You get paid commissions for selling other people’s products or services. You display banners or text links on your website, and you get paid for each reader who clicks on them and takes the desired action (which can be a sale, or simply a free subscription to a service). This is why this kind of advertising is also known as Pay-Per-Action (PPA).
Although some companies manage their affiliate programs by themselves, many of them handle their affiliate program management to affiliate networks, which you need to join if you want to use those programs.
Advantages of affiliate programs
- Control: you decide which programs and which banners or text links you display on your websites.
- Big potential: there are programs which pay up to $200 per sale, so if your blog is in such a niche you have the opportunity to earn more than you’d have earned from PPM or PPC advertising. Besides, there are programs which pay you commissions for a simple form submit, with no financial obligations for the subscriber. These programs usually have a higher conversion rate, and they can be very profitable
- Having a blog is not a must: if you don’t feel like setting up and running a blog, you can earn from affiliate marketing by promoting the programs in other ways: PPC campaigns or email campaigns.
Drawbacks of affiliate programs
- Pre-selling is often required: you’ll see that the simple action of stuffing banners in your sidebars doesn’t lead to lots of affiliate earnings. If you want better results, you’ll have to write about the products and include the affiliate links in your articles.
List of affiliate programs networks
AdultFriendFinder - RECCOMENDED !
For sure the best ever program, well-known website, pays affiliates with no exception, as long as they don't cheat.
Very easy to use, offering many affiliate programs, NeverblueAds can be a good choice for beginners. Make sure you give a real telephone number when you subscribe, because they require telephonic confirmation before accepting new members.
Another affiliate network suitable for beginners.
Additional to the above mentioned characteristics, ShareASale offers affiliate data feeds, which means that you can automatically import and display on your site hundreds of products, and in case the producer makes changes to their offer, you just have to import the data feed again and your site will be automatically updated with the new offer.
One of the most known affiliate networks, with only one major disadvantage for beginners: if during 6 months you don’t make any money, your account will be suspended and you’ll have to open a new one (and to apply again for approval with all merchants you had campaigns for, plus you’ll have to change all your past links).
Very well-known affiliate network, with very good commissions, but restrictive for some countries like Romania and Malaysia.
New members approval time: 2 business days.
One of the newest affiliate networks, PepperjamNetwork approves new affiliates in less than one hour (at least during business days).
Approval of new members takes a few working days.
Very well known and very trusted by buyers all over the world, Amazon is easy to implement on your blogs, but the commissions are much lower compared to other affiliate networks (due to their trustfulness amongst consumers).
They have a few different types of advertising available, and they seem to convert well on products blogs (such as digital cameras). Chitika is a Pay-Per-Click network.
Another Pay-Per-Click affiliate network which seems to be very suitable for product reviews blogs.
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