The three main types of affiliate marketing are independent affiliate marketing, involved affiliate marketing, and related affiliate marketing. Focus on serving first, not revenue. Focus on what's best for your audience. To help, we've compiled the 11 best affiliate platforms and networks.
Together, they'll give you access to tens of thousands of stores and millions of products. ShareASale is one of the most popular affiliate networks out there. While Amazon Associates focuses entirely on Amazon products, ShareASale hosts affiliate programs for more than 4,500 merchants, both large and small. Overall, ShareASale is an excellent choice for digital and physical products.
Awin, a shorter rebrand from the original affiliate window, is another popular affiliate network that gives you access to more than 13,000 different merchants. With more than 13,000 stores, at Awin you will find many options for physical and digital products. Like ShareASale and CJ, you'll need to submit an individual request to network merchants. Then, you can generate your links and start tracking statistics.
If you want to promote physical products on your website, Amazon Associates is a good option. While some high-volume affiliates didn't like the change, this change makes Amazon Associates even more attractive to smaller sites, since you no longer have to worry about reaching a certain amount of sales volume to earn a higher commission. CJ, formerly known by the longer name Commission Junction, is another affiliate network that brings together thousands of different merchants under one roof (just like ShareASale). Along with ShareASale, CJ is one of the largest affiliate networks out there, meaning you'll be able to connect with thousands of merchants big and small.
Currently, the exact number is 2,696 different merchants. Like ShareASale, you'll submit an individual request to these merchants from the CJ control panel. Next, you'll be able to generate links and view statistics. I think CJ's affiliate panel has a slightly higher learning curve than ShareASale, but I prefer it to ShareASale once you figure out how everything works.
They also have some smaller stores, although their network is not as large as ShareASale, CJ or Awin (they are “only about 1000 merchants”). It has one of the most attractive panels, in my opinion, and FlexOffers adds more than 50 new merchants per day, so you can always find new offers. The Walmart affiliate program is technically part of Rakuten Marketing, but I continue to give 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 yes, there's a reason for that. Amazon holds almost 50% of the US e-commerce market. Compared to that, Walmart has only 3.7% of the online retail market (eBay, which you'll see below, is in second place with 6.6%). However, when Amazon Associates moved 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 will only give you 3%. In addition, the Walmart tracking cookie lasts three days, while the Amazon cookie only lasts one day (24 hours). Colin Newcomer is a freelance writer hired with experience in SEO and affiliate marketing. Help customers increase their visibility on the web by writing mainly on digital marketing, WordPress and B2B topics.
If you want to connect with truly worthwhile brands with profit potential, check out GiddyUp. GiddyUp focuses on partner marketing, which is their approach to creating performance-based partnerships. Translation? Excellent results for brands and for you. They are totally focused on quality, so you must be a very serious affiliate to be accepted and start to benefit.
If you meet the requirements, we definitely recommend that you try it out. If you're looking for a high-quality affiliate network to work with, you can't go wrong with DFO Global. You get access to a wide range of e-commerce products in a closed, secure and protected brand environment, with high-coverage offers and high payouts as a reward. For serious affiliate marketers who want a program worth investing their time and effort in, DFO Global, with top-notch data analysis and responsive managers at their disposal, is the way to go.
Widitrade is an affiliate, e-commerce and lead generation platform with a wide range of its own and direct high-converting offers with global coverage. The most impressive thing about Widitrade are its original and unique pre-landing versions: they look fantastic and work even better, so you can expect excellent results with this affiliate program. If you venture into PPC affiliate marketing and it works for you in a way that's instilling trust in your audience, I applaud you and wish you continued success. It may take a while to get used to the sophisticated toolbox, but it has great features for more advanced affiliate marketers.
The original Avangate tool merged with 2Checkout, while Avangate Affiliate Network is the affiliate platform you'll want to join. ShareASale is one of the largest affiliate networks in existence, operating for almost two decades, so it has generated a lot of trust in the affiliate industry. A lot has changed since then, and I've learned a lot along the way about affiliate marketing the right way. If it were up to me, this is the only way affiliate marketing would be done, because for me it's the most honest and useful.
So, to conclude, I'd say that you can choose what type of affiliate marketing works best for you: not associated, related, or involved, but in my experience, using your authority and presence in a niche to recommend products that you've used and that have benefited you in some way is the best way to do that. Rakuten Marketing (formerly known as LinkShare) is a popular affiliate network that includes many large merchants. The affiliate marketing cheat sheet offers you three exercises to help you find the products that best fit the needs of your audience. Involved affiliate marketing is when you've used a product or service, truly believe in it, and personally recommend it to your audience.
Your account manager can help you find the best deals to promote and work to improve your affiliate marketing. It's a great way to earn money without having a solid background in the art of affiliate marketing. But affiliate marketing is only a viable strategy if you can find quality products that interest your visitors (and that you can proudly recommend). Avangate Affiliate Network is an affiliate network that focuses on digital products and software, rather than physical products.
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