Home Depot Affiliate Program – Review, Pros And Cons

Here’s a comprehensive guide on the Home Depot Affiliate Program.

Home improvements and renovation has always been a constant practice In sought to make residential properties comfortable, congenial, and beautiful.

Come to think of it, who wants to be left out in this modern era?! –facts– Nobody, everyone wants to be updated.

According to Statista, the total expenditure for home improvement in 2020 amounted to a whopping sum of $457 million. 

…Huge?

It is even expected to reach over 500 billion dollars by 2024.

And this is the reason hundreds and thousands of affiliate marketers are trooping to this industry.

When it comes to Home improvement, we all know who’s the boss here. In this article, we’re going to take an in-depth review of the Home depot affiliate program.

But first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page and fully know what Home Depot is all about. 

What is Home Depot?

Headquartered in Atlanta, United States, Home Depot is an American home improvement retailer founded way back in 1978. 

The 43-year-old company is the largest retailer with $110 billion in revenue followed by Lowe’s Home Improvement with $90 billion, and HomePro with $60 billion.

Home Depot hosts over 2,296 stores with 500,000 employees worldwide. The majority of Home Depot stores are in the United States and its territories, although it also has locations in Canada, Mexico, China, and other countries.

Home Depot sells all products/materials relating to home accessories, renovation, and repairs. Appliances, Baths and faucets, Blind and window treatments, building materials are a few of many products available at Home Depot. 

What is the Home Depot Affiliate Program?

The Home Depot Affiliate program, although a marketing strategy, is a program created to provide an opportunity where people can earn as they promote home depot products.

The fact that Home Depot is well-known worldwide (with over 2,200 locations) is a huge relief for affiliates. You wouldn’t have to worry about introducing your company to your audience.

How Does the Home Depot Affiliate Program work?

Home Depot welcomes all types of sites and anyone for its affiliate program. Whether it’s a blog, a magazine site, or a review site, Home Depot’s affiliate program is open to all sites. This being said, Home Depot still reserves the right to reject or even delete any sites failing to conform to its terms and conditions. 

Alongside Target affiliate, Walmart affiliate, and many other affiliate programs, Home Depot partners with impact radius.

Impact Radius is a smarter approach to managing digital marketing, specifically affiliate networks. The software helps advertisers to fully track and manage affiliate networks and advertising at ease. 

The Home Depot program provides affiliates with an easy-to-use dashboard thanks to impact radius. 

Impact radius helps to track earnings, generate reports such as impressions, CTR (click-through-rate), and commission. etc.

If you are a member of Impact, you already have access to The Home Depot Program. Simply sign in to your Impact account and apply for the Home Depot Affiliate program.

What Products are available for the Home Depot affiliate program?

The Home Depot affiliate program gives users flexibility when it comes to promoting products. 

The company allows you to promote just any product available at homedepot.com. In other words, there are over 2 million products stocked in homedepot.com, you can promote any of your choices.

…But this does not call for promoting products ineptly

All products are arranged in categories. There are 17 different categories in total and they’re all divided into subcategories.

Some Home Depot’s Popular  categories include;

• Bath and Faucets
• Appliances
• Decor and Furniture
• Building Materials
• Electrical
• Doors and Windows
• Flooring and Area Rugs
• Hardware 
• Heating and Cooling
• Kitchen and Kitchenware
• Lawn and Garden
• Lighting and Ceiling Fans
• Outdoor Living
• Paint 
• Plumbing
• Storage and organization 
• Tools

As said earlier, you can promote just any product on homedepot.com but it is also important to note that all products are not the same. 

Price, conversion rates, competition, popularity amongst others are all factors you should consider when selecting a product for promotion.

Home Depot affiliate program does not restrict in any way, whether your referrals product is shipped directly to him/her or a shop, you still get to earn.

However, some specific products are not eligible for promotion.

Products That are Not Eligible For Home Depot Affiliate Program:

1. In-store purchases

An in-store purchase is when one simply buys a product directly from the warehouse/shop.

If someone clicks on your affiliate links and decides to buy a product. If the person chooses to buy the product directly from a brick or mortar store rather than the online store, you won’t earn any commission.

However, if the product is paid online, and the buyer decides to pick such a product from the store, you’ll earn your due commission.

2. Custom created products

A custom product is simply a product specially designed and manufactured for a particular customer.

Since custom-created products are not usually listed on the Homedepot.com site, it’s impossible to track referrals and thus there is no commission attached to these products.

3. Special orders

Special orders are vast. It could simply be orders carried out by external bodies or massive orders involving a large number of products at significantly low prices.

Generally, special orders are not allowed.

4. Gift Card

Simply, this means that when someone purchases a product –directed from your affiliate link– using a voucher code or gift card, you won’t earn any commission for such products.

5. Installation services

Home Depot usually pays extra service fees for customers who buy products that involve installation.

It is important to note that you will not earn any commission from this service fee.

Home Depot Affiliate Program Commission Structure

Home Depot affiliate program commission rate, unlike Target affiliate program, is constant irrespective of the sales volume you achieve.

Generally, products randomly selected at homedepot.com and promoted have a minimum commission rate of 1%.

Normally, the commission rate of the Home Depot Affiliate program is 2% and 8% for home decor products.

Home Depot Affiliate Program Payout Schedule/Structure

The Home Depot Program Payout structure is every month. Far better than Target and Walmart payout schedule of 3months and 2months respectively and a little bit poor compared to Amazon payout schedule of 2 weeks.

Home Depot’s 1 monthly payment schedule is employed to help validate the company that products sold via your link are paid for and are not canceled or refunded.

Home Depot reserves the right to modify or cancel your commission within the waiting period only if the products sold through your affiliate link are returned and refunded.

Payments are usually made on the 20th of the succeeding month of a particular month. Irrespective of the “date of the particular” you made the request, you’ll only receive your payments on the 20th of the succeeding month.

Take, for example, if you’ve made sales and have reached the threshold for the month of November. Irrespective of the date you decide to make withdrawals, whether it’s on the 1st of November or on the 30th of November, you’ll still receive your payments on the 20th of the succeeding month.

This being said, you can withdraw your money using a variety of payment options, including PayPal, cheque, wire transfer, and direct deposit.

Another important caveat is that Home Depot has a minimum threshold of $100 and $50 only for direct deposit. 

In other words, if you have not raised up to $100 in your Home depot affiliate account then you can not make a withdrawal.

Home Depot Affiliate Program Cookie Duration

Affiliate Providers Make use of cookies to track and source referral data of users who click on your affiliate link.

But first, hope we’re on the same page?!

In simple terms, a cookie is a file stored in a user’s web browser containing data shared between the user and the websites. 

So how do cookies work in affiliate marketing?!

When a visitor clicks on an affiliate link on your site intending to research and possibly buy the product. If he/she decides to do more research and leave for a while. Subsequently, if he comes back to the site and purchases the product even without clicking on your link again you’ll still earn your due commission. This is possible, thanks to cookies.

But, one thing with cookies is that they always have an expiration date. And this is where cookie duration comes in.

Originally, cookies do last for 30 days, but due to preference, marketing strategies, and others, most affiliate providers tend to adjust the cookie duration of their program.

Generally speaking, cookie duration ranges from 1 day to 30 days. 

Home Depot, on the other hand, also employs the use of cookies, but this time, their cookie duration is poor.

Home Depot affiliate cookies have a maximum duration of 1 day. This is obviously the lowest life span of cookies and thus a discouraging factor when selecting a suitable affiliate program. 

Alternatives Of Home Depot Affiliate Program

While the Home Depot affiliate program can be a good one to start up with, there are just too many downsides.

If you would like to see our top 3 alternatives of the Home depot affiliate program, keep scrolling.

1. Amazon

Amazon is actually the beast of affiliate marketing. Although it’s not the first affiliate program, it’s the most popular affiliate program worldwide.

Unlike Home Depot which is restricted to Home improvement products, Amazon is a generic e-commerce site that sells everything you can think of.

its quite unfortunate that both Amazon and Home Depot have the same cookie duration.

Amazon affiliate program appears to be better than  Home depot affiliate program in so many aspects.

The only thing home depot affiliate program has advantage over Amazon is the expertise and trust it has built in the industry. And Except for that, Amazon is a still step better than Home Depot.

The commission rate of products under home improvement in Amazon is 3% while Home Depot is 2%.

Both programs are okay and can be used as alternatives to each other.

One thing distinct about the two programs is that Home Depot doesn’t ship products outside the US while Amazon ships internationally. 

So, is your audience based in the US, or are they spread across the globe? – A food for thought 

2. Walmart 

You can’t talk about top retailers in the world without mentioning Walmart. Walmart is currently the No.1 largest retailer in the world with annual revenue of $534.7 billion.

Founded by Sam Walton in Bentonville, United States, Walmart is a multinational retailer that works just like Amazon.

Walmart sells just anything you think of promoting exempting automobiles (and who thinks of promoting automobiles?!).

In terms of pricing, Walmart tend to offer a higher commission rate to affiliate marketers.

In Walmart affiliate program, Affiliate marketers are opportuned to bag-up a commision rate ranging from 1% – 4%.

If you’re interested in marketing Home products like Home Depot then you’re in a good hand with Walmart.

You can earn up to 4% of commision rate from every sales you make for a home and accessories products in Walmart.

Also, unlike home depot, Walmart generously give affiliate marketers a longer referral period (cookie duration) of three days.

So, in other words, you have more potential of increasing your sales in Walmart than in Home depot.

Which ever way you choose, we’ve prepared a well detailed article on Walmart affiliate program which you can choose to checkout at your convenience.

3. Target 

So here’s the game changer; Target affiliate program

Target is also a popular retail company based in America. It is the eleventh largest retailer corporation worldwide after Walmart, Amazon, Costco Schwarz, and 8 others.

The company is also a multinational retail company which specialises in just everything retail you can possibly think of. However, their affiliate program is only open to 4 distinct categories of products.

Likewise the Home depot Affiliate program, Target affiliate program is hosted on impact radius affiliate network.

In terms of cookie duration, Target affiliate program appears to be superior to most affiliate programs out there. Where Amazon and home depot only offers 1 day referral period (cookie duration), Target offers a whooping seven day referral period (cookie duration).

When it comes to commision rate, Target is still a step ahead of home depot.  The company pays affiliate marketers directly proportional to the sales they make.

Affiliate marketers can earn between the range of 1% – 8% on every sale they make. But as said earlier, your earnings would only be increased if you’re able to increase the number of products you sales for every month.

For instance, if you sell from 1-10 products from the “Home and outdoor living” category you would only receive 5% commission rate out of the products sold. But if you’re able to level up and make over 301-1000 sales or even 10’000+ product sales from this category, you can earn about 7% and 8% respectively, for each product.

Sounds interesting right?

Below is a list of Target affiliate program eligible products category and a list of commission rate accorded to them.

You can also check out our article on Target Affiliate Program.

Pros And Cons Of of Home Depot Affiliate Program

We’ve already listed out some alternatives to this affiliate program.

This is to say this program is not totally a good one. As much as there are Pros, there are also some Cons .

The question here is, do the Pros outweigh the Cons?

Pros

• Home Depot is a well established company in the industry. – Making sales won’t be much of a problem
• You have a whole wide range of products to promote. Literally, you can promote everything at homedepot.com
• Products eligible for home depot affiliate program are unique and most likely branded.
• Home depot has a lot of high ticket affiliate products. With this, you have more potential of earning more Money.

Cons

• Home Depot affiliate program’s product are tailored only to home improvement product.
  • Home Depot product’s are restricted to customers out of US. So, if your audience are based out of the country, then Home Depot is not for you.

How To Make Money From Home Depot Affiliate Program ($1000)

Every success starts from a plan – same goes to affiliate program. You’d need to set up your marketing strategies ready to beat the competition. And that’s why we’ve made a list of best affiliate marketing strategies for 2021.

To make money out of home depot affiliate program, you’ll need to go plubic. And by public, I mean you need to find the right marketing channel – this should be done based on your preference.

You can go by Vlogging, Blogging, Email marketing, Influencer Marketing, Ad marketing or any other means you can use to get to a large audience.

Preferably, you can either start by blogging or Vlogging. Either way you wish to start, always maintain consistency– Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich scheme.

1. By Blogging 

With a blog or a product review website, you can actually reach your target audience.

All you need to do is to launch your site, focus the website on a particular niche, preferably home Improvement or something related.

Write reviews on products available at home depot. Make sure your articles are content based rather than the proposed promotion intensive.

In essence, don’t sound pushy with your affiliate link rather, make your work more informative.

But before all this, always perform explicit keyword research before embarking on writing articles. You can perform this with the help of some SEO tools.

As a newbie that you’re in the game, it’s important you target keywords with very low keyword difficulty so you can easily rank on Google SERPs.

In add it up, Always add your affiliate links to your article multiple times so that they can become inevitable to users.

Remember; don’t make them sound pushy!

2. Vlogging

If you prefer speaking, going life or even podcasting rather than going through those boring writing stress and Hastle then Vlogging might actually be the right option for you.

There is actually a huge list of video hosting platforms out there but the predominant one is YouTube.

You can easily start up a YouTube channel free of cost by just creating a Gmail account– that’s all!

You can then start up by producing quality review videos. It could be a mere review video, a package unboxing or any other thing related products reviews.

Also, before embarking on producing any content, always make thorough research – This is the most important caveat.

Final Thoughts

Home Depot is a good option, but they’re a lot more limitations than advantages.

Nevertheless, if your niche is related to the home improvement industry, it’s ideal you opt into the program as people see Home Depot as an expert and trusted company for Home improvement products.

Always remember that products such as special orders, installation services, gift cards, in-store purchases, custom created products.

This is it!