Today’s affiliate marketing landscape is saturated with networks and programs that it can be difficult to find the right one. In order to effectively scale your brand and grow your business, you need the right tools and services. There are hundreds of affiliate marketing networks to choose from, but not all of them are created equal. Some might be a better fit for your company than others based on things like audience, products, commission structure, ease of implementation, and more. That said, not every network is the same, which can make finding the best one for your business a bit tricky. There are lots of different factors to consider when choosing an affiliate network for your business – whether that’s a smaller niche site or a larger generalist network.
How to Find the Right Network for Your Business
There are a lot of affiliate networks out there, so the first step in finding the right one for your business is to evaluate your needs. You’ll want to think about things like: What products or services will you be promoting? What verticals are you looking to target? What commission rates are you aiming for? How experienced is your team? How much traffic do you currently have? And how much time do you have available to dedicate to your campaigns? Additionally, you’ll want to take into account things like the network’s audience and fit, the ease of implementation, the network’s pay out schedule, the network’s partnership with your website (i.e. does it integrate with your shopping cart, CMS, or payment processor?), and how many active affiliates are on the network.
Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Networks
Despite being one of the newest networks on the market (2008), Impact has established a large network of affiliates in a relatively brief period of time (compared to Rakuten, for example). A wide range of brands are available, with more than nine million items available. You can find SaaS and SEO firms such as Semrush or organisations like Airbnb and Adidas among its partners.
Impact’s 400+ reviews on G2 reveal that its clean and modern user interface and advertising tools are among the most well-received aspects. Impact provides a Mobile App Partner Marketplace, which is uncommon. In addition to its automation tools, it also offers a variety of automation tools to manage your campaigns.
Getting paid: Either when you hit minimum or custom payment threshold, or on the 1st or 15th of the month.
Payment method: Direct Deposit, BACS, or PayPal.
Affiliate support: Yes.
G2 star rating: 4.6 out of 5.
One of the biggest affiliate networks on the market, CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction) has a market share of 8.15%. The firm was founded in Santa Barbara, California, in 1998 and is trusted by twice as many IR500 companies as its nearest competitor.
It is quite simple to become an active member with CJ. You must fill in your contact information, add your “promotional asset” (i.e., your website or social media accounts), and complete seven steps to become a member.
You may connect with thousands of big and small merchants through CJ, which ranks as one of the largest affiliate networks with ShareASale. At this time, there are 2,696 various merchants.
Some of the major offline and online businesses that utilize CJ are:
There are also a ton of smaller retailers.
You can apply to these merchants individually from the CJ dashboard, just like ShareASale. You will then have the ability to create links and examine statistics.
Though I believe CJ’s affiliate dashboard has a somewhat steeper learning curve than ShareASale, after you get the hang of it, I actually prefer it to ShareASale.
The developer portal for API access at CJ is excellent if you’re an experienced affiliate or a developer, because it has open API access.
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Getting paid: Current month’s commissions are generally paid on the 20th or 28th of the following month.
Payment method: Direct deposit or Payoneer.
Affiliate support: Yes.
If you want to promote physical goods on your website, Amazon Associates is a good alternative.
Through Amazon Associates, you can make money off of practically everything sold on Amazon.com.
Because you receive a commission on every new item a person purchases, regardless of whether it is the item you referred to, this scheme is even more profitable.
You will still be paid, for instance, if someone clicks on your link to a $5 toothbrush but ends up buying a $500 television (as long as the cookie duration is met). Also, the item cannot have previously been in that person’s shopping basket.
In the past, Amazon Associates gave you a compensation rate based on how much money or sales you generated. The flat-rate commission system, which Amazon started using in 2017, pays you a set amount based on the category of each sale and is effective as of 2017.
Although it also offers tangible goods, ClickBank is another affiliate network that features many digital products, similar to Avangate Affiliate Network.
While ShareASale and Awin have a large number of well-known, large-scale merchants, ClickBank clearly has more “smaller” merchants.
You can find several retailers selling eBooks, online courses, or membership websites, for instance. These retailers might not be as well known as well-known national or international brands, but if they meet your niche, they can be excellent bargains.
However, there is a drawback as well; some of the ClickBank products are simply of low quality. Additionally, even though ClickBank’s screening procedure has improved to better weed out unreliable merchants, be careful about which merchants you choose to promote.
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With the help of the well-established, well-liked affiliate platform FlexOffers, you may access more than 12,000 different advertisers and merchants.
You can always find fresh discounts with FlexOffers because it adds more than 50 new merchants each day and has one of the more attractive dashboards.
Numerous deals from both large and small companies are available on FlexOffers, including offers from well-known companies like Priceline.com, Macy’s, Skechers, Lenovo, and more. If you want to check what’s available before signing up, you can browse a complete listing of all the businesses.
FlexOffers has been around for a while, much like the other major affiliate networks, so you can be sure that they won’t disappear anytime soon.
Every publisher is also given a personal account manager by FlexOffers, which is a great touch. best offers to promote and otherwise work to improve your affiliate marketing.
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Is JVZoo the “ideal” substitute for ClickBank?
It is a respectable rival.
The difficulty is that this means you run into the same issues—publishers making absurd income claims for goods that, in some circumstances, are blatantly inferior.
On JVZoo, there are still some excellent products to be found.
Furthermore, once you realize that you may earn a 50% commission rate, you’ll know why so many affiliates promote these goods.
They earn a lot of money for them.
You’re here to learn how to generate money online, isn’t that why you’re here? If so, you’ll appreciate our free tutorial on how to create your first affiliate website. We provide a FREE website that has already been completed and go over all the fundamentals with you how to get up and running. Free of charge. With no obligation to purchase anything.
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MunchEye is a fairly well-known website where business owners advertise their upcoming goods, which often take the shape of software or an online course. It is not an affiliate network in and of itself; rather, it is a product launch calendar for affiliates to choose whatever goods they wish to market.
Because they want their items to receive the most exposure through affiliates, the product developers want to list them on MunchEye.
Both the producers and the affiliates benefit greatly from this: the creators earn more money from their items through their affiliates, and the affiliates may pick and choose which things to advertise.
Pros: You get access to a calendar with a whole host of upcoming digital products you can promote and make commissions on.
Cons: Mostly what you’ll find is low-quality scams from JVZoo and WarriorPlus.
To break it down in the most simplest terms possible, ShareASale is a website which lists companies who are willing to pay a commission for referral sales. In other words, it’s an affiliate marketing portal. And broken down even further than that, it’s an excellent resource for journalists and bloggers due to the fact that it’s a “one stop shop” kind of deal. Instead of having to scour the entire Internet trying to find products to promote, ShareASale conveniently lists thousands of products all in one place.
The main reason for using ShareASale is convenience. It’s personally been a huge timesaver for me, because I have six different blogs at the moment. 99% of my time is spent writing and creating videos, and I simply don’t have time to searching around for affiliate programs for the products I am discussing in my articles.
Convenience alone could very well be the end of this ShareASale review. However, there is a lot more to it than that. I’ve been a ShareASale user for well over two years now, and I’ve actually got quite a bit to say about it. Most of it is good of course, but there are some things that really drive me bonkers about the service.
Let’s peel back all the layers to reveal what it’s really like to use this product on a daily basis:
I’ve been a ShareASale user for over a year now and I’m very confident that I’ve got a really good sense of what works well (and doesn’t work well) with the service. Of course everyone’s needs are different, so the following pros and cons are based on my own experience and how it relates to all the things that I personally find useful in an affiliate marketing portal.
Pros
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Walmart’s affiliate program is technically part of Rakuten Marketing, but I’m still giving it its own section because I think it makes a valuable contrast to Amazon Associates.
If you’re selling physical products, Amazon Associates is definitely the biggest name in the affiliate game. And yeah – there’s a reason for that. Amazon holds almost 50% of the US eCommerce market.
Compared to that, Walmart has just 3.7% of the online retail market (eBay, which you’ll see next, is actually in second place at 6.6%).
However, when Amazon Associates switched from its old commission structure to its new category-based approach, the Walmart affiliate program became a little more attractive because it offers higher commissions than Amazon in some categories.
For example, Walmart will give you a 4% commission on toys, while Amazon only gives 3%.
Additionally, Walmart’s tracking cookie lasts for three days, whereas Amazon’s only lasts for one day (24 hours).
In the end, this is something you really just need to test if you sell a lot of physical products.
If you’re already using Amazon, and Walmart offers higher commissions in your category, see if switching to the Walmart affiliate program moves the needle on your revenue (in either direction).
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As the name suggests, eBay Partner Network is eBay’s own affiliate network. With it, you can earn a commission for promoting eBay listings.
Yes – anything that’s listed on eBay, which is obviously going to give you access to a huge selection.
The only downside is that many of eBay’s products are transient due to the auction approach (though you can also find plenty of permanent listings).
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Affiliate marketing is a great way for publishers and brands to monetize their content. It is a win-win situation for both parties as publishers earn a commission for referring customers and brands get an instant boost in sales by bringing new customers to their websites. The only problem is that it is very hard to find an affiliate program that pays good commission and is easy to use. That said, there are a handful of networks that rise above the rest. Below, we’ll take a look at 10 of the best affiliate marketing networks to help you find the right one for your business. Here are a few other honorable mentions.
Commission Junction
by Web Marketing Today – Commission Junction is the oldest and largest affiliate network in the world. It has been around for more than two decades and is a subsidiary of AOL. There are more than 300,000 affiliate programs available on the Commission Junction website. Commission Junction offers a variety of commissions, including CPA, CPL, and CPS.
Shopify
Shopify is an eCommerce company that provides a software solution for online stores. It is also the world’s largest affiliate network for online retailers. Shopify has over 800,000 merchants using its affiliate program. The Shopify affiliate network has a large number of high paying offers and low competition rates.
TE-FO
TE-FO is an Asia-Pacific focused affiliate network that offers a mix of product and service offers. TE-FO is best known for its wide range of products, including gift cards and vouchers, dating services, travel services, health and wellness, and information products.
Digistore24
Digistore24 is a German digital reselling and affiliate marketing platform. Everything they do, comes down to one simple mission: Help as many enterprises as possible, small ones and large ones, to have success online, by making their business processes as simple as possible.
Affiliate marketing is a great way for publishers and brands to monetize their content. There are a handful of networks that rise above the rest.
Amazon Associates is the world’s largest affiliate network, with an estimated $1.5 billion in sales paid to publishers in 2017.
CJ Affiliate by Conversant is the largest digital marketing services provider.
Commission Junction by Web Marketing Today is the oldest and largest affiliate network in the world.
Shopify is the world’s largest affiliate network for online retailers.
TE-FO is Asia-Pacific focused affiliate network that offers a mix of product and service offers.
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