The Best 2017 Affiliate Marketing Websites

What is Affiliate Marketing For Beginners Video

What is Affiliate Marketing & FAQ

Affiliate Networks

An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliate marketers) who sell products and services and the merchants who create those products and services and their affiliate programs.

For merchants, affiliate network services provided often include reporting, tracking, payment and refund processing, affiliate management, and most importantly – access to a large base of publishers (affiliate marketers).

For affiliate marketers, network services include a central database of available affiliate programs organized by category and popularity to choose from, a simple registration platform for those programs, reporting tools, analytics, and payment processing.

While affiliate marketers are generally able to join affiliate networks for free, merchants usually have to pay a fee to participate in the network. Affiliate networks usually charge an initial setup fee for each merchant and often a recurring membership fee. It’s also common practice for affiliate networks to charge merchants a percentage of the commissions paid to affiliates. This percentage is known as an ‘over-ride’ and is payable on top of the affiliates commissions. But make no mistake about it, despite these fees, the benefits to the merchant for joining these networks is well worth the price. Here’s why…

There are several payout models used by affiliate networks including the two primary models: CPS and CPA.

(CPS)Cost-Per-Sale

CPS, also referred to as PPS (Pay Per Sale), is a low-risk, high-profit, revenue-sharing model used by marketers to lure an unlimited number of new customers to their product or service. Cost-Per-Sale pays a set commission to the affiliate marketer who refers a lead that results in a purchase. Marketers love the CPS model since they only pay a commission after they get paid first by the purchasing customer. It’s in essence free marketing and advertising since the affiliate is the one who produces the lead without any up-front cost to them. This is also why CPS payout commission percentages are so high.

(CPA)Cost-Per-Action

CPA marketing programs pay affiliates when a specific action is taken by the referral or lead. Common actions include clicks, impressions, form submits, sign-ups, registrations, or opt-ins. Since Cost-Per-Action models don’t necessarily involve a direct sale (and involve more risk taking) the payout percentages are far smaller than they are in Cost-Per-Sale. 

The 13 Best 2017 Affiliate Networks

1. Clickbank As a top 100 online retailer with 200 million customers, ClickBank sells digital products worldwide created by entrepreneurs. From advice for getting in shape to healthy cooking recipes and dating advice, ClickBank delivers digital lifestyle products to customers in 190 countries and was founded in 1998.

2. Rakuten Formerly Buy.com, Rakuten.com has grown into a monster for the past 20 years, ranking among the top three e-commerce companies in the world with over 18 Million products serving 20 Million Customers. Rakuten.com is a marketplace with a mission to deliver an outstanding shopping experience and offer a broad selection of products to discover and purchase. The Company empower retailers to build individual relationships and go the extra mile for their customers. Rakuten is located in California, USA and is one of the world's leading Internet service companies.

3. CJ Affiliate by Conversant Formerly Commission Junction, CJ Affiliate by Conversant reaches millions of consumers shopping online through their affiliate marketing network. The Conversant, Inc. companies include Commission Junction, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, and ValueClick Media.

4. Amazon Associates Amazon.com needs no introduction. Amazon is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the United States. It’s affiliate network, called Amazon Associates, allows you to tap into over a million products to advertise to your customers.

VIDEO > How to Make Money as an AMAZON Affiliate Marketer

5. ShareaSale has been in business for 17 years, exclusively as an affiliate marketing network. Their technology receives accolades for speed, efficiency, and accuracy – and their reputation as a fair and honest business is well known within the industry.

6. eBay has 171 million active shopping buyers, 5 million sellers offering nearly $70 billion in gross merchandise annually. Plus eBay has global reach, operating in 13 countries around the world. Many marketers don’t even know that eBay has an affiliate network. eBay has now been online for over 22 years. The ebay Partner Network provides first class tools, tracking, and reporting.

7. 2Checkout, formerly known as Avangate Combined company, with more than 4000 digital businesses in over 180 countries, will bring a unique combination of eCommerce and subscription management solutions to market through various payment models across the globe. Backed by a cloud platform, focuses on online commerce, subscription billing, and global payments for Software, SaaS and Online Services companies.

8. Flexoffers is a premiere affiliate network that builds mutually profitable relationships between strategic, skilled, and trustworthy online publishers and a robust portfolio of 12,000+ popular advertisers spanning all verticals. With over 12+ years of experience in the affiliate marketing industry, they offer unparalleled customer service, an array of optimized data delivery tools, and fast and dependable payments– proving that flexibility is the key to affiliate success. FlexOffers.com was ranked the eighth overall affiliate network in the Revenue+Performance Top 20 Affiliate (CPS) Network 2017 Blue Book survey.

9. Avantlink is the industry-leading technology platform for affiliate for 10 years. Avantlink works hard to remain on the cutting edge with constant upgrades and updates to the their platform, rapid implementation of new tools and technology, and an unyielding emphasis on quality over quantity.

10. RevenueWire is a global ecommerce platform specifically designed for companies that sell digital products online (just like Clickbank). Combined with industry-leading services like AffiliateWire, their ecommerce platform is a player in more than 120 countries.

Bonus 3 More Great Affiliate Marketing Websites

11. ReviMedia is an online lead generation network specializing in owned and operated campaigns for insurance, home services, and financial verticals, as well as exclusive advertisers’ campaigns both focused in the US and international markets. They also own their own proprietary lead management platform called Px.com which offers quality scoring of every lead and insights into performance by key demographic info. ReviMedia is extremely flexible to run campaigns with many different integrations. They pride themselves on their transparency with clientele as well as having flexible payment terms. ReviMedia also offers advertising partners access to their vast direct publisher network of over 2,000 publishers. They consider themselves a one-stop-shop!

12. AdCombo is a CPA Marketing Network, that uses its own in-house technology, that allows you to customize advertising campaigns to reach your targeted audience throughout the globe. They aim at, and hit their target in, encouraging strategic lucrative partnerships between advertisers and publishers to monetize their traffic. AdCombo has offices and co-workings in 5 cities around the globe.

13. AffiBank is a comprehensive and categorized affiliate programs marketplace. Most of the offers pay affiliates a whopping 75% commissions on sales. Most of the affiliate programs listed in AffiBank’s marketplace use AffiBank’s in-house tracking system.

Which Affiliate Networks Should You Choose?

The 13 choices I’ve listed above are the affiliate networks that I’m most familiar with. Most I use today or have used in the past. It’s hardly a complete list of all the good affiliate networks that are out there since there are so many. If you would like to share a network that you really like working with please list it in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

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