Last Updated on February 5, 2021
Affiliate Marketing Industry is on a boom. So are the Affiliate Networks.
More and more people are getting attracted towards it. Are you one of them?
For someone starting with Affiliate Marketing, choosing the right product and right network can help bring in the first sale quickly and easily.
Affiliate Marketing has been around for quite a long now and is one of the oldest forms of Marketing known to human.
Affiliate Industry has grown a great deal since the late 90’s. It’s no more restrained to the offline world.
Companies in the United States alone are spending more than 5 billion dollars in Affiliate Marketing.
According to Rakuten Marketing, the Affiliate industry will grow to a whopping $6.8 billion mark by 2021. That’s huge, isn’t it?
Almost every company today has its Affiliate Program to promote and sell their products and services. Some are big enough to manage their programs on their own while other SME’s are outsourcing it to Affiliate Networks.
An Affiliate Network works as an intermediary between the publisher (affiliates) and the merchant in return of a small commission from every sale done through the network.
These networks have an inventory of numerous products of merchants and a huge army of affiliate marketers.
Affiliates find the product they love to promote and merchants find the promoters for their product.
Networks come into play mainly due to two reasons. One, a big brand or a company does not want to invest time and resources in its affiliate programs hence they outsource this job to the well established Affiliate Networks.
These Affiliate Networks handles and manages the transactions, tracking, delivery, and all other technical stuff. They even provide customer support and other useful marketing tools for making things easy.
Second, small companies or small vendors who cannot afford to start and manage their own affiliate portals and those who are tight on advertising budgets, take the route to these Networks to list there products and services.
That being said, if you are new to this blog or just in case haven’t about the terminology “Affiliate Marketing” you can head over to this detailed post about, What is Affiliate Marketing?
And if you’re feeling lazy enough to click-through the article and read, let me just quickly brief you up on this.
When you refer a Product/Service to someone and that someone ends up buying that product, you get a certain amount of commission out of this sale. This is known as Affiliate Marketing.
Now, the product you’re promoting can be a physical product like a hair-dryer or a digital product like a software application or a dating offer or an app install or a membership lock-in or a yearly/monthly subscriptions or an Affiliate Network itself.
It’s best to choose a recurring commission affiliate marketing program that pays you everytime the customer renews the subscription of a service, for a lifetime.
Talking about the affiliate programs, there are mainly three major types. Pay-Per-Sale, Pay-Per-Click, and Pay-Per-Lead.
Pay-Per-Sale being the most popular and widely used affiliate program pays the affiliate marketer for every sale that happens through the unique affiliate link of the publisher.
Pay-Per-Click model pays commission to the publisher for every valid click that happens on the affiliate link and leads the prospect to the merchant’s website or a product page. A sale is not mandatory for making the commission.
Pay-Per-Lead programs give commission to the affiliate marketer when a prospect lands on the merchant’s website through publisher’s affiliate URL and fills out an information form. Thus for every form filled or every lead captured, a commission is paid.
1. ClickBank
It is one of the biggest and most popular affiliate networks out there. Clickbank is also one of the oldest affiliate networks out there.
Its FREE to join and anyone can join it by filling some necessary details. The review process is somewhat strict and professional to avoid low-quality spammy traffic.
Clickbank is very particular about its anti-spam policy since user experience is a priority for the platform.
Clickbank has a huge inventory of products to choose from. Initially, it used to be just digital products selling e-books, e-courses (Make Money Online) or software but over time it has started listing physical products too.
The payouts are weekly and are well managed by the company. Approval for promoting a product is super fast and automatic.
Clickbank even has a joint venture program that allows even higher earnings but you have to go through a strict approval process to become a second-tier Clickbank partner.
Clickbank is a great platform for beginners with a huge sea of opportunities to promote products on niche blogs.
2. Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is the worlds largest affiliate network with over 1.5 million sellers on the platform.
There is not a single network out there that comes close to Amazon when it comes to the number of merchants selling their products.
It’s easy to register on Amazon Associates and become Amazon’s Affiliate. And yeah, you can register for FREE of course.
Amazon is the largest e-commerce website in the world. Needless to say that you will face trouble finding the right product.
The brand trustworthiness of Amazon makes it easy for you to promote and sell products on the platform.
It’s one of the best affiliate networks for beginners as you can choose any product in your niche and start promoting it with just a couple of clicks.
There’s even a set of extra tools from Amazon to up your marketing game, using which you can create an ad banner for any product you wish to promote.
You can write reviews and articles to promote products.
The payouts are monthly and commissions range between 1-10%.
All you need is a web property, be it a blog, website or a social media page to start with Amazon Associates.
Amazon even gives you 180 days to crack your first 3 sales, before your account gets fully active.
3. JVZoo
JVZoo is best suited for internet marketers as it only contains an inventory of digital products.
You will usually find offers for Internet Marketing, E-commerce, Online Courses, and Online Softwares & Applications.
Since its inception in 2011 JVZoo has climbed up the ladder pretty fast and is one of the most trusted and easy-to-use platform.
You can join it for FREE even if you don’t have a blog. The signup process is simple and you can start promoting products from the very first minute.
Same goes if you want to signup as a merchant. JVZoo hosts your products and offers on its platform and pitch it to the affiliates.
There is no hindrance in getting started with the platform and the dashboard looks clean and organized.
JVZoo also gives you instant payouts for your sales once you qualify as a pro/trusted marketer.
You don’t have to wait a day or week or month to get your payments. It gets transferred to your PayPal account instantly as the sale happens.
JVZoo makes a profit by charging a small amount of commission from the merchant and the affiliate after the sale occurs.
JVZoo is famous for its 6 figures product launches that happen almost every other day. Merchants head over to this platform to launch their product on a huge scale.
If you’re an experienced marketer, JVZoo will even give you instant access to its product launches and pre-product launches.
JVZoo also lets you host or create your own landing pages on its website to make promotion super easy for you.
JVZoo is a great pick if you are a professional internet marketer and knows where the potential customers are.
4. MaxBounty
Maxbounty is yet another great affiliate network founded in 2004 that only focuses on Cost-Per-Action/Acquisition (CPA), Pay-Per-Call and CPL campaigns.
It doesn’t contain any banner ads that you can place and promote on your blog.
Maxbounty also claims to be an affiliate friendly affiliate network where affiliate’s needs and interest are best-taken care of.
Though you will find only digital products on the platform with no physical product offering which can be a deal breaker for some.
While on Maxbounty you will find offers related to Real Estate, Finance, Video Games, Dating, Market Research, Health & Fitness, and numerous lead generation offers for marketers.
Maxbounty currently runs more than 1700+ active campaigns that are mostly in the business niche.
The payouts are weekly and a minimum threshold of $50 is required to withdraw payments.
Maxbounty has a robust customer service and a very strict approval process, that includes a telephonic confirmation as well. All this is done to keep the platform spam-free and trustworthy.
Maxbounty is very specific about the rules and regulations for the merchants as well as publishers.
You will often find big brands promoting their products on Maxbounty. If you have the targeted traffic then getting success with Maxbounty is easy.
The user-interface is clutter free and the dashboard looks clean and simple for a newcomer.
5. CJ Affiliate
Formerly known as Commission Junction, CJ Affiliate is a great place to start with your affiliate marketing journey.
It’s one of the biggest and well-known names in the Affiliate Marketing Industry that was established in 1998.
You will find almost every type of offer on CJ Affiliate. Many big brands turn to CJ to promote their product and services.
It has a huge inventory of products and services that pay well to the affiliates.
The signup process is easy and FREE. CJ Affiliate even has tie-ups with many TV commercials.
If you plan to promote any product from CJ, you will be provided with multiple Ad sizes to suit your requirements.
CJ Affiliate UI is delightful and user-friendly. You can easily track your affiliate link and measure your earnings.
There is no scarcity if advertisers on CJ as there are more 3000 advertising partners on the platform.
You can promote mobile apps installs and purchases, digital products, lead gen forms and more.
The payment term is net-20 and you get paid on a monthly basis.
Although the customer support is not that great for CJ Affiliate.
6. Rakuten Marketing Affiliate
This is another great Affiliate Network from Rakuten Inc. though not the biggest network around.
It was founded in 1996 and has been nominated as the number 1 Affiliate Marketing Network for seven years in a row.
Rakuten provides you with some cool tools to promote offers. Like Ad Rotation and Deep Linking.
With Ad Rotation, the Ad Banner on your website gets optimized and even changes multiple times to show Ads of different products that you are promoting. It’s a great feature.
Deep Linking enables you to target your traffic to a specific page on their site making it easy for you to track your audience.
Brands like Walmart and Lacoste can be found on this network.
Rakuten provides you with Affiliate Links, Ad Banners and Search to promote your products.
Payment structure is not so smooth though. You only get paid after your commission is received by the merchant.
7. ShareASale
It’s one of the largest Affiliate Networks with over 4000 merchants registered.
And more than 1000 merchants out of which are exclusive to ShareASale.
Big brands like Zazzle, Dollar Tree, and Craftsy are one of the merchants on ShareASale.
You can choose from a large variety of products that are stacked under 40 different categories.
The user interface is above average and dashboard looks pretty much organized.
Creating an account on ShareASale is FREE and hassle-free.
Account and product approvals are given instantaneously.
Once the product is approved for promotion, your dashboard will reflect the affiliate links and Ad banners.
Finding the best offers to promote is a piece of cake on ShareASale due to its calculated metrics.
Payments on ShareASale are given out on 20th of every month with a minimum threshold of $50.
8. Peerfly
Peerfly is the most organized Affiliate Marketing Network I have come across.
The inventory includes digital as well as physical products which can be promoted through CPA campaigns.
Peerfly has a robust second-tier affiliate program that will make you 5% of the sales your second-tier affiliates do in the first year.
You can choose from a list of 8000 offers that give high commissions and payouts.
Peerfly has a great reputation and trust factor among its affiliates.
You will find brands like Target, CBS and Fiverr on Peerfly.
The signup application process is meticulous and does not allow every other person to become its affiliate but only legitimate users.
It usually takes 72 hours to process your application.
Peerfly has a beautiful website that looks premium and delivers great UI/UX.
The dashboard is super intuitive and very easy to understand even for a new marketer.
Peerfly has a limited selection of products but is quality ones.
Payouts are given every 7/15/30 days with a minimum threshold of $50.
9. Admitad
Admitad is a big network of Cost-Per-Action/Acquisition programs. Founded in 2009 this German Affiliate Network has spread its reach in many nations.
Its an easy-to-use and FREE to join the platform.
You will find reliable products on this network with decent commission rates.
There are many large companies that are promoting their products on the platform.
Though you will mostly find digital products on the platform.
Payouts are regular and customer support is good.
You even get some advertising tools to crack sales.
10. Tradedoubler
Founded in 1999 this Affiliate Network has an army of more than 180,000 publishers and 2000 merchants.
You will find mostly CPA offers on this platform.
With over 19 years of experience in the affiliate marketing industry, Tradedoubler has a global payment gateway and great tracking mechanism for the publishers.
The user interface looks clean and easy to work on. The user experience is also taken care of.
Altogether its a good platform for the publishers and the merchants.
Tradedoubler provides performance marketing and technology solutions to its users.
11. eBay Partner Network
It is also one of the largest Affiliate Networks managed by e-commerce giant eBay.
You can build a profitable affiliate business from this platform that hosts 1.1 billion listings.
You can promote anything you want just like Amazon’s Associates.
eBay is among the oldest players in the e-commerce industry and a name that everyone resonates with.
It has great brand value and people trust eBay. You can leverage all its reputation to make your affiliate journey a success.
Started in 2010 eBay Partner Network has helped many affiliates since then.
It’s easy to join and even easier to choose and promote products.
12. AdCombo
AdCombo is yet another CPA marketing Affiliate Network that contains an inventory of mostly digital products.
It was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Canada.
You can start monetizing with the network within 24 hours of signup.
AdCombo has a good list of quality offers that can be promoted pretty easily to the audience.
The best part about AdCombo is that provides ready-to-use landing pages in more than 40 languages for the offers you’re promoting.
There is no shortage of resources on the platform to help you with every step.
You can signup for FREE and payments are reliable too.
13. Affiliate Window (AWIN)
Formerly known as Affiliate Window, AWIN is a German Affiliate Network with a majority of merchants from Europe, the US is catching up though.
Since its launch in 2000, AWIN is currently 13,000 active merchants and 100,000 publishers strong and functions in 11 nations.
AWIN features 1600 brands promoting products in 77 categories.
It’s easy to understand and work upon affiliate network with a decent looking dashboard that is clutter free and user-friendly.
Big names like Etsy, AliExpress, Hyatt, and HP are working with AWIN.
You will find products from every vertical but AWIN majorly focuses on the financial, sports, beauty, retail, fashion, travel and home products.
Digital and Physical products find space in AWIN’s inventory.
Reports can be tracked in Real-time with AWIN.
AWIN also provide additional marketing tools and resources to help you make more sales.
Commisions can only be tracked once your application is approved to promote a product.
Payments are sent out twice a month with a minimum threshold of $20.
The signup process is not FREE and you need to pay $5 in advance.
14. WarriorPlus
Warrior Plus has been in this industry for quite a long now. Though you cannot tell this looking at their website, as it looks too unpolished and ages old.
You will find only digital products inventory on the network with a prime focus on Make Money Online courses or Free online courses meant to capture leads.
The good part about the network is you get instant payments and you get paid for every product in the sales funnel.
It’s easy and FREE to join the Network and start earning straight away.
Unfortunately, the interface is cluttered and there is a huge inventory of often low-quality products, that sometimes makes it difficult to promote.
On the bright side, the approval process is FREE and easy. There are some offers that pay high commissions.
The tracking system is good and the metrics provided are often useful.
15. FlexOffers
Flex Offers has one of the fastest payment approval in the industry, so you don’t need to worry about your commissions.
It’s one of the trusted Affiliate Networks as well. Being in this industry for more than 10 years now Flex offers is a great platform to crack your first affiliate sale.
You are offered thousands of digital products along with numerous resources to promote your campaigns.
All programs are divided into categories and sub-categories which makes it easier for publishers to choose the right product in their niche.
Interestingly, Flex offers has its own affiliate program that rewards you commissions up to 50%.
There are more than 15,000 affiliate programs to choose from and you also get assigned your own Affiliate Manager to help you in your marketing campaigns.
The payment structure is flexible and anyone can join their network with few clicks.
16. Avangate (2checkout)
When it comes to promoting Software and SaaS products, Avangate is a premium platform for it.
The website and its interface are beautifully built that makes the user experience smooth.
If you are into technology and stuff then this network is probably the best for you.
Avangate has some strict norms in place to keep the network spam-free.
You will mainly find high quality and original content to promote.
Commissions are usually high and are paid timely.
Avangate is also backed by a cloud program for global payments for software.
There are more than 4000 digital products to choose from with HP, Bitdefender, Kaspersky lab being some of the big merchants.
17. RevenueWire
This is yet another good platform for selling digital products.
The network is simple, easy and fun to work on. The UI is clean and clutter free.
Navigation is easy on the platform and searching the right offer is no pain.
Creating an account and getting approval, both are easy in Revenue Wire.
One of the greatest advantages of using this network is, you don’t need to be a registered merchant to promote your product.
The payment process is fast and secure.
It is a good match for a beginner.
18. AvantLink
An amazing network that connects businesses with the publishers in a simple yet effective ecosystem.
Merchants have a full control over their product and its marketing. Every necessary tool or plugin is provided to make the procedure smooth.
All the sales and tracking are well managed by the system and are usually fast.
There is a huge army of Merchants as well as affiliates on the network.
The large inventory of products makes it easy for the affiliates to select the right one.
The commissions are timely and the approval process is lenient as well.
You will not find the customer service up to the mark.
But all-in-all Avantlink is a great pick for you even if you’re starting out.
Conclusion
The list of Top Affiliate Networks mentioned above will be useful for you whether you’re an experienced Affiliate Marketer looking for more options to scale your business or a newbie who knows little to nothing about Affiliate Marketing.
You can choose one or many of these networks to find the best match for your niche. If you’re a beginner I would suggest you stick with one or two affiliate networks initially to avoid distractions.
Whichever network you plan to work on, make sure it compliments your niche and has enough opportunities to scale and progress.
Not all networks are for every niche, you need to figure out the best combination.
And most importantly, choosing the right product to promote is the most crucial part of affiliate marketing.
Many fail in affiliate marketing just because they chose the wrong product at the wrong time and was promoting to the wrong audience.
It can be a little overwhelming in the beginning but eventually, you will find out your target audience and their preferences.
And this goes without saying that Never ever promote a poor or a shady product or any product that you yourself will hate to use, to your audience.
Always remember,
People love to buy but hate being sold to.
So its a wrap then. Will see you in the next post.
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