Review Summary
We give the Chewy Affiliate Program a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Whether you’re a business entrepreneur in the pet care industry or simply have a couple of animals running around your house, you’re definitely familiar with the Chewy empire. This company has quickly risen to be one of the strongest players in the market for pet care and accessories and they show no signs of slowing down.
We’ve been part of the Chewy affiliate program for almost four years and have been using it on a daily basis when recommending specific pet products to our audience. In this article, we’re going to review the affiliate program for this massive online pet store. We’ll cover the specifics of the program and then dive into the pros, cons, and our suggestions for success.
Let’s get to it!
A Quick Look at the Chewy Affiliate Program
| Commission Rate | 4% for new and existing customers orders |
| Cookie Length | 15 days |
Being part of the Chewy Affiliate Program allows you to monetize your content by collecting a commission on products purchased by your online audience. It’s free to join, which is often reason enough to give it a try, and we’ve found it’s generated a lot of perks for us.
Here are our objective thoughts on the main components of the program:
– The commission rate of 4% is better than Amazon (at 3%), but it does get less attractive over time as Chewy is heavily investing in gaining new customers.
– A cookie length of 15 days is also decent. It’s definitely a lot better than Amazon’s 1-day cookie. But it’s a bit lower than the industry standard of around 30 days.
– We’ve found that the conversion rate of Chewy’s Affiliate Program is quite high because there seems to be solid trust in the company’s brand thanks to word-of-mouth referrals and their generous 365-day return policy.
Here’s a quick pros and cons overview that we’ve constructed after using the Chewy affiliate program for almost 2 years:
Additional Considerations of the Chewy Affiliate Program
Doesn’t Come With a WordPress Plugin
At the time of writing, Chewy doesn’t provide a WordPress plugin. This is something that was originally an issue for us, as we wanted to direct our readers to Chewy products whenever possible. As a result, we hired a developer from Codeable and told him what we wanted. He got it done within a couple of hours. This is highly recommended if you have the resources to create this workaround.
Their Deals Help You Promote Them
Another aspect that we like about Chewy is that they offer some great promotional campaigns that you can promote on your site(s). For example, their ‘Save up 30% OFF on your first order’ and their ‘Free Shipping’ campaigns have made it a lot easier for us to give our readers a reason why they should buy through Chewy. We’ve seen a lot of success in the popups that we added to our sites to promote these deals.
Their Email Support Is Great
Whenever we reach out to Chewy we always get a reply back within a day, which helps us make decisions or rectify issues quickly, and ultimately, it saves us time and money. We also found that, generally speaking, their customer support team seems more interested in helping their partners succeed than other affiliate programs.
Choosing Between Partnerize or CJ Affiliate
If you want to sign up for the Chewy Affiliate Program, there are two companies you can go through, Partnerize and CJ Affiliate. We recommend going through Partnerize as we’ve worked with them for almost four years and it has been a pretty smooth process. The company’s interface is fairly easy to use, and the payments have been on time. Sometimes finding the exact data you want can take require a bit of trial and error, but other than that, our work with them has been going quite well.
Chewy vs Amazon Associates Program
Given the strength of both these players in the pet care niche, it can be hard to zero in on which can give you bigger returns overall. In 2023, we find that the pet product selection on Chewy and Amazon are quite similar. If you find a certain cat food on Amazon, then you can usually find that same product on Chewy (and vice versa).
At the time of writing, Amazon only gives 3% in commissions for all sales in the pet category. Amazon’s percentage seems quite low when you also consider that their cookie lasts for 1 day. However, the good thing about Amazon’s program is that it gives you commissions on all purchases that a consumer makes, not just the original product that got them to the site. This means that if someone goes to Amazon through your affiliate link and buys cat food, but they also buy a new laptop, you will also get a commission for both products.
All in all, we think that both programs are interesting, so we use a mix of both. Some people prefer buying through Chewy, and some people prefer buying through Amazon, so we show both options. This brings us to our next point…
Diversification
We’ve found diversification to be a strong strategy in the e-commerce industry, so we recommend using a mix of major product sites like Chewy and Amazon, along with smaller pet companies.
It’s important to mention that there are also a lot of high-paying pet food affiliate programs out there. We recommend also signing up to 2–4 of those. As with anything, most of the earnings will usually come from just a few, but you won’t know which works best for your company until you try at least a handful.
However, if you’re part of 30 affiliate programs, it can be hard to build real business relationships. That kind of setup can be a huge time sink, and you will probably not earn a lot. Therefore, we recommend working with just a few affiliates programs—2–5 should do—and then focusing on gaining traction with those.
Final Thoughts
The Chewy Affiliate Program has a lot to offer those with an audience of pet parents looking to give their animals everything they need and more. While it’s not a perfect system (we have yet to find one that is), its pros certainly outweigh its cons.
If you think the program may be right for you, ensure that you take the time to tailor it to your company’s personal endeavors. This may require some outside help and resources, but it will ultimately garner bigger results. We also recommend taking advantage of Chewy’s customer support team who can answer questions before, during, and after your sign-up process.
Featured Image Credit: laptop mockup by freepik
