known brands and established reputations to drive traffic to their website through their affiliates.
If a deal was being offered to you as a solution to a problem, you might be wary. But you’ll probably let your guard down if the answer is from a company you trust.
Skyscanner has the same concept. The revenue it makes off of each booking might be minimal, but it starts to add up when there are a lot of people making the purchase.
Skyscanner Affiliate Program Commission Structure
Affiliates are a source of traffic for Skyscanner, so Skyscanner uses them and pays them half of their profit as a commission. Skyscanner pays as high as 50% affiliate commissions from their profit to their affiliates but as Skyscanner’s commission itself is small, even 50% of it is still considered extremely little.
Skyscanner affiliate commission is between a few cents to a little more than a dollar. It also offers $1 for every installation of its app referred by you.
The app is available on iOS and Android, so you might make more money off of app installation than bookings.
However, their cookie length is thirty days, so for every purchase, your audience member makes within that period, you get a cut. You can get your money out through a bank transfer.
How to Join The Skyscanner Affiliate Program
Joining the Skyscanner affiliate program is a walk in the park. Much like others such as the Kayak affiliate program and Expedia’s affiliate program, the Skyscanner affiliate program is hosted by Commission Junction, a top affiliate network.
To apply for the program, you must first create an account with Commission Junction. This will only take a few minutes. After that, you can search for the Skyscanner affiliate program or click here.
Some affiliate programs have to have certain conditions fulfilled before you can become a member. Skyscanner isn’t one of them; you can use many means to promote their services.
However, there is a hitch. While you’re filling out your application, you will come across a drop-down menu, requesting that you choose a country from amongst the many Skyscanner has there.
The traffic from the country you want will be the only one taken into account when it comes to your commissions. That is, you’ll only receive commissions on purchases bought from people in that country, so choose carefully.
This can be disappointing because most content creators in the travel niche have audiences all over the world, whereas Skyscanner only offers commissions for affiliates in these countries:
- USA
- Philippines
- Taiwan
- UK
- Canada
- Poland
- Hong Kong
- Brazil
- France
- Japan
- Germany
- Mexico
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Middle East
- Russia
- Spain
Tools and Support
Commission Junction is well-known for being a great affiliate network platform. It provides all sorts of promotional materials for affiliates to use on their pages and earn commissions.
Skyscanner has banners, widgets, and buttons available on its Commission Junction page. Deep linking is also available and encouraged.
However, if you want to get a little more involved, you could use a Skyscanner API. But this will require you to go through another application and wait to get approved.
It can be a little frustrating, but APIs are way more eye-catching than any old banner or widget.
There’s also a support page that’s more like a knowledge base. There are answers to all sorts of questions there, but if the answer to your question isn’t on your support page, you can contact them as well.
Promoting Skyscanner
Before we discuss how to promote Skyscanner and drive more traffic towards their website, what methods are you allowed to use to do that?
Skyscanner may not have strict requirements during the application process for the Skyscanner affiliate program, but it does have a few promotion methods that are strictly forbidden.
- Disruptive ad formats
- Domain-buying websites
- Cookie stuffing
- Teaser networks
- Auto-direct sites
- SEM bidding
- Toolbars and browser extensions.
If you’re found to be using one of these platforms or activities to promote Skyscanner, then you run the risk of having your affiliate account deleted without warning.
Thankfully, Skyscanner allows more promotion methods and activities than it bans.
Here are the ones allowed:
- Content platforms
- Forums
- Blogs
- Advertising networks
- Travel websites
- Deals websites.
- Social media groups
- Cashback websites
- Price comparison websites.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here are a few tips to help you get more out of the Skyscanner affiliate program.
1. Create valuable content
Sales content is out of fashion. When writing or creating content for your blog/website, or social media, you should strive to give people the information they need. Then, you can present Skyscanner as an answer.
2. Email marketing
If you have a mailing list, it’s not a bad idea to send regular emails to your audience and notify them of any deals or sales happening currently or in the future.
3. Research
Do your research according to the country that you picked. Find out the keywords used most frequently, the country that most citizens will want to visit, etc.
Then, work that information into your content with a deep link or two from Skyscanner.
Benefits and Disadvantages of Joining The Skyscanner Affiliate Program
Benefits
- Provides excellent tools and support
- Skyscanner is widely recognized and has an excellent reputation.
- Cookies are valid for thirty days.
- $1 payment for each app installation.
- Large commission percentage (50%)
Disadvantages
- Poor commission rates
- Only paid for traffic gathered in specific countries.
Who Should Join The Skyscanner Affiliate Program?
The answer to the above questions is, “someone who’s not in it for the money.” Affiliate marketers are affiliate marketers because they monetize their traffic and their reputation.
However, the commission from Skyscanner’s affiliate program has an average of $0.43. When you calculate the time, energy, research, and effort that goes into promoting this Skyscanner, it just doesn’t seem to be worth it.
However, if you run a travel website that’s dedicated to helping out your audience, you can suggest Skyscanner as a solution to a problem. The Skyscanner affiliate program is not for the affiliate marketer who wants to earn a living off of commissions.
Conclusion
You’re not going to get rich with the Skyscanner affiliate program. At least, not without a whole lot of traffic. However, Skyscanner can provide a steady source of income, a side hustle, if you will.
Because it’s so easy to integrate into your content and most travelers will have a use for it, you can suggest it, run comparisons with other travel affiliate programs, do a review, etc.
You won’t be earning a lot, so you probably won’t be excited about your payouts. But, being associated with a reputable organization like Skyscanner may boost your website’s popularity.
