Today, we are going to discuss the top 5 affiliate programs. As you may know, affiliate marketing is among the largest online industries, and it has become one of the key sources of online income for numerous professional bloggers, entrepreneurs and webmasters.
For those people who are relatively new to this particular online marketing concept, these affiliate programs act as an intermediary between the affiliate marketers who wish to sell their products and services and the vendors who want to provide those products as well as services as the affiliate programs. These vendors work with these affiliates in order to get assistance to get their services and products to the customers.
In short, both the vendor and the affiliate marketer get benefit in this particular programs as the vendor will be able to sell more products and the affiliate marketer will earn a commission for each product that is purchased through his/her website. Most of the affiliate markets earn a good monthly income by simply selling products of other people. You can also produce your own products and then collaborate with one of the top 5 best affiliate programs that we have mentioned here to enlist a large number of bloggers as well as website owners to assist you in becoming financially free.
One of the most salient things about this particular market is that as there is an increase of affiliate marketers, more vendors have become onboard which means that there is certainly an opportunity for everyone. In case a website is gaining a lot of traffic, it is the best time to think about affiliate marketing to earn extra income.
As a blog or website owner, there are numerous ways with which you can easily benefit from affiliate marketing. You should remember that the affiliate marketing program doesn’t need the affiliate markets in order to have their own services or products. Hence, there are no hassles with the shipping as well as customer service for these affiliates.
You just have to place an ad on your website for other vendors, and you will be able to get a commission of each product bought from your website.
Now let’s discuss the basic payment methods of an affiliate program. Generally, there are most of the popular affiliate programs provide three kinds of payment. They are:
1. Cost-per-sale or Pay-per-sale.
This is the most popular method of payment which is offered by almost all affiliate programs. In this program, the affiliate marketers essentially earn commissions from the vendors every time they will send a customer to the vendor website, and that the customer makes an actual buy. A lot of affiliate programs provide a specific percentage of the sale made as a commission while some of them will pay a fixed rate for each sale made.
2. Cost-per-click or Pay-per-click
It is considered to be the most common and widespread affiliate agreement. In this agreement, the affiliate marketers will be able to get fixed rates which depend on the number of customers who actually click on the different links which are placed on the affiliate website which leads to the vendor website. Here the purchase of the product isn’t necessary in order to earn a commission. All that needs to be done it that the customer clicks on the link and stays on the vendor website for at least third seconds. It doesn’t matter what the customer does on the vendor website. It doesn’t affect the commission.
3. Cost-per-lead or Pay-per-lead
In this case, the affiliates are paid which depends on how many numbers of visitors are sent to the vendor website and then they sign up as leads. For the visitors to sign up as potential leads, it essentially means that the visitors need to fill out the information request form present on the vendor website.
Affiliate programs provide a great opportunity to earn money online but choosing the best affiliate program might not be quite straightforward especially in case you are a beginner. You need to remember that the affiliate programs are not only beneficial for the vendors but also for the affiliate marketer. In this, both of them gets rewarded.
Now, let’s take a look at best affiliate programs that are available:
1. Rakuten Linkshare
It is among the oldest affiliate partner network which is gaining popularity with quite a pace. To wade off all the competition as well as making it more user-friendly, the platform has come up with few distinctive features. One such feature includes rotating various banner ads for the particular products which makes it easier to administer as well as optimise in the longer run. Rather than selecting the ad, you just need to run on the blog by yourself which will allow you to let multiple ads versions rotate with a small piece of the code. The various advantages of this affiliate program are:
- It has deep linking options. The most important advantage of this site is that it provides you with an option of which particular page you want to send traffic to your website. It provides more flexibility when it is about promotion various affiliate offers.
- Another major advantage is dynamic ad rotation. Even though many people consider this as a small feature, these features play quite a significant role when it is about optimising the ads.
- It comes with very simple signup. The signup program is quite simple.
One of the disadvantages of this affiliate program is that it has a small affiliate network. Even though this website had been established quite a long time ago, it isn’t a major player in the business. This actually means that the products which you want to promote aren’t that much.
2. Clickbank
It is among the most popular affiliate marketing program which deals with different digital products like eBooks. This particular website has been around for quite some years, and it is among the very first affiliate marketing website on the internet. Another salient thing about this website is that it allows the people from various occupation to sign up to get a free account. Once you have signed up for its account, you get access to millions of eBooks which other members are selling. The quality of most of the items within this program is, however, debatable. But the commission is quite great and above many of the other affiliate programs that we have listed. The reason why it is considered to be highest rated is its history as well as ease of use.
In order to become an affiliate marketer on this website, you don’t have to purchase them or seek any permission in order to become an affiliate. You simply have to click on the promote button, and then you will have a particular platform in order to create your account. From here, you will get an affiliate link which allows you to advertise the products anywhere. Once any visitor clicks on the link that you have given and then makes a purchase, you will get a commission of that particular sale automatically.
The major advantages of this affiliate program are”
- It has free registration. Unlike different other affiliate programs where you need to pay an initial sum of money, the registration on this website doesn’t cost any money. Also, there aren’t any hidden charges.
- Another key advantage of selecting this program is that you get the freedom to sell whatever you want.
- As a beginner, you might be worried about losing your money. However, this website always pays on time.
- When you think about the commission, you would certainly want it at higher side. This website provides commission ranging from 10 to 75 percent.
- It is the simplest website to use. It doesn’t require any type of prior experience as everything is quite easy to understand.
The only disadvantage of this affiliate program is the delay in payments. You have to be patient at first since you need to meet the threshold for customer distribution and payment.
3. CJ affiliate
As known as Commission Junction, CJ is one of the largest and best affiliate programs for a wide range of famous and well-established companies. This program performs as the intermediary between the vendors who will offer the products to sell and he affiliates who will do all the marketing. This program is quite advantageous as it offers a lot of affiliate programs at the same place.
This will assist you in check the reporting as well as tracking the sales of any particular program that you have decided to promote. You will also get the option to choose from various companies which offer various products and services. These also include things like fashion accessories, electronics, health and beauty products as well as online services like web hosting and many more.
The key advantages of this program are:
- It provides you over three thousand vendor partners who offer millions of products. It makes it considerably easier for you to find and choose the most suitable ad for your website regardless of the particular niche that you concentrate on.
- As this platform provides millions of products that can be advertised, it is quite easy to choose your most preferred goods and services and then start making a profit.
- It comes with impressive reporting capabilities which helps in enabling performance optimisation tweaks that play a quite an important role in their ad configuration.
- This program provides you access to different data. It helps you in finding the right program to join.
The only disadvantage of this program is long delays in the payment because the company waits for the money to be delivered from the vendor before it pays the commission to the affiliates.
4. Amazon Associates
It is the largest affiliate website which provides a plethora of advantages to both sellers as well as affiliates. With over one and a half million merchants on this website, it is the best place for the beginners to get started with affiliate marketing. This website comes with an excellent option for various advanced affiliate markets who can easily create their own custom tools as well as websites which have APIs along with the Amazon implementation. In case you are a beginner, you just need some type of platform where you can easily promote all of your products. When it comes to doing it, the most common what is through your website or blog. The best thing about this affiliate program is that you get a choice of products that you are interested in. You can easily promote the products by simply writing reviews or even articles about the products. The essential part of this program is that the earning potential is unlimited. Unlike different other companies where you need to promote a single product, Amazon provides you with a unique link which earns you a commission every time a customer buys any product from the website.
Some of the major advantages of this program are:
- It provides a user-friendly interface which is not only friendly for the beginners but also to advanced marketers.
- There are millions of products which can be bought. It provides you different ads that might interest your visitors.
- This platform has over one million vendors. There is no affiliate program which comes close to this.
- Amazon is among the most popular websites across the entire world. Millions of customers all over the world trust this brand
The only disadvantage of this program is low commission rates which start from meagre percent. This essentially means that you have to generate a larger volume of sales to make your business sustainable.
5. Avantlink
As one of the best affiliate programs, it connects the businesses with different marketers where the vendor can take advantage of affiliate marketing in order to boost their sales. In this website, the vendors have to provide information about the affiliate program and set the commission charges along with all the important details about their products. Essentially, the affiliates can take this information into the market and then earn commission after selling the specified products. The system itself will handle all the sales as well as the commission.
Few of the advantages of this program are:
- One of the crucial and best thing about this website is that you will easily find a vendor who you can easily promote his services or products. This is due to the fact that the program has various merchants who require their products to be marketed.
- Along with numerous merchants who are available, there is a wide range of different categories for you to choose from. This actually means that you can easily find the right product to promote on your website or blog.
- Even though this program has some of the most advanced features, that doesn’t mean it isn’t for the beginners. They can easily jump to this platform. The program has a quite simple as well as user-friendly interface which is very easy to understand.
The only disadvantage of this particular program is that it doesn’t have best customer support. It also doesn’t have any live support. This actually means that you have to contact them through email and this might take a longer time before you get any type of response.
6. 3dcart
3dcart is one of the best ecommerce solutions in the market, and a must-have solution for anyone promoting eCommerce platforms or website builders. If your company works directly with the clients you’re referring, you qualify for our Partner Program, which generates recurring 25% commissions. This is great for Design and Marketing agencies, Webmasters, Payments Providers and Resellers.