So, you have your new Blog or Website up and running.

Congratulations!

Now you must be thinking about the ways to make money from the work you produce, right?

What’s the better way to monetize your blog?

Choose the right Affiliate Programs to partner with.

Yeah!

Affiliate Programs could be the most respectable option.

They are easy to get started with and at the same time, very efficient at producing results.

They provide a third party platform.

And the best part?

These programs build relationships between merchants and affiliates and also track the entire process of affiliate marketing.

Merchants and Publishers sign up for the platform, they try to find each other and start working together.

Inc.com magazine is predicting that by 2020 U.S. spend on affiliate marketing is expected to rise to $6.8 billion.

And according to AWIN’s Affilite Marketing statistics, as of 2016, 84% of publishers and 81% of brands had adopted Affiliate Marketing.

Must Read: What is Affiliate Marketing and how it works?

In this article, I’m going to walk you through the Top 9 Affiliate Marketing Programs you can partner with to monetize your blog or website and also highlighting their pros and cons.

 

• ShareASale

 

 

It’s a trusted name in the affiliate marketing world. It was acquired in 2017 by AWIN, an international affiliate marketer.

ShareASale has over 4000 merchants to choose from and over one million affiliates.

Its merchants feature a large catalog of products to partner with. You can always find relevant products to promote on your site.

They pride themselves for honesty, transparency, quality customer support, and efficiency.

 

Pros:

• Large network to partner with:

As it has a network of over 4000 merchants, you have a lot of options for what product to choose to promote.

Of those 4000 merchants, more than 1000 are exclusive. This means you can find them only at ShareASale, nowhere else.

• Quick payment cycle:

ShareASale pays on the 20^th of every month. But your account balance should be more than $50.

• Easy to compare offers:

It’s very easy to compare the various offers available. This will help you to choose the best one to feature on your site.

• Great features to learn new things:

ShareASale also provides its affiliates with great features to learn new things and increase their revenue. The features include affiliate marketing classes, webinars, and marketing tools.

 

Cons:

• The main drawback of ShareASale is its payouts. The minimum payout amount is $50 which is difficult to reach for the beginners who are still trying to build the traffic.

They deactivate all the accounts if the balance is less than $25.

 

Join the ShareASale Affiliate Program

 

• ClickBank

 

 

It’s one of the oldest and most popular platforms, founded way back in 1998.

It has over 200 million customers in 190 countries featuring digital products such as software, e-books, and membership sites.

No matter what’s our occupation, you can join ClickBank for free and there’s no screening process.

You may find a wide range of products to promote and earn commission up to 75 percent.

 

Pros:

• Free Registration:

There’s no registration fee to join ClickBank as an affiliate.

• Good Commission:

ClickBank is known to offer a good commission to its affiliates. Its commission rates are higher than other affiliate marketers. You can get up to 75 percent commission to promote their products.

• ClickBank University:

If you are new to affiliate marketing, ClickBank also runs ClickBank University to teach its affiliates almost everything about this form of marketing.

 

Cons:

• Lower quality e-books:

Most of the products ClickBank offers are e-books and their quality isn’t that good.

• No digital payments:

They offer payments only through check, direct deposit, or wire transfer.

 

Join ClickBank Affiliate Program

 

• Amazon Associates

 

 

It needs no introduction. Everybody knows Amazon.

It started its affiliate program in 1996, the first online affiliate program in the world.

Amazon Associates is the largest affiliate site with products from more than 1.5 million merchants.

No matter what’s your niche, you’ll always be able to find relevant products to promote on your site.

And that’s why,

This is the most popular affiliate site with more than one million affiliates registered with it.

It’s free and easy to join Amazon Associates as an affiliate.

You can either write product reviews or articles about the products you want to promote on your site.

 

Pros:

• Over a million products to choose from.
• You can earn a commission of up to 10 percent.
• You get a commission on not only the specific product you linked to but all the purchases your referred traffic make post referral within 24 hours.
• Payout threshold is low.

 

Cons:

• The main drawback of Amazon Associates is its affiliate cookie only lasts 24 hours. Purchases made after 24 hours will not earn you any commission.
• Commissions are low in comparison to other affiliate programs in the industry.
• It pays you only by cheque, bank transfer, or Amazon gift card. There’s no digital payment method.

 

Join Amazon Associates Affiliate Program

 

• Shopify Affiliate Program

 

 

Shopify is the biggest e-commerce solution provider on the internet. If you are interested in building an e-commerce store, this is the great platform to build your site.

Shopify provides almost everything needed to run e-commerce business – like website building, shopping carts, analytics, web hosting, store management, SEO etc.

Shopify values its affiliates.

Here’s HOW?

As a Shopify affiliate,

You can earn an average $58 for each additional user that signs up for a paid plan with them.

You can get a flat $2000 if a referral signs up for the Shopify Plus enterprise plan.

And if your referrals sign up for the Standard Plan, you can get $598.

But the real value of Shopify is everybody’s trust in the brand Shopify and the service they provide.

As an affiliate, you are promoting one of the best in the industry.

 

Pros:

• The payout is one of the best. You can earn 200% of your referral’s monthly subscription through Standard affiliate promotion (up to $2400 per sale).
• Brand reputation is very good.
• They provide customer service through live chat, email, and voice (phone).

 

Cons:

• You get the commission two months after a user becomes a paying subscriber.
• Pretty niche products. Though the payout is great, it’s appealing to those who are interested in selling their products online.
• You are never going to get your revenue if the balance is below $25, even if you close your account.

 

Join Shopify Affiliate Program

 

• eBay Partner Network

 

 

eBay Partner Network is a trusted and one of the most popular e-commerce sites.

It is similar to Amazon Associates and functions the same way Amazon Associates does.

The only difference is that products on eBay are sold through auctions.

You can earn money by sharing eBay listings.

 

 

There are over one billion listings.

Just offer your audience links to the things they like. If they make a purchase, you’ll get the commission.

eBay also provides you with a variety of listing tools.

There are simple link generators which help you add a few choice items to your site.

And high volume product feeds that open up your audience to a variety of relevant products.

When you send your audience to eBay and they make a purchase within 24 hours, you’ll earn a percentage of eBay’s revenue.

And best of all,

They’ll pay you even if the auctions take up to 10 days to end.

And your percentage of revenue will be between 50 – 70% depending on the category of items purchased.

 

Pros:

• High Conversion Rate:

With eBay, the visitor to buyer conversion rate is very high.

• Incredible Product Diversity:

You have the opportunity to choose your favorite or the best-selling category from the unlimited range of products.

• Low payout threshold:

You’ll get the payment every month if you have reached the limit of $10.

• Double Commission:

New affiliates get a double commission for the first 3 months.

 

Cons:

• You’ll earn nothing if the auction takes more than 10 days to end.
• For many marketers, especially beginners, the commission structure in the auction model may be quite confusing.

 

Join the eBay Affiliate Program

 

• CJ Affiliate

 

 

Formerly known as Commission Junction, CJ Affiliate is one of the oldest, biggest, and most popular affiliate programs in the world. They have been in the industry since 1998 and has over 3000 leading advertisers and brands on board.

This makes it easy for you in choosing the products after comparing and segmenting different offers.

There are also numerous exclusive offers you are not going to find anywhere else.

This platform also gives the merchants the right data to find and recruit the relevant affiliates.

Once your application is approved, you may start promoting different offers on your site.

 

Pros:

• Very Large Partner Network:

If you do a quick browse on CJ Affiliate site, you’ll find a big list of all the leading brand publisher partners. They have various affiliate link options.

• Reliable Network:

They have been into the business for over 20 years. It makes sense to rely on a platform which has been around for so long.

• You can join CJ performer program:

If you are one of the top performing affiliates, you’ll have the opportunity to enroll in CJ performer program. This will help you in getting additional support from CJ in finding and promoting offers that have great chances of converting.

 

Cons:

• High Rejection Rate:

With such a large network of leading advertisers, there should be more competition among the affiliates.

To start promoting an offer, you have to get individual advertiser’s approval.

And the advertisers being flooded with so many applications, the rejection rate of application is higher.

• Limited Customer Support:

Being a network of such a large number of affiliates and advertisers, CJ’s customer support is very limited.

 

Join CJ Affiliate Program

 

• Rakuten

 

 

Rakuten has been ranked the number one affiliate network for 7 consecutive years.

It’s also one of the oldest and top affiliate marketing platforms. It has been in the industry since 1996.

It has 1000+ merchants. Many of them are global brands in so many categories. They currently boast to have facilitated more than $100 million worth of order in the 12 months.

The main drawback of Rakuten is that it is not for beginners.

It’s very selective.

To become a Rakuten affiliate, you must meet their standards. And if you don’t, they can suspend your account.

One of its features that differentiates it from the rest includes automatic ad rotation.

You don’t need to manually select the ad you want to run on your blog. With only a small piece of code, multiple versions of the ad will start rotating on your site.

 

Pros:

• Ad Rotation:

This feature of Rakuten helps you in optimizing your ads.

• Deep Linking Options:

You can choose the page of advertisers’ site where you want to send your traffic to. You have more flexibility to promote different offers.

• A Service You Can Rely On:

It has been around for long, is an award-winning affiliate, and has partnerships with some big brands. So, there shouldn’t be any confusion in relying on the service they provide and promoting the products they offer.

 

Cons:

• Hard To Get Approval:

If you are new or inexperienced, it may be hard to get their approval.

• Smaller Network:

Rakuten’s network is not as big as major players in the industry like CJ Affiliate or ShareASale. And thus you have fewer options for products to promote.

• Unpredictable Payouts:

You will get your commission only after they collect the payments from their partners.

 

Join the Rakuten Affiliate Program

 

• ConvertKit

 

 

ConvertKit is a leading email marketing platform having a customer base of around 20000.

If you’re a ConvertKit user, you must sign up for its affiliate program since it will cost you nothing to join.

As an affiliate, you can earn 30% commission for referrals that subsequently become customers of ConvertKit. They’ll pay you this commission every month that your referral is active.

How to join ConvertKit Affiliate Program?

 

 

Pros:

• Lifetime Commission:

As long as your referral is active, you’ll get commission and that’s 30%.

• Free, fast, and easy to join for existing users.

 

Cons:

• Not for everyone:

You got to face it. Many of your audiences will not be using email marketing. So it may not be a great platform for you.

• It takes 30 days to confirm the commission:

No commission will be credited to your account until 30 days period has passed.

 

Join ConvertKit Affiliate Program

 

• FlexOffers

 

 

Another big platform in the affiliate marketing industry having over 12000 affiliate programs and 500+ premium advertisers.

Their Affiliate Programs are divided into various broad categories and sub-categories.

As the name suggests,

FlexOffers is very flexible with the recruitment of affiliates and their payments.

It is open to everyone.

They accept all types of affiliates from all over the world.

They also give you very flexible payment options, unlike other platforms that keep you waiting for a month or two.

That’s not all.

One very cool thing about FlexOffers is that they’ve their own affiliate program called FlexRev Program. This is actually a referral program. If you, as an affiliate, refer someone and they earn commission, you will also earn.

And, that is as much as 50% of the commission earned by your referral.

 

Pros:

• Tons of Product Range:

They have over 20 million products in various categories.

• Sharing of Commission:

You can earn 50% of the commission earned by someone you refer to FlexOffers.

• Anyone can join:

Anyone from anywhere in the world can apply.

• Dedicated Relationship Manager:

It gives you your own affiliate manager who helps you in your affiliate marketing efforts to get the most out of it.

 

Cons:

• Commission Not That Great:

Though not one of the lowest in the industry, the commissions they offer their affiliates are a bit lower in comparison to other sites.

• PayPal is the only available payment option to receive payment for international affiliates.

 

Join FlexOffers Affiliate Program

 

Conclusion:

 

There is nothing quick and easy money with affiliate marketing.

It’s not going to make you rich overnight.

The key is value creation for your audiences.

The more value you create for your audiences, the greater will be the chances of making big bucks with affiliate marketing.

Remember:

The interests, needs, and likes of your audiences are the most important factors.

Just choose the affiliate programs you like and sign up.

And align yourself with quality products relevant to your niche.

Learn more and more, get started and earn yourself nice referral revenue.

Let’s finish this post with a quote by Julia Carmen,

What we really want to do is what we are meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Affiliate Marketing

 

Affiliate Marketing is a fantastic way to earn money online. It is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

For Bloggers and Online Marketers, Affiliate Marketing is the most lucrative way to make money online. Some affiliates are earning in millions.

Definition:

According to Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income,

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting another person’s (or company’s) product. Products exist in your target market right now (that people are probably already buying) and if you can become the resource that recommends those products, you can generate a commission as a result.

This is a win-win for the merchants as well as affiliates. The Merchants sell the products or services and earn profits as well as reach potential customers. The Affiliates earn commission by recommending the products to their site visitors.

The merchants pay the affiliates only for their performance and that’s why it is called performance-based marketing. An affiliate has to promote the merchant’s products or services on his site. If he succeeds in attracting and convincing the potential customers of the value of the products and they end up buying the products or services, only then the merchants pay him the commission.

In this article, we are going to focus on the basics of Affiliate Marketing, how it works, how an Affiliate gets paid and how to become a successful Affiliate Marketer.

Who are the main parties involved in Affiliate Marketing?

As per Wikipedia, the Affiliate Marketing industry has four core players:

• The Merchant or Retailer or Brand
• The Network – it contains offers for the Affiliates to choose from and also takes care of the payments
• The Publisher ( also known as “Affiliate”)
• The Customer

Now let’s look in detail at the relationship between these four core players:

 

• The Merchant

Also known as the retailer, the brand, the seller, the creator, or the vendor, a merchant can be a big enterprise or a solo entrepreneur.

A merchant or seller is the party that creates the product. The product can either be a physical object, like electronic gadgets or a service, like online courses.

Suppose you have a product or service and you want to reach out to more and more potential customers. And for this you use publishers or advertisers for a fixed incentive without getting yourself actively involved, then you’re a merchant.

 

• The Network

The Affiliate Network acts as an intermediary between the Merchant and the Affiliate.

It contains offers for the Affiliates and the Affiliates have the liberty to choose the multiple merchants within the network. It also takes care of the payments to the affiliates.

 

• The Publishers or Affiliates

The Affiliates, also known as the publishers, can be an individual or a company. They can be anyone: Bloggers, YouTubers, or the friends of merchants on social media.

If you want to earn money online as an Affiliate, you need to run a review blog or make some videos about the merchants’ products. Through this blog or videos, you try to attract and convince the potential customers of the value of the merchant’s products. If some of the customers make a purchase, you get a commission by the merchant.

You can also promote their products through a website dedicated to finding particular products.

 

• The Consumer

If a product has no end consumer, no sale would take place. And, if there’s no sale, there wouldn’t be any commission to be paid to the Affiliates.

Consumers are the most important players in any marketing system.

You need to make good content and drive more and more traffic to your blog, videos or website so that you can get more potential customers for the merchants’ products.

 

How does Affiliate Marketing work?

First of all, you have to apply for an affiliate program. After you are accepted, you will receive an affiliate link or a unique URL that includes your username or your affiliate ID. You can share that link or URL with your subscribers, visitors and your connections on social networks.

If someone clicks on that link, he is redirected to the advertiser’s website and the Affiliate software records that click. If the online visitor makes a purchase of any product, you will get a commission.

 

How do Affiliates get paid?

The Affiliates receive payment by the following payment terms:

• Cost Per Sale (CPS): If there’s a sale, you’ll receive a flat fee per sale or a percentage of the sale price of the product.

 

• Cost Per Lead(CPL): You receive payment for every completed or validated lead.

In this payment term, you’ll receive payment after people complete actions such as surveys, quote forms, subscribing to the newsletter, downloading software or files.

 

• Cost Per Click(CPC): Here, you receive payment for driving traffic via Ad Clicks. In this program, you must focus on moving the traffic from your site to the merchant’s site.

 

How to become a successful Affiliate?

Getting started as an Affiliate is very easy. Here, you don’t have to worry about creating or storing the products.

Apart from buying the Domain Name and Hosting, there’s no other cost involved.

You can work from the comfort of your home. There’s no special qualification or skill required to start as an Affiliate.

All you need is Computer or Laptop and Internet. That’s it.

 

Following are the tips you can follow to become a successful Affiliate Marketer:

 

• Choose a Niche

Select a Niche you are comfortable with. To post links and advertise the chosen products, you must be owning a website or a blog.

 

• Choose relevant products and services in your Niche

As you already use and have an idea about plenty of products, choose the products or services that best fit in your niche. Always go for the products that are appealing to the target audience and make sure it has a good reputation and is of good quality.

The products you are offering should be relevant to the audience. For instance, if you are running an electronic gadget website, Ads should be something related like mobile phones, laptops, cameras, tabs etc.

 

• Promote products by bringing visitors to your site

If you want to make a commission by recommending products, your affiliate website should get more and more visitors. Free consultation, adding subscribers to your newsletter, making videos etc. are some of the ways to bring more visitors to your site.

You can also use some free advertising tools like SEO, Email marketing, creating backlinks. People also use some paid advertising tools like Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads etc. to drive traffic to their site.

 

• Make a quality content

The content should be given the top priority. Making a list of products is not enough, you should also write reviews on each product. Such kind of content will compel the visitors to click on the link and they will end up buying the products.

 

• Don’t stick with only one merchant

Promoting products from many different merchants will help you diversify the commission you make. This way you will be able to create a steadier stream of revenue for your Affiliate website.

 

• Connect with other Affiliates

You should also connect with other Affiliates in your niche and cross promote your products. There are many Affiliate networks where you can find successful affiliates. Some of the popular ones are Commission Junction, ClickBank, Amazon Affiliate Program, LinkShare, ShareASale etc.