Affiliate marketing is the heart and soul of internet marketing across blogging niches. Internet marketing goes much beyond affiliate marketing but as far as most of the bloggers are concerned, it is the sole source of their earnings which fuel their blogs.
As affiliate marketing is so important for us, it is also important to know the best options available to an affiliate marketer. There are many affiliate networks and marketplaces in the world. But can you choose all of them?
The answer is ‘No’.
The primary factors which should drive your affiliate network selection are;
- Ease of sign up
- Payment processing like commission payout
- Customer support
- Availability of products.
- Sales tracking and monitoring reliability
If you are a vendor or publisher, then you should focus on bigger affiliate networks and marketplaces simply because you would like to have more and more affiliates promoting your product but if you are affiliate marketer, then you don’t have such a compulsion.
It is less about the affiliate network itself and it is more about the product you promote. You cannot make sales on a bad product. Now you also cannot ignore the points mentioned above because if you are not getting good customer support or if you cannot get the commission payouts easily and on time, then there is no purpose of doing affiliate marketing.
There are hundreds and thousands of products available in the world to promote and you just cannot bombard your blog with review posts or banners.
So first of all, you need to choose products which are relevant to your niche.
Remember, you intend to sell them. So if your readers are interested in your content related to a particular niche, then they would be interested in the products related to same niche.
For example, if you running a blog on seo or blogging, then you need to target related categories of products like;
- Seo tools
- Link building tools
- WordPress plugins
- WordPress themes
- Email marketing tools
- Web hosting
- Blogger tools
And many more but related to that niche.
You should only pick and promote top products and try to promote products which you have used yourself.
There are many good products which you won’t find on these affiliate networks like hosting and email auto-responder products. These companies offer affiliate programs but they manage it themselves. So you will have to sign up with their programs directly with them.
Now that doesn’t mean no web host or email auto-responder service provider is available on these networks, it’s just that you need to look for them.
For example, if you are looking to join the affiliate program of Getresponse or Aweber, then you will have to sign up directly with them but if you want to sign up with Vertical Response or icontact, you can do that by using Link share or Commission junction.
But still, most of the affiliate networks are good for digital products only except few like Amazon. But as Amazon is country specific, bloggers from other countries who are getting traffic from elsewhere, cannot use that as it is not relevant to them.
Therefore they can’t make much money with it. I mean you can make money with Amazon affiliate program no matter where you are, it’s just that you will have to target US and other countries where Amazon is active for your blog’s traffic.
So if you are looking for best affiliate networks which provide good customer support, product portfolio, established tracking and better commission payout systems then you need to look at the list of affiliate networks given below.
Most of them are established players and as mentioned earlier, you need to pick products based upon the flavor of your blog.
Best affiliate networks and marketplaces for affiliate marketers are;
Clickbank– I am not sure but I think it is the biggest affiliate network in affiliate marketing industry for digital goods. As it provides good services to the vendors, it is widely used by them to sell their products. You can get lots of good products in their marketplace. It is extremely hot when it comes to wordpress , seo and social media tools. As Clickbank is widely used by the vendors for selling their goods, it is a very good affiliate marketplace.
Their payment system is good and provides support for lots of countries in the world so no matter where you are, you can still use them to do affiliate marketing.
Shareasale – shareasale is another good affiliate network which is used by lots of vendors to sell their products. For example we are using thesis theme on our blog and its affiliate program is managed by them. As you know thesis is one of the best selling wordpress premium themes, it is a good idea to join its affiliate program. Thesis theme is a mere example here; they offer other good products also.
They offer checks and direct deposit as their commission payout methods. Direct deposit is not available in all countries so better check it for your country of residence.
Plimus – Plimus is a relatively newer player but you will find lots of good products to promote in their marketplace. They are similar to the other affiliate networks mentioned here in terms of providing good services, tracking and commission payouts. So you can also use them to make money online.
Commission junction – Commision Junction is one of the biggest affiliate networks in the world and it is used by whole lots of vendors. You can find products from all categories to promote here. Even if you are looking for other niches and non-digital products, you can find their affiliate programs here.
JVZoo – JVZoo is also a new affiliate network, at least it has gain popularity in the recent past. Its biggest USP is that it’s most of the products are cheap so easily sellable and commission payouts are instant. So you don’t have to wait for biweekly or monthly commission payouts. They use PayPal to instantly transfer your commission to you.
Skimlinks – Skimlinks is an affiliate network which can be used to monetize keywords in your posts. It can be easily integrated with wordprss, vbulletin and other content management system. It is as good as any other affiliate network mentioned here but if you are looking for internet marketing related stuff, then Clickback, Plimus and Shareasale are better options than this.
E-junkie—E-junie is also very popular among the marketers selling digital content. You can use it to pick the products which you are looking to promote.
Google affiliate – Google affiliate program is new and initially it was launched only in US. Then it expanded to UK also and currently it is available in few other countries. As it is new so the product portfolio is not very big. But as it is coming from Google, every other aspect is as good as you can expect.
There are few other affiliate networks also which you can use but as if you can cover the networks which are mentioned here, you are covering most of the market so we are not going to cover them.
If you have any thought or opinion, please don’t forget to leave your comments.
You have done a nice job on this website and I appreciate the information you provided. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas with us.
i am always looking for informative post.and finally i got this. Thanks for the good resource out here. Thanks For Share with us.
Hi Akhilendra,
How about covering a post on Affiliate Networks in India? There are many such as Tyroo Media, OMG India, VCommission, DGM pro and few more. Let me know if you would be interested in publishing it, I can provide you my inputs (if required).
Thanks
Thanks Vikash for suggestion, i will definitely think about it and let you know in case i need any info. Once again, thanks a lot for stopping by.
Is Google Affiliate available in India Akhilendra bhai ?
Kundan bhai, yes it is available. You can apply for that but i think there are not many indian merchants on that.