Anyone considering making an income online with affiliate marketing will come across affiliate networks at some point, but what are affiliate networks?
Please note that this article is written with someone who already understands the concept of affiliate marketing in mind.
affiliate networks
When you decide that you want to earn income online with affiliate marketing, you will need to become an affiliate of a company and its products in order to earn a commission when you sell one of their products.
Now, to become an affiliate, the business will either need to have their own affiliate program that you can join for free or they will use an affiliate network that will run their affiliate program for them.
If the company decides that it would rather not have the hassle of running its own affiliate program, then, as just mentioned, it will use the services of an affiliate network which is really like a third party intermediary.
The network will run the affiliate program and all that this implies on behalf of the company. This will include handling new affiliate signups, handling commission payments, tracking tracking data, etc.
The Affiliate
What this means for you as an affiliate is that instead of joining that company to become an affiliate, you will first join the affiliate network, and then when you are accepted into the network, you will apply to join that specific company’s affiliate program.
On a side note, the network will already have plenty of other companies on its books running affiliate programs that you can ask to join as well.
Once accepted into the business program, you’ll have access to all the tools you need to promote products and earn your commissions. The network will send any payment due to you and any issues will be dealt with by the network rather than the actual company you are promoting.
Where are these affiliate networks?
To be honest, you don’t actually have to find them because you’ll discover them while looking for affiliate products to promote. When you find a product and go to join their program, you will either join the company’s own affiliate program or be directed to their program through an affiliate link.
But if you’re interested in networking first to see what companies and products have on their books, here are some of the more well-known ones.
-ClickBank
-Commission Junction (CJ)
-ShareSale
-Affiliate window
-TradeDoubler
Are affiliate networks better?
Whether the product you want to promote is run in-house or by a network, it doesn’t make a huge difference, you’ll still get paid and you’ll still have access to marketing material.
With that being said, I still prefer being an affiliate of a company that runs its own affiliate program rather than promoting a product run by one of the affiliate networks simply because I can more easily get in touch with someone who can help me specifically with the product I’m promoting.