When you are aspiring Affiliate Marketer, one of the biggest challenges is UNDOUBTEDLY, to find the best affiliate network for beginners.
Nothing is more frustrating when you can’t find the place fulfilling your needs. Either being it not in your niche, having ridiculous joining requirements or are super late with the payments.
Don’t worry though!
In my guide, you will see the overview of the 4 best affiliate networks for beginners.
In addition, I will have a short look inside of the one, that comes with in-depth training.
Shall we start?
Things to look for before joining
Even though you sign-up with great affiliate training, you still might want to get exposure outside of it.
Because for instance, you chose different niche than your affiliate training platform does.
In that case, it is good to know your options outside your “home nest”.
But let me tell you one thing, it is not easy to find the one that will fit you.
Firstly, when trying to choose one fulfilling your needs, there are 2 major criteria you want to look for:
Difficulty to Join and Usability.
Difficulty to Join
With that I mean, how likely you will be accepted as a newbie.
While there are affiliate networks accepting you straight away (without even checking your website), you will come across some networks(or merchants) that will make a quite screening before letting you place their links on your site.
Some important data they might check are:
- Website Traffic (Number of People Visiting Your Website)
- Content Relevancy (When Your niche is Health Food, merchant selling Gardening Equipment might refuse your application)
- Other Content Requirements( Rarely, some merchants will ask you to have a specific blog post regarding their products)
As a newbie, you want to look for affiliate networks that accept without those checks from obvious reasons.
No worries, couple of lines further, you will see the best affiliate networks for beginners.
Usability
Under usability of affiliate network you should understand how well is the chosen one fitting your NICHE.
Secondly, how easy is to navigate yourself.
While with some affiliate networks it is easier to find your point of interested, some made it really hard for you.
Especially when starting out, this can be very important fact, you will base your decision on.
Because before you want to place your affiliate link on your website (hoping to earn $$$), you want to be sure where to find those links on the merchant or affiliate network site, right?
Before I will show you the 4 best affiliate networks for beginners, you would maybe like to know the difference between some terms I will use.
In case you know them already, you can skip the following section.
Merchant– Is company having a product or service to sell. To increase their sales they use affiliate program helping them in achieving that.
Affiliate Network– Is place where merchants put their affiliate offers when in search for more affiliate marketers.
Affiliate Platform- Website teaching you affiliate program. Often times those platforms have their own affiliate program. But not necessary.
So, I hope that is clear and now let’s dive in the important part.
What are the best affiliate networks for beginners?
Amazon Associate
One of the easiest to join (and therefore being very favorite among beginners is Amazon Associate).
Although, there are some negative substances you should be concerned about, it is still good point for your start.
PROS
easy to join
CONS
averagelly low commissions, strange “kicking-out” policies
Share a Sale
Place to start when looking for physical goods This website uses a bit outdated web design, that shouldn’t be a big problem for many though.
PROS
new products added daily
CONS
far too often their links are so-called broken links (this can rapidly harm your rankings)
ClickBank
The most popular affiliate network nowadays. Super easy to join, no monthly activity or limits requirements and products from all around the world are some reasons, you might want to join this network.
PROS
variety of products, some hot niches, relatively high commissions (on some products)
CONS
70% of products are low quality, a bit sales pitch
Commission Junction
One of the “early birds” in our list. Commission Junction (CJ) started their affiliate services in 1998.
Since then, they were able to grow their reputation, that even some biggest names moved to their platform instead their own affiliate program.
PROS
variety of merchants to join
CONS
they will most likely close your account if you are inactive 3 months or longer, by some merchants it can be sometimes hard to get accepted (make sense when you consider their brand quality
Why Wealthy Affiliate Could be the best affiliate network for beginners?
I don’t want to brag on Wealthy Affiliate. High chance that you know about its high value already. Additionally, If you haven’t read yet my Wealthy AffiIiate Review yet, you should not miss it.
Along with it great, in-depth and FREE training has Wealthy Affiliate a great selection of affiliate networks.
Those very being very well-organized on the home page and could be found under the “promote” drop down menu button.
Not only is there a filter with a great variety of criteria to choose from such as auto approval remember when when we previously talked about the easy to join measure?), or star rating, but also you have additionally option to adjust your search criteria depending on popular keyword and trending opportunities.
Those two elements are adding such a huge value to your affiliate options.
Let put me that in example. Imagine your niche is Healthy Food.
You see that Sugar Crush Detox is trending opportunity.
As well as that the word “natural” (in the middle column) is popular keyword. Along with the fact that Health&Fitness; is popular categories you know what you should search for.
I know in reality, you can’t always use it so easy, also you want to consider the competition. I hope you got the idea how this can help you though.
So, even if MMO (Making Money Online) is not your chosen NICHE, you can still use the wealthy affiliate platform to find some valuable affiliate programs in your niche.
Where to go from here?
This post was written as a guide for you to be better oriented in this jungle called affiliate marketing.
I know how confusing it could be when you want to earn money online and create passive income, but you don’t know where to start.
Therefore I really hope this short overview helped you trying to choose best affiliate network.
Thank you for a great article.
I want to say this has opened my eyes to more affiliate networks that I can use as a beginner. I had a commission Junction few months ago but had not really focused on it.
You welcome -;)
This is a useful guide for any newbies starting out. Amazon is the easiest to join but you must make 3 sales in the first 180 days. I find their commission rates very low and it's really only worth it for higher priced goods. I have been making fairly regular sales though so it's definitely worth joining once you get enough traffic. Commission Junction is also well worth joining as they have a lot of advertisers in different niches. However, not all accept automatically and you can be rejected. I am also a Wealthy Affiliate member and can recommend their affiliate program search as it has an extensive list for many niches.
Thank you for your tips, Kathy. I am sure that our readers are going to appreciate it a lot.
Hi Julius,
I started my affiliate marketing business with Amazon, so I knew if your website gets lots of traffic, you can make commissions from promoting the products. At the same time, you also need to learn the latest or ever-green marketing strategies, SEO techniques, or keyword researches to rank your articles higher on search engines. In that case, a platform with training courses, keyword tools, and other powerful features should be my pick. Wealthy Affiliate seems like the best route to go!
Thanks for the recommendations.
Matt
Hey there, Matt. Thank you for sharing your opinion with us. Appreciate it. Did you earn any good money with Amazon?
I personally prefer working with Clickbank to any other affiliate network.
Don't get me wrong. I think Amazon Associates is worth it also, but I don't see myself selling physical products ever again.
Focusing on digital ones is much more cost-effective and doesn't require as much effort, I would say. Don't get me started on the fact that most digital products offer %40+ commissions.
It's a matter of taste at the end of the day. The traffic source is also essential but not as crucial as loving (or at least understand) the product you're promoting.
Thank you for sharing your own experience with us. The height of commissions on ClickBank, is definitely a good point to join their network. Also the website is relatively easy to navigate, but what do you think about quality of the products? That’s my only one concern.