Gain Access to Thousands of Affiliate Marketing Companies and Products by Joining These Lucrative Affiliate Marketing Networks

Where do you begin when you want to learn how to start affiliate marketing?

Affiliate networks are the easiest places to start learning how to promote products/services.

What are they?

An affiliate marketing network is a collection of businesses that sign up with a specific sales/marketing platform that helps them get exposure to thousands of eager affiliate marketers like you.

Most of these merchant companies are successful at marketing and selling their goods and services. However, when they utilize the power of affiliate marketers who are willing to promote their products/services to the masses, these companies can explode their sales, reaching way more customers through the efforts of affiliate marketers than they can with traditional advertising and marketing.

Companies that are a part of a powerful affiliate network know the value of affiliate marketers, and they too are eager to have you, and other affiliates, select their businesses for this type of promotion.

This is definitely a win-win situation for both parties because they’re willing to pay affiliates a percentage of the sales when people click on the affiliate links you share with people visiting your online blogs, websites and social media accounts.

Here are two of the best affiliate marketing programs for beginners:

Amazon Associates

The Amazon Associates program gives you instant access to thousands of products sold on its popular e-commerce platform. The great thing about being an associate is that you get to promote products being offered on one of the world’s most popular product-selling platforms.

Chances are pretty good that if you tell a friend you’re going to check out something on Amazon. They just assume you mean the product-selling website – not the Amazon jungle. That’s big-time clout, and you benefit from Amazon’s years of providing a vast array of products to its customers, along with good customer service. That means when people visit your affiliate site and click on a product link that goes directly to Amazon, they already know that they can trust making a purchase from there. That alone can make it easier to get clicks that lead to purchases, which fills your bank account with money earned from those commissions.

Another thing you’re going to like about being an associate is that Amazon makes it super easy to create affiliate links that you can copy and paste to your site pages. Inside your Amazon Associates account, you can use tools to generate as many text and image links as you desire.

Amazon sells a ton of products in numerous categories and niches, which makes it easy to find lots of products to promote for countless affiliate niche topic sites.

How much can you earn?

Commissions are 1-10% and the rate depends on the product category.

Payment threshold: Earnings of at least $10 can be paid out through direct deposit or an Amazon gift certificate. If you choose to be paid by check, you must have at least $100 in earnings. For earnings that are less than $10 your commissions roll over into the next month.

Cookie duration: 24 hours

Important note: After you apply to Amazon, your account is on probation for 180 days (5-6 months). During this time, you must have 3 qualifying sales through at least one of your affiliate links to gain approval from Amazon to keep your affiliate account.

If you don’t meet this requirement, Amazon states that “Your application can be withdrawn if there were not enough qualifying sales for 180 days after your application was submitted.

They also state that “We’re unable to reinstate your account or Associates ID after it’s been rejected.”

Learn how to get those three sales by signing up for my FREE email course, How to Earn Your First $100 with Affiliate Marketing.

Impact

Impact is another big player in the area of affiliate marketing management, and it’s been around for quite a number of years, steadily growing in influence. Formerly known as Impact Radius, there are thousands of brands using it for affiliate marketing management. That means that you have the opportunity to promote products and services from top brands in sectors such as retail, hospitality entertainment and sportswear.

Getting accepted into this affiliate network is going to take a bit of work on your part. It wants affiliates that can prove they can bring plenty of traffic to affiliate offers. The network states that it wants to see “significant website traffic” for all applicants. So, before applying you should put effort into building website traffic for one site to 1000+ per month. This is the bare minimum amount of traffic for a well-organized affiliate site that caters to its audience, and it’s definitely an achievable goal.

How much can you earn?

Commissions vary by advertiser. You can earn commissions for sales and leads.

Payment threshold: The minimum is $10 to get a payout. You can choose to get paid by direct deposit or Paypal.

Cookie duration: Varies and is determined by the advertiser.

ShareASale

ShareASale is my favorite affiliate network outside of Amazon. It’s extremely newbie-friendly for affiliate marketers just getting started. Way back in the day when I was a beginner, I remember how much I liked the user-friendly interface that made it easy to find companies in various niches and products to promote. It’s the same today, and that’s why this network continues to be among the most popular among affiliates at all levels.

The diversity of partner companies and products is fantastic, and you can find more than 21,000 advertisers offering a wide variety of products and services. You must apply to join each advertiser affiliate program and wait for them to accept you before you can begin promoting their items. Some merchants offer automatic program acceptance, while others require a review period.

How much can you earn?

Commission rates and earnings with ShareASale vary. Find out the commission payout by reading advertiser information.

Payment threshold: The minimum is $50 to get a payout. You can choose to get paid by check, direct deposit or wire transfer. If you select the wire transfer option, there is a $29 fee for this service.

Cookie duration: Varies and is determined by the advertiser.

Important note: There are no traffic requirements for new sites, so you can get started quickly. Keep in mind that ShareASale prefers sites that have these qualities – visible branding, relatable content, creator credibility and good visual appeal.

What is an affiliate tracking cookie? A cookie is a tracking code that is embedded into your affiliate ID. This is how the affiliate platform knows how to identify you as the affiliate who earned the commission. Always be sure that your correct affiliate ID is included with any affiliate links you copy and paste to your sites, email messages or newsletters or social media.

Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners

by Donna Gets Real, an affiliate marketer and experienced online content writer.