Nathan 
Are you looking for a good car rental affiliate program? If so, then think about joining Zipcar’s program. A car rental affiliate program refers to you (an affiliate) sending traffic (other people) to a car rental company’s (Zipcar) website. If someone purchases something from the website, then you receive credit for the sale; Or I should say a commission for the sale.
Before you participate in any car rental affiliate program, you want to learn as much as you can about it. That brings us to why you’re here: To find out if Zipcar has a good car rental affiliate program? Well, to answer this question, dive into the rest of this article.
What Is Zipcar
Zipcar is considered to be a car-sharing company. I think of them as being an on-demand car-rental service/mixed car-sharing company. You purchase a membership with them, and then you can pay a rental fee each time you want to drive one of their cars. They have cars at various locations and if you reserve a car in a specific location, then you’ll retrieve it when you arrive.
For example, you book a car in New York City at a specified location. You go to that location, unlock the car door and drive off. That’s pretty much how the process works, and then you return the car back to the location. I’m not sure, but you might be able to bring it to other Zipcar locations, but don’t 100% take my word for it.
How Can You Make Money With Them
Zipcar has what I call a car rental affiliate program. You make money when you refer people to them. In short, you promote Zipcar/someone becomes a new customer/you get paid.
The company requires customers to have a membership in order to rent their cars. When someone signs up via your affiliate link and they become a new member, then you’ll get credit.
How Much Can You Earn via Their Car Rental Affiliate Program
At the time of this writing, the commission is $10 per new member. That is the base commission. When someone follows your affiliate link to Zipcar’s website and they signup to become a member, then you’ll make ten-dollars.
As for the exact amount you can earn promoting Zip car, this all depends in so many different variables. A newbie to affiliate marketing will probably struggle to earn at least $10 per day. An experienced marketer who has a bit of creativity could probably do around $1,000 per month. With the right amount of traffic, and the quality of it going to Zipcar’s site via a person’s link/links, I don’t see why someone couldn’t earn that much on a monthly basis.
Going by the above example, that would be 100 new memberships per month, so there would be considerable amount of work to do in order to continue to get 100 people to become members.
Pros & Cons Of Zipcar’s Affiliate Program
1. The Pros
A few of the advantages of their affiliate program includes:
. The commission- Right now, the base commission is $10 per new member. If you’re creative and can generate a lot of traffic, then you could end up earning a fair amount of money.
. Easy to join- Joining Zipcar’s program doesn’t seem difficult to join. However, you do need a Commission Junction account. They are the ones that payout the commissions. Don’t worry though, signing up for an account is fast and free.
. Payment- You can receive your commissions via PayPal or direct deposit. You can also opt to be paid via check. The choice is yours.
2. The Cons
There’s not a whole lot of bad things that can be said about their affiliate program. But, if I had to pick a couple of things they would be:
. The pay frequency- They pay monthly. If you’re looking for an affiliate program that pays out weekly, then this may leave you disappointed.
. Limited to certain countries- There are only a limited number of countries that can participate in the affiliate program. At the time of this writing, those countries are the US, UK, Canada, Austria and Spain.
Tips For Making Cash With Zipcar
In regards to this specific affiliate program, in my opinion the best things to do is to create a site, build an email list and share your affiliate links via social media. Let’s dive into more details below:
. Create a website
You can create a niche website. This site would need to be relevant to Zipcar. A potential examples might be travel sites with a focus on road trips or a site dedicated to car rentals. I could list examples within those examples, but hopefully you have an idea of what I mean when I say create a niche site.
Do bear in mind that building a site takes time. Traffic won’t come overnight, but once your website is up and running and you create content, then you can always pay for advertising. Do not dump money into advertising campaigns without getting your feet wet; Meaning, learn a bit about launching ads and start off with a very small amount. If you cannot afford it, then stay away from advertising until you can afford to jump into it.
. Build an email list
Another thing you can do is focus on building an email list. You can create a squeeze page and give something relevant away, for free in exchange for people’s emails. You can create a short eBook explaining the benefits of using Zipcar or rental cars in general or an eBook about how to save money when you need a rental car. These are a handful of examples of what you can give away.
Once your list has been built up, you can send out more info about Zipcar. Do this maybe 1-4 times per month. Who knows, you could end up referring a lot of people to Zipcar.
Building an email list can be difficult for newbies. Even novice marketers can struggle to build up a list of highly targeted subscribers. Be prepared to do a lot of testing in regards to campaigns if you decide to try to build an email list.
. Share in relevant social media groups
There are all sorts of groups and pages that you could post a link to. Once your affiliate account has been approved, you can paste your link in various groups across social media. But, make sure you are actually putting in a solid effort into leaving quality comments. For example, if there is a Facebook group that is perfect for promoting your link, then contribute to that group by posting relevant and real thought-out comments. Don’t just post a bunch of spammy comments with your affiliate links.
If leaving comments is something you don’t want to do, then create your own groups and pages on social media. And then you can share your affiliate link whenever you see fit.
However, I suggest only sharing affiliate links every now and then, regardless if you’re leaving comments on other pages or your own pages.
Who Should Jump On This
Affiliate marketers looking for something a bit different to promote should consider jumping aboard Zipcar’s affiliate program. Travel agents should too, as well as website owners that run sites that would be suitable for promoting Zipcar.
Final Thoughts
My final thoughts is that this car rental affiliate program isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s for people who maybe want to refer a few friends to Zipcar and make a few dollars. If you’re serious about making a lot of money with Zipcar’s affiliate program, then you need a lot of traffic. That traffic needs to be highly targeted and you need to continue to put in hard work regularly.
To sum up the above:
. This affiliate program isn’t for everyone
. You need a lot of traffic
. You need quality/targeted traffic
. Be prepared to put in a lot of work
I say give it a go if you think the Zipcar car rental affiliate program is worth a try. Good luck if you do.
