Affiliate marketing is a very large
industry and has become a key source of online income for many thousands of
professional bloggers. With more and more online businesses becoming involved
in affiliate marketing, more opportunities have arisen for bloggers, like you
and I, to make money with their blog.
In this
post I will go through some of the most popular affiliate marketing platforms.
Shareasale
ShareASale
is one of the largest affiliate networks. The Shareasale platform has about
4,000 merchants listed, of which over one thousands of them are exclusive to
them. ShareASale publishes a large amount of data on each of the offers they
are running, these include:
·
Earnings per Click
·
Reversal Rates
·
Average Sale Amount
·
Average Commission
While these
figures aren't guarantees of payouts you can expect, they're certainly very
helpful in assessing a campaign.
The
advantages of ShareASale include:
Large
Partner Network. The 4,000+ merchants include more than 1,000 that are exclusive.
Easy to
Compare Offers. When trying to choose from the various offers available,
ShareASale make it very easy to evaluate the best ones based on the metrics.
Quick
Payment Cycle. ShareASale pay out on the 20th of every month, assuming your account
balance is more than $50.
Flexoffers
Flexoffers
is another huge affiliate marketing network. They pay you (the affiliate) a lot
faster than others in the industry. It has more than 10 years of experience in
the field. While they do not offer anything that is neither groundbreaking nor
revolutionary, they do provide a solid array of tools and features that will
surely aid you in your campaigns. In addition to the fast payouts, Flexoffers
lets you choose from thousands of affiliate programs to promote, offers various
content delivery formats, and more.
They have
tens of thousands of different affiliate programs to choose from. They have
divided these affiliate programs into dozens of broad and hundreds of sub-categories,
which makes the publisher's life easier to find exactly what would fit into
their niche.
Flexoffers
also has their own affiliate program which is a licence to print money. If you
refer someone to FlexOffers and they earn commission, you also earn commission.
You can earn as much as
50% of any
earnings generated by any affiliates referred by you. How cool is that!!!
The
advantages of FlexOffers include:
Revenue
Share. As I just mentions, if you refer someone to FlexOffers and they
generate income, you get a cut of what they earn.
Dedicated
Affiliate Manager. A lot of networks leave you to your own devices. Not FlexOffers.
You get your own Affiliate Manager to help you get the most out of your
affiliate marketing efforts.
Vast
Amounts of Affiliate Programs. Well over 15k affiliate programs
to choose from and apply for.
Disadvantages
of FlexOffers
Paypal the
only payment option for those who are based internationally (Outside US)
Tradedoubler
Tradedoubler
was founded in 1999 by two young Swedish entrepreneurs. They have offices in
the UK and multiple countries throughout Europe, including Sweden, Germany,
France, Poland and Spain. Their focus has always been to provide smarter
results for both clients and affiliates through technology. In 18 years,
they've amassed an army of 180,000 active publishers, connecting them to over
2,000 merchants in Europe and the UK. Many of these merchants are household
names.
CJ Affiliate
CJ Affiliate
is considered to be the biggest affiliate platforms online; if you have worked
in the affiliate marketing space for any amount of time, you've probably come
across them.
Nearly
every major retailer have their affiliate programs on CJ Affiliate (formerly
Commission Junction), which makes them as close to a one stop shop as you can
get in the affiliate marketing business. Most retailers have multiple ad sizes
available for affiliates, which gives you better control of the offers you show
on your blog.
With such a
wide array of advertisers on the CJ Affiliate platform it makes it relatively
easy to compare and segment different offers. Finding the affiliate tracking
code to place on your blog is also straightforward; once you're approved to
promote an offer, you can be running lots of different offers on your site in
just a few short hours.
The
advantages of the network are:
Large
Partner Network. CJ Affiliate has over three thousand advertising partners, many
have lots of creative sizes and various affiliate link options.
Reliable
Payments. They offer a net-20 payment term which means that you'll get
your commission paid out in a timely manner each month.
Powerful
Reporting Options. The reporting suite from CJ Affiliate is pretty impressive,
which is a big advantage for marketers who plan to spend a their time
optimizing their sales performance.
Disadvantages
of the network include:
Steep
Learning Curve. While the reporting capabilities are great, they're also
quite difficult for beginners to get to grips with. You'll need to spend time
in the dashboard before you're comfortable navigating the reporting suite and
can then start to take full advantage of the tools on offer.
Limited Customer
Support. Due to the large number of affiliates and merchants, it's
understandable that customer support is quite limited. But only having a
contact form as the main method to get in touch with the support department can
be restrictive.
Rakuten
Rakuten
LinkShare is considered to be one of the oldest affiliate partner networks, it
is now a fair amount smaller than some of the bigger players in the affiliate
industry. There are a few slick features of Rakuten LinkShare that
differentiate this platform from the rest.
For
example, they have the ability to rotate through the various banners
automatically for a product which is a huge advantage when trying to optimize
your offers. Instead of having to manually select which ad you want to run on
your blog, LinkShare lets multiple versions rotate with only one small piece of
code.
LinkShare
also allows for more flexible "deep linking" to individual merchant
landing pages, this allows for increased customization of the types of
campaigns you can run.
Advantages
of LinkShare are:
Ad
Rotation. This may seem like a pretty minor feature, but it can make a
significant difference when it comes to optimizing your ads.
Deep
Linking Options. LinkShare lets you choose the page you want to send your
traffic to on their site, giving you more flexibility for promoting different
affiliate offers.
Disadvantages
include:
A Much
Smaller Network. LinkShare have around 1,000 partners – this is considerably
fewer than the bigger networks like CJ Affiliate or ShareASale.
Unpredictable
Payments to Affiliates. Rakuten LinkShare only pay out to their
affiliates once the commissions are collected from their partners.
Affiliate Window – (AWIN)
Previously
known as Affiliate Window but now officially referred to as "AWIN"
after acquiring Zanox a few years ago, this network claims to work with over
13,000 active advertisers and 100,000 publishers (affiliates). Founded in
Germany, AWIN's merchants primarily hail from Europe (especially Great Britain)
although the U.S. network is growing rapidly. AWIN is currently active in 11
countries.
Established
in 2000, this company has since grown into one of the most well regarded
affiliate networks in the UK, as well as the world. Currently, it boasts of
over 1,600 brands across 77 sectors in 11 territories worldwide.
They also
provide a simple, user friendly dashboard, as well as an array of useful tools
that can definitely help you boost your affiliate marketing campaigns.
Viglink
VigLink
works a bit differently than other affiliate programs in that it is
specifically designed for bloggers. Instead of affiliates picking and choosing
which merchants to work with, VigLink uses dynamic links that automatically
change to work with merchants that VigLink has determined are offering the
highest conversation rates and/or commissions at any given moment.
In effect,
VigLink works as the middleman between a publisher (blogger) and merchants by
scanning the publisher's content and automatically creating links to publishers
that are chosen "in real time" based on their payout/conversation rates.
This makes VigLink a very hands-off affiliate program for publishers who prefer
to focus on content instead of managing their affiliate links.
Niche
Information
VigLinks
works with all types of advertisers/merchants but does categorize them by
"trends" or what's popular. It's important to note that this
information about trends comes from third-party sites, not VigLink itself.
Product
Types
VigLink is
primarily about selling physical products but also does work with some
digital-only products and services.
Average Commission Rate
VigLink
allows affiliates to filter between CPC, CPA, or both CPA and CPA offers. The
commission rates are set by the merchant, not VigLink.
Who is it
for?
VigLink is
an intermediary platform, so it can serve as a backdoor for affiliates who have
previously been banned/suspended from working with other affiliate programs
like Amazon. And while you can choose specific merchants or offers, VigLink can
be set up to work automatically by scanning your published content and dynamically
generating affiliate links, making it a great choice for established content
producers who are looking for a simpler way to generate revenue via an
affiliate program.
A quick
round-up of the pros and cons of this program:
Pros
of VigLink:
Ø
Works well across websites/social media/apps.
Ø
One-page dashboard is very simple to use yet powerful.
Ø
Great for bloggers who want a more hands-off affiliate program.
Ø
A good option for people banned from Amazon or other affiliate
programs.
Ø
Can be set to dynamically update links to maximize your income.
Cons
of VigLink:
Ø
You have to be approved by each merchant separately.
Ø
The "automatic creation of links" needs to be fine-tuned
(esp. the WordPress plugin) in order to maximize earning potential.
Ø
Huge disparaties in payouts between merchants/offers.
Ø
Only pays out once a month.
Ø
VigLink will take a healthy slice of your commissions/income.