How Does Experian Make Money? (YOU Can Do it in 3 Steps)

Experian.com made $5.179 billion in revenue in the year that ended March 31st without issuing credit cards or giving loans by themselves.

How does Experian Make Money?

This is a popular question that many people ask online, because if they find out how the Experian business model works, then they might be able to replicate it and make money with the financial services market without a big investment and without lots of experience in the field.

You are in the right place!

I will tell you in this short article about the 2 ways that Experian.com uses in order to make money, and at the end of this article, I will tell you about the same place that helped me create a business that makes me money with one of these two methods, even though I didn’t have a big budget or experience.

So, without further ado, let’s begin!

Table of Contents

How Does Experian Make Money?

Experian.com makes money online with the two following methods:

1 – By Selling SaaS Tools for a Monthly Fee

SaaS stands for Software as a Service.

And this is one method that Experian makes money with.

For example, Experian.com offers many tools on the site for there audience to use based on their needs, such as:

Free Credit Report tool
Free Credit Score tool
Free Credit Monitoring tool
Experian CreditLock
3-Bureau Credit Report and FICO® Scores
Identity Theft Protection
CreditMatch

And some of these tools are offered for free, and some cost a monthly subscription that the users have to pay in order to keep using them.

2 – Through Recommending Relevant Companies for a Commission

And this is my favorite method, and it is called CPA marketing, which is one form of the bigger affiliate marketing model.

And if you were new to this model, then in brief, affiliate marketing is a performance-based model where the affiliate (like Experian.com) promotes other companies’ services and products, and gets paid a commission for every customer or lead that they bring to these companies.

And in the case of Experian.com, they promote credit card companies and loan companies, and they get a commission on every prospect that they bring to these companies.

To simplify this to you, here’s a screenshot from one of their articles that is titled: “Cash Back Rewards Credit Cards”, in which they list some of the recommended credit cards in this category.

And when someone clicks on the “Apply” button, they get redirected to the website of the company or bank issuing the card in order to fill in the application.

And this happens through a unique link (affiliate link) that helps that company to track where this person is coming from, which makes them know that the person is coming from Experian.com, so that they can credit the commission to Experian in case that the user completed the application process.

And this is a completely legitimate business model, and many other financial websites make money this way, and it is how Bankrate makes money.

And now that you know exactly how Experian makes money, it is the time to answer the most important question:

Can You Make Money with The Experian Business Model?

Sure, you can make money with the two methods that Experian utilizes in their business model.

However, there’s a different level of budget, skills, and experience that is needed for each one of them.

For example:

In case that you want to sell a SaaS that people in a certain industry can use, you need to know how to create the software itself, or a big budget in order to hire someone who can do it.

While with the second method, and my favorite, affiliate marketing, you can start at a very low and affordable budget, and you can start with absolutely zero experience thanks to the training and tools available at the platform mentioned in the last section of this article.

I personally make money with the method of affiliate marketing, and I started few years ago without prior experience, but I succeeded after learning and working on building my affiliate marketing business as this platform has taught me.

Can You Make Money with Experian.com itself?

Yes, you can make money with Experian itself in two different methods:

1 – By Reselling Their Tools to Small Businesses

This happens by partnering with Experian.com in order to provide the Experian Business Credit Report to small businesses, and getting a margin on this service.

But the downfall of this method is that you need to have an existing business and existing customers that would need these reports, which might not be the case for you.

Which takes us to the second method:

2 – Promoting Experian’s Tools in Exchange of a Commission

And this is the same method that Experian makes money through, which is affiliate marketing.

Like Experian earns commissions on every customer or prospect they bring to loan companies and credit card companies, you can yourself make money from Experian.com by bringing them customers to use the SaaS tools that they sell.

Experian has something that is called an affiliate program, which you can join and get a unique link (affiliate link) that takes people to their paid tools, and when your referral purchases any of these tools, you get a 20% commission on what they pay on monthly basis.

For example, if you promote the tool that is called “3-Bureau Credit Report and FICO® Score”, which costs $39.99/month, and one of your referrals purchases the tool, you get of what they pay every month they keep using it ($8/month for every referral).

And if you want to make more money, you need to bring more referrals.

And the nice thing about making money with Experian through affiliate marketing, different from the first method of reselling their services, is that with affiliate marketing you don’t need to have existing clients, and you don’t need to interact with business owners.

Affiliate marketing can be done in a very passive way, which is why I like it the most.

Add to that, with affiliate marketing, you can start with absolutely zero experience, and for a very low investment, compared to starting a service-based business where you need to have an office and to do lots of meetings and hire employees.

So, after learning that you personally can make money with the same business model that Experian.com makes money with, you might be in knowing how to do this, step-by-step, which is what I will be covering now.

3 Simple Steps to Create Your Mini-Experian Business

Since affiliate marketing is easier to get started with compared to creating and selling SaaS tools, I will be explaining here how to create a business that makes money like Experian.com makes money through the affiliate marketing model.

And to do so, you need to follow the following three steps:

1 – Decide on Your Niche (Audience)

Experian.com focused on a specific audience and on the services that help them.

And this audience is everyone interested in credit score reports and repair, credit cards, and loans.

And through specialization, Experian.com became the trusted expert that people would think of when they need a relevant service, which allows Experian to make money as an affiliate when people take by their recommendations.

And you need to do the same and focus on a niche (group of people with a common need, goal, or problem).

For example, your niche could be:

People looking for student loans.
People looking for cash back/rewards/travel/…etc. credit cards.
People looking for credit report or credit repair services.
And so on.

You don’t have to start as big as Experian.com and focus on everything in the financial niche.

This is the nice thing about affiliate marketing, you can start it at any scale, and you can always scale it up later.

But there’s something even better, which is the fact that you can make money with affiliate marketing in many other niches and industries other than the financial niche like Experian.com.

For example, you can make money affiliate marketing in the cooking, dieting, yoga, tennis, basketball, wellness, maintenance, woodworking, knitting, ….etc.

And for any of these niches, you will find lots of services and products (physical and digital) to promote.

For example, in one of my affiliate businesses, I promote a tool that helps people get a customized diet plan for losing weight based on their gender, age, body, activity, and food preferences.

And when someone purchases that tool, I get a $26 dollar as a commission on every sale I bring to them.

You can create an affiliate business on almost any niche you can think of, personal finance is just one option.

2 – Create a Simple Website (No Experience Required)

If you don’t know how to start a simple affiliate site, then don’t worry! It’s easier than you think.

I have started many affiliate sites and I know nothing about web design, and will never need to.

Starting a website can be done in few minutes, especially with the tools provided in the platform I will tell you about in the following section.

But the site is important to make money with affiliate marketing like Experian.com does, because you need a place that you own, and where you can place the offers you want to recommend as an affiliate.

And this place must be a website.

And this is where you will bring your audience to see what offers you have to tell them about, so that they take what they need and you make affiliate commissions like Experian.

3 – Start Helping Your Audience Like Experian.com Does

Making money is all about helping others find solutions to their problems or improve their lives.

This is what Experian does when they recommend the best loan companies and credit cards to their audience.

And this is what you need to do in order to make money with the same affiliate model that Experian follows.

And this happens by answering the questions that your audience asks on Google.com.

For example, if you decide to make a website about credit cards, your audience might ask stuff like:

Best travel credit card USA
Best buy credit card USA
Best cash back credit card USA
Best virtual credit card USA
Best airline credit card USA
Best secured credit card USA
And so on.

And for each of these searches, you need to create a simple article where you list the best card providers like Experian.com does, and you would link to these companies or banks through a unique affiliate link.

And when someone clicks on your link and goes to a certain card issuer and applies to get the card, you get a commission that depends on the card and the issuer, and it could be $25, 35, $45, or even more, as you can see in the following screenshot for some of the affiliate offers that you can promote.

And assuming that you want to promote the tools that Experian itself sells, then you need to join the Experian.com affiliate program in order to get your affiliate links, and you need to create articles on your site answering peoples’ questions such as:

Best free credit report
Best time to dispute credit report
Best way to dispute credit report
Best free credit report UK
Best place to get free credit report
Best way to get credit report
Best free credit report site

And for each of these queries, you write an article giving helpful answers, and then you link to the tools that are available on Experian.com through your affiliate link.

And if someone clicks on your link and purchases one of Experian’s tools, you get 20% on whatever that person pays to Experian.com.

So, with these, easy-to-follow steps, you can create a small business that works like Experian.com and makes you money like Experian makes money to its owners.

And if you liked the process, and you want to apply it and start generating income online, but you don’t know where to go, or you need someone to take you by the hand, then the following section will help you.

A Step-by-Step Plan to Follow? (With Training & Tools)

Sure!

Making money with affiliate marketing like Experian.com is not a rocket science, it’s a simple process.

What I’m going to recommend here, is the same step-by-step plan that I personally followed when I started with affiliate marketing.

The most important thing is to learn and take a consistent action in order to succeed and start generating income.

And the place where I found this step-by-step plan for affiliate marketing is an all-in-one platform that is called Wealthy Affiliate.

This place has provided me, and can provide you, with all of the following at one place:

A step-by-step plan to create a successful affiliate marketing business from scratch.
A comprehensive training in order to learn and start without any prior experience.
A website building tool and premium hosting so that I don’t need to learn or care about the technical stuff related to websites.
The research tools to find opportunities to make money with affiliate marketing like Experian.com.
Most important, the wonderful community of 2 million supporting entrepreneurs and expert affiliates that are willing to help you whenever you need.
And much more.

And all of that for an affordable monthly fee that allows you to use all of what is mentioned above in order to create a business that takes advantage of the Experian.com business model, but without the need to invest lots of money in branding and creating software tools like Experian did.

Even better, this platform offers a free Starter plan for you to try it before paying anything, and it will give you the complete first level (10 lessons) for free.

If you are serious about building a business that makes money off the Experian.com business model, then this is the place to go.

Check out this review of Wealthy Affiliate to learn more about this amazing platform and how you can get the free plan at the beginning. (No Credit Card Required)

Or just click here to start with the free account and training now!

Conclusion

I hope that my article was helpful in explaining how Experian makes money online and how you personally can make money with the same methods of the Experian business model.

If you still have any question about anything mentioned here, or if you need any help, please, let me know in the comments’ section below and I will be happy to help you out 🙂