Part #5: 10+ Best Affiliate Programs and Networks
Reminder: always start your affiliate marketing journey by building a relationship with your audience and never recommend products you haven’t used or don’t love.
That being said, I want to give you a starting point for finding affiliate marketing programs that might be a great fit for you and your business, and give you some insight into what you should consider when evaluating affiliate marketing websites and opportunities.
Note: I’ve used many but not all of the below networks and programs myself, but am familiar with the others from my research and recommendations from friends and colleagues.
So while I’m comfortable sharing them with you there isn’t any direct financial benefit to me for doing so.
Top Affiliate Marketing Networks
Affiliate marketing networks are platforms you can join to get access to hundreds, sometimes thousands of affiliate marketing products and programs.
Let’s explore a few of the most popular:
Impact
Formerly Impact Radius, their Marketplace was built to offer content creators a seamless way to monetize their work and offer their audiences a lot of value through a huge list of brands looking to advertise and a suite of tracking and automation tools.
With direct access to global brands like Airbnb, Adidas, and Allstate, flexible payment processing, and robust reporting and alerts, there’s a good chance you’ll find them a great fit for your audience and business.
CJ
Formerly Commission Junction, CJ has spent the last 2 decades building relationships with brands and publishers to create an affiliate marketing platform worth exploring.
Advertisers you’ll find here include Priceline.com, Overstock.com, and J. Crew.
CJ also includes some one-click join affiliate programs to make it easy for beginner affiliate marketers to start their journey, while also offering omnichannel tracking (across browsers, devices, etc) and strategic recommendations based on business size, vertical, and region for when you’re more established.
ShareASale
ShareASale helps beginner and expert affiliate marketers alike create profitable long-term partnerships with brands their audience will love.
With 260+ affiliate programs launched every month (businesses like Etsy and Rebook are already on board), a product discovery bookmarklet for quickly generating affiliate links, and a slew of analytics and reporting tools, if you find a product worth promoting to your audience here you won’t be going astray.
Some of my favorite affiliate programs I’m promoting through Shareasale include:
Tailwind – is a great Pinterest and Instagram scheduling program I use every day.
JVZoo
JVZoo is very popular with affiliates who promote internet marketing products. Affiliates have instant access to all of JVZoo’s affiliate tools and training. Sign up to start earning instantly paid commissions today.
Warrior+Plus
WarriorPlus is a great affiliate network and a great place to find information products and courses to make daily sales. You can often make 100% of the first sale and 50% on the upsells. You have to request an affiliate link for each product and not everyone is approved.
ClickBank
ClickBank has done a good job of owning the information product affiliate program space, offering products like online courses and ebooks that you won’t find as readily on other affiliate marketing platforms.
A word of caution: I’ve seen a lot of shoddy products that were created with an earn-a-dollar first approach on offer so be sure to do your due diligence before recommending what you find here.
If the affiliate product checks out, though, this is an affiliate marketing network you can rely on for ease-of-use and on-time payments.
Best Affiliate Marketing Programs
What is an affiliate marketing program?
Beyond the products you can promote, affiliate programs include the commission rates, payment terms, marketing materials, and promotion rules a business with an affiliate product offers affiliate marketers like you.
Again, please do not start by seeing the financial opportunity in these programs and working backward from there to fit your business around them.
These affiliate marketing programs are great examples of what’s available to you as an affiliate marketer so use them, but only if they’re truly going to benefit the audience you’ve built a relationship with.
Amazon Associates
You know Amazon, now you know about their Amazon Associates affiliate program!
They’re the world’s largest retailer so if your business is related to any sort of physical product, you’ll find a quality option to offer here.
Worth noting, Amazon recently caused quite a stir by drastically lowering their commission rates (from 8% to 4% in many categories), which is a good example of why building relationships with your audience and eventually creating your own offerings is so important.
That being said, on top of having the world’s largest catalog, Amazon has poured billions into optimizing their site for conversions and you earn a commission for any product purchased visitors purchase within 48 hours of clicking your links, so they’re still a top recommendation for physical affiliate products.
Ebay Partner Network
eBay Partner Network is eBay’s own in-house affiliate program. And their affiliate program is well worth checking out.
Everyone knows Ebay. They have a wide range of inventory and high conversion rates. When you drive traffic to eBay and it converts into a purchase, you’ll earn a percentage of eBay’s revenue. The commission is based on category-level commission rates and ranges from 40% to 80% (of eBay’s profits).
You can earn even more with a 200% bonus by driving new and reactivated eBay buyers to purchase.
Rakuten Marketing/Ebates
Rakuten is one of the top 3 e-commerce companies worldwide. Rakuten (formerly known as Ebates) offers cash back at over 2,000 stores whenever you begin your shopping through the Rakuten website. And affiliates receive $25 for every referral through their link.
Rakuten also owns many other sites and services, including Ebates, Viber, Kobo, Overdrive, Rakuten Marketing and has invested in Pinterest and Lyft.
From the company:
The industry voted us the #1 Affiliate Marketing Network for eight straight years and we just eclipsed past performance by crossing more than 110 million orders worldwide.
Rakuten and Ebates are joining forces to give you up to 40% cash back at 2,500+ stores. Sign up with Ebates and get a $10 Bonus.
Fiverr Affiliates
Fiverr, the popular marketplace for freelance services, offers a few different affiliate products and services that might be a good fit for promoting to your audience.
These include:
Fiverr, the freelance marketplace offering services for everything from graphics and copywriting to complete websites and custom apps.
Fiverr Business, their suite of premium tools and vetted talent for business owners.
Fiverr Learn, their online courses platform.
Fiverr affiliates, their affiliate program (links to Fiverr on this page are NOT my affiliate links)
If you work with clients who might need support from freelancers available on Fiverr’s platform or have an audience of entrepreneurs, a partnership with Fiverr is worth considering.
In addition to being a good fit for a broad set of businesses, I decided to add Fiverr to my list of affiliate marketing programs because they introduce some interesting commission structures you can find in some other programs.
Many affiliate programs will offer flat commissions per sale.
In Fiverr’s case, this includes a $15-150 Cost Per Action (CPA), depending on the service the person you refer buys.
They also offer percentages of the sale price, 30% for Fiverr Learn courses as an example.
Something you don’t see as often but is very valuable as an affiliate marketer is a revenue share option.
In this case, Fiverr’s “Hybrid” payment structure lets you earn $10 for a first-time purchase and 10% of all further purchases made by someone you refer for 12 months.
The beauty of revenue share commission structures is twofold:
You have the potential to earn a lot more than flat-rate plans
Revenue share smooths out your earnings curves
For example, as people get outside during the summer months, you’ll sometimes see a natural dip in traffic and sales for software-based products as people are spending less time on their computers.
But, if you earn a piece of the monthly fees a person you refer pays for their software, you’re less likely to see a dip in your monthly revenues.
HostGator Affiliate Program
HostGator is a popular web hosting and domain registration company you’ve likely heard of because their affiliate program is so popular.
And because so many different audiences from entrepreneurs to crochet enthusiasts can benefit from having a website, chances are your audience may be interested in a web hosting service.
While I use and prefer Bluehost because I know them, trust them, and have a great relationship with their team, I mention HostGator here because it shows us another element of affiliate marketing commission structures: pay for performance.
What does this mean exactly?
HostGator offers a tiered payments structure based on how many monthly signups they receive from you:
1-5 signups per month: $65/signup
6-10 signups per month: $75/signup
11-20 signups per month: $100/signup
21+ signups per month: $125/signup
Again, please think about your audience’s needs and the quality of the product/service first, and commission rates and structures second.
But if all else is equal between two tools, it’s worth investing your time and effort in creating helpful content and building a partnership relationship with the company that helps you grow your commissions as you grow their sales.
Wix Affiliate Program
Our last affiliate marketing program example is Wix, the popular website building software.
I mention them here for two reasons:
Again, website-related products and services are useful for a lot of audiences, so chances are Wix might be a good fit for you and yours.
They’re an example of one other element of affiliate marketing program commission structures – minimum payouts.
To point 2, many affiliate programs have minimum earnings targets you have to hit to get paid. In Wix’s case, you have to generate at least $300 in commissions before they’ll send your earnings to your bank account.
This is a fairly common practice and thus a nice example of why I say affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
That's it for today, please read the next part!
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