Why use an affiliate network?

Affiliate networks are a great tool for internet marketers. They basically do all the leg work, you just need to advertise and boom, you get paid. They handle all payments (both yours and people who purchase products), transactions, refunds and tech support. Some affiliate networks are larger than others, containing thousands of products for you to sell!

Because each network has many products, you only need to create one username and password in order to sell hundreds of products. You don’t need to create multiple accounts which is very convenient. Once you find a product all you need is the link they give you. Your network will track all traffic coming in through that link and pay you when a purchase or lead is made through this affiliate link.

Another great reason to use affiliate networks is that they track many statistics for you in one convenient location. Say you have 15 products you are promoting all from one network. You can easily log in and see how many times each of your links was clicked, how many leads you made, how many sales you made and your earnings and much much more.

Top affiliate networks

Commission Junction (CJ) is the largest affiliate network…and my favorite. They have thousands and thousands of product and partner sites. Many websites run their affiliate programs through CJ, which is nice because once you have an account all you need to do is hit a single sign up button for the site you wish to promote for. For larger sites you sometimes get instant approval, others take longer, but most of the time you usually get approved within a single day. CJ has products from basically all genres. If you can’t find it here, you probably won’t find it anywhere.

Clickbank is one of the easiest to use but can sometimes be limited in their product selection. All their products are electronic (ebooks, e-courses, etc.), which means they can be distributed instantly to the customer and have a 30 day return policy. With Clickbank you never need to be approved for any items. With just an account your good to go on selling any product in their site.

Linkshare is another huge network affiliate, similar to CJ. Their product scope is a little smaller and deals more in things like webhosting and VOIP (voice over ip). They also have electronic products but most are services. Again, like CJ, you must be approved before you can promote any particular product.

Shareasale has many products with a diversity in many areas. Definitely worth taking a look at.

Some others worth mentioning:

• RegNow
• Performics

Don’t forget to check out my post on Pay-Per-Click Advertising if you haven’t already!