Affiliate Marketing

It’s time for the next “real talk” within affiliate marketing

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In full candor, my enthusiasm for partnership and affiliate marketing didn’t start out very high by any standard of measurement. It is not something I hide. I agreed to run a turnaround of a relatively high-profile distressed business in the category. It wasn’t an easy “yes” to the private equity sponsors. It involved a lot of diligence.
It was not lost on me that this is a category that for years had been constrained by its own now-well-chronicled bad behaviors, including PPC and SEO manipulation, opaque arbitrage, click stuffing, grade-your-own homework measurement and a self-enriching game of last-click hijacks. It wasn’t particularly shocking to find that CEOs and CMOs were still putting their most important partnerships in the hands of their business development teams instead of their affiliate teams. It also wasn’t particularly shocking to consistently find that more than 60 percent of a program’s revenue was allocated to less than five partners. Not exactly a recipe for growth.
Don’t misunderstand, collectively we’ve made real progress over the past few years. New narratives have been written, and technology innovation has enabled diversification of partners, equitable attribution and, with it, the new opportunity. New capital has flowed into category businesses, and, with it, the skepticism has given way to optimism and clear progress on the path to authentic enthusiasm from those whom we seek legitimacy (otherwise known as significant increases in category spend).
My colleague Michael Jaconi, the CEO of Button, recently referenced the ongoing effort to expand the addressable market for affiliate and partner marketing with a powerful call-out identifying a potential path for “affiliate companies to escape the enterprise value smurfdom they’ve faced.” Our channel (yes, it is a channel) has finally started to take ownership of taking down the self-imposed barriers to mainstream legitimacy and thereby opening a much larger addressable market. This is due to the fact that the strategies (partner diversification), methodologies (multi-touch attribution and dynamic commissioning) and underlying technologies (automation and open APIs) found in platforms like ours have grown up and are delivering verifiable evidence of the integral role we play in driving performance business outcomes and profitable growth for marketers, partners and creators.
Taking the Next Step and Changing the Conversation
That’s a good start, but it is only a start. To fight this fight, we have to get our hands into it and refuse to settle, in order to move the industry further away from the status quo in favor of a better way for all involved. No CEO or CMO should ever have to question their ability to trust the affiliate channel with their most important partnerships, and there is still a significant road to travel before we get there.
To say that the key to overcoming shortcomings is getting the CEO and CMO on board sounds a little rah-rah simplistic. But if we as a dedicated, evolving ecosystem lean into innovation in all the areas even slightly lacking, the aggregate effect of our active enthusiasm and quest for change is great. The key will be to ensure we’re all speaking from the same script.
Yes, we all wish we had a crystal ball to look to the future five years out. But it’s safe to say that over that time, there’ll be some core themes that we’ll see resolved, as those of us who have been in it are committed to progress. I think, first and foremost, that the legacy network model will continue to fade into the background as it has in all of the other paid channels. If you think about the programmatic display, it went from a network model to a programmatic model. It took a period of years for that to happen. And the larger network models, ultimately, gave way to the programmatic providers, both on the demand side and the supply side. According to eMarketer, fully nine in 10 digital display ad dollars will transact programmatically in 2022.
In order to move the category forward, the onus has been on innovation to really move the channel beyond its last-click history from an attribution perspective. This has been happening, as we collectively raise the bar on both measurement and attribution. In essence, we have to be willing to enable measurement of our channel’s contribution with the standardized tool sets and methodologies deployed against primary channels. So that’s what we’ll see: more innovation, more disruption, more movement away from legacy models and the continued fuel that will come based on the needs of both brands and partners for this category to increase its contribution over time.
The next necessary area of innovation is as much about imagination as anything—making sure we and our clients are reimagining partner types to drive business results. Historically in a last-click channel, an affiliate was generally thought of as a cashback site or a coupon provider. Then there came mass media publishers, accessed through an aggregator or subnetwork model (the result of the primary inventory owner devaluing the channel and handing it to someone else to monetize on their behalf). And now, we're seeing a pretty significant expansion of the affiliate definition to include influencers and even what we might call a performance PR model.
Nontraditional partners that may not have been considered relevant to the affiliate and partner channel before are now in a position to come in. Brand-to-brand partnerships have become much more prominent in our talk track, driven largely by the recognition that the next generation of consumer is buying based on trust and that matching the first-party data sets of complementary brands is a powerful remedy to the loss of targeting resulting from ITP and the deprecation of the third-party cookie. Look no further than the recent growth in retail media ad network spending as consumer goods manufacturers use search and display ads to reach target customers during their purchase journey.
The automation underpinning the growth of the channel and enabling nontraditional partnerships by simplifying administration is a big part of this. The historic manual nature of the channel often romanticized by references to “this is a relationship channel,” without acknowledgement that the ramification of a purely human-based dynamic is a complete lack of access to a diversified scale—is a dynamic that is increasingly falling away. This bodes well for continued growth, but we are still in the early innings.
Together, we must continue to press forward and endeavor to change the narrative around affiliate and partner marketing.
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02
Best affiliate marketing software of 2022

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The best affiliate marketing software makes it simple and easy to earn additional income from your website.
The challenge after is to turn those earning opportunities into useful revenue streams.
Even still, affiliate marketing is the key to generating income from websites that might otherwise struggle to sell advertising space, or else serve as an additional income for those websites already active in the advertising space.
The concept of affiliate marketing is relatively simple: you sign up for a program for a particular product or service, and if accepted for it, you can then use existing marketing materials and/or links with a unique URL. In the event that someone signs up for that product or service using that URL, you earn a commission.
As a way of making money online, it sounds easy enough, but there are a lot of potential complications with affiliate marketing. For a start, the affiliate tracking must be precise and accurate, so that you are rewarded for the sales you actually made.
On top of that, you need products and services of actual interest to consumers. While many big brands are actively involved in affiliate marketing, there are various restrictions that may make them less attractive than alternatives.
For example, the time between a customer clicking a link and making a sale can be a number of days, so affiliate tracking that takes this into account will likely be more favorable to the affiliate marketer than ones that only reward instant sales, and therefore ignore the possibility of browsing.
You also need to actively promote affiliate products, something a lot of website owners overlook - or even overdo. But done right, and with enough traffic in play, it's possible to make income from it.
To determine the best affiliate marketing software, we evaluated various affiliate marketing platforms. We considered how hassle-free the application and acceptance process was, the product catalogue diversity, commission rates, ease of use, and the quality of the products, among other aspects.
Here then are the best affiliate marketing software programs currently available.
The best affiliate marketing software of 2022 in full

(Image credit: Amazon)

1. Amazon Associates
   The best affiliate marketing platform for general websites
   Reasons to buy +
   Easy application and acceptance

Large product catalog

Additional service promotions

Very easy to use
Just about everyone already has an Amazon account and buys from them, so it certainly makes sense to partner with them as an affiliate marketer through their Amazon Associates (opens in new tab) program.
It's free to join, and once accepted to the program you can sell any Amazon product, including third-party ones without getting into individual programs. You also get the opportunity to receive commissions on not only the specific product that was advertised, but any other purchases that are made at Amazon for 24 hours post-referral.
Signing up to Amazon Associates is a generally pain-free experience - unlike some other platforms where you need to apply for each affiliate product/service separately. With Amazon, you have a single sign-up and can promote any of its products and services afterward. This can be especially handy as Amazon frequently do promotions specific to services, such as Amazon Prime or business accounts, making it potentially more lucrative than individual product links.
However, Amazon does change its terms quite frequently, and sometimes this has resulted in a reduction of commission across various product ranges, so that the earnings potential available now is lower than it was a few years ago. Even still, it can be a handy way of monetizing existing links to Amazon that you might be using anyway, and the ease of use is second-to-none.

(Image credit: Awin)

1. Awin
   Is the best affiliate marketing platform for size and choice
   Reasons to buy +
   Huge choice

Easy to use
Awin (opens in new tab) is a huge affiliate marketing platform that accommodates a wide range of advertisers, services, and products.
Publishers can sort through different advertisers to apply for the products or services that might work best, and then if accepted, apply targeted links to generate an affiliate income.
Awin does enjoy a lot of brand companies offering a wide range of products and services, so there is a lot of choice. However, this means that a single brand might offer multiple products that need to be signed up for individually, such as for financial services.
Additionally, some brands can be very picky about the publishers they will work with, and even though you might successfully apply to one service from a company, you might find your application rejected from promoting a similar service by the same company.
Overall, though, despite there being such a huge amount of choice the platform is actually quite easy to use, though applying for individual services can be quite a time consuming, especially if you think your website(s) might be fit for a number of different companies and/or services.

(Image credit: CJ Affiliate)

1. CJ Affiliate
   The best affiliate marketing program for link automation
   Reasons to buy +
   Automation of deep links

Real time transaction monitoring
Reasons to avoid -
Arduous two-stage application process
CJ Affiliate (opens in new tab) is a popular affiliate marketing program with a global reach, formerly known as Commission Junction which goes back to 1998. CJ Affiliate features Product Widgets that are embedded on your site, and can then feature multiple products via a slideshow, collage or grid to increase sales. Additional functionality includes deep link automation to automatically monetize links that lead to a CJ advertiser domain, and real-time transaction monitoring.
While this all sounds good, the stumbling block is the application process. First, you need to apply with your website, which needs to be found worthy of becoming a partner, based on traffic, optimization and quality of content.
However, this is only the first step, as then you need to apply individually to each vendor for the products that you wish to sell, and you may not be accepted into their individual affiliate programs, making this one of the harder programs to get up and running with.

(Image credit: ShareASale)

1. ShareASale
   Best affiliate marketing program with the simplest signup process
   Reasons to buy +
   Wide variety of products

Free signup
ShareASale (opens in new tab) is another affiliate marketer, with a longstanding reputation across eighteen years, and was acquired last year by Awin, an international affiliate marketer. It features a large catalogue of products to partner with from beauty supplies, to branded sports gear, luxury goods, and eyewear- almost 5,000 vendors in total, making it easy to find products that tie into your site.
With so many options, ShareASale uses a Power Rank system to clue you in to the most popular vendors. The signup process to get started has no cost, and is quite painless, with owners of multiple sites able to sign them all up in ‘one fell swoop.’
The drawbacks of ShareASale center around the payouts. The payout threshold can be difficult to reach for newer websites still building their traffic. In addition, be warned that it reserves the right to delete your account if your account balance remains under $25.

(Image credit: Clickbank)

1. Clickbank
   Is the best affiliate marketing program for high commission rates
   Reasons to buy +
   Free registration

High commission rate
Clickbank (opens in new tab) is a major affiliate marketer which has been around for years, with 200 million customers. It features a variety of products to partner with, across many categories, particularly eBooks. It is simple for a novice to get started as anyone can create an online account, and it is free with no signup fee, so it is great for startups.
It is also known for having a much higher commission rate than other affiliate marketers. It even runs a Clickbank University (which opens in a new tab) to teach the ins and outs of affiliate marketing to those new to the field or curious about what affiliate marketing has to offer.
One of the only downsides of Clickbank is that most of the products for sale are eBooks, and while they span several categories, most are lower quality offerings, without brand recognition.

(Image credit: JVZoo)

1. JVZoo
   The best SaaS offering
   Reasons to buy +
   Extensive product range

Additional revenue from recruited affiliates
JVZoo (opens in new tab) takes a SaaS approach to affiliate marketing. Product creators can list their products in their marketplace for free, and JVZoo gets a standard 5% commission on anything that sells - and nothing before that. Marketing affiliates get instant payments to their PayPal accounts as soon as the item sells, with no payout threshold required.
In addition, there is an opportunity to make money as affiliates can get a cut of sales of any affiliates that they have recruited, termed a ‘Second Tier Commission.’ Finally, if the buyer that was referred purchases another product (that was not specifically referred), the affiliate gets the commission - permanently.
The downsides include that payments are only made via the PayPal platform, with no option for direct bank transfers. Also, looking at the top-selling products, they are all digital downloads, and of lower quality, that could potentially lower the quality of a website. Finally, the affiliate marketing commissions will be taken back for a buyer that requests a refund.

Other affiliate marketing software to consider
There are a number of other affiliate marketing software programs available, including some major platforms not yet covered, which either bring together a large number of vendors under one place, or else are large retail platforms in themselves which offer affiliate payments.
Then there are other programs where you don't even need to add any marketing or product information, but instead, have affiliate links or advertising directly automatically inserted into your website pages.
Here we'll look across the board at these affiliate marketing software options:
Tradedoubler (opens in new tab) is another big advertiser, especially in European markets. Like with CJ Affiliate and Awin, you need to apply to different advertisers to be accepted - once that happens it's easy to get started. You can use simple links, or any of the promotional banners provided.
eBay partner network (opens in new tab) is specific to the eBay platform, a huge online marketplace populated by many small sellers. The advantage here is that you can list eBay products and be paid for any link clickthroughs that result in sales, without having to actually market any products directly through eBay itself.
Google Adsense (opens in a new tab) may be seen as less of an affiliate program as much as an advertising solution. However, if you're looking to monetize your website you should probably look to Google Adsense as one of, if not the main, source of income for those pages. While the payout isn't high, it does add up, and can help support your affiliate marketing campaign and revenue.
Skimlinks (opens in a new tab) is a program that replaces keywords in your text with paid-for links, from which you get paid per click. The advantage is that the links work directly in your copy so you don't need to make room for adverts, but the disadvantage is that some malware can do something similar, so Skimlinks might not look the best for your users. However, it's another option to consider on the topic of your affiliate marketing and Adsense to help provide an additional revenue stream.
What is affiliate marketing software?
Affiliate marketing is when an affiliate earns a commission for marketing and selling a company or person's products or services. Affiliate marketing software platforms offer affiliate programs and opportunities to marketers.
How to choose the best affiliate marketing software for you?
With the best affiliate marketing software, you can supercharge your affiliate sales. But you’ll have to look at many factors before selecting the right affiliate marketing software for yourself.
You’ll first want to consider how effortless the registration process is, whether it’s free or paid, and the size, variety, and quality of the product catalog. You’ll want to look at the commission rates across different product categories and the payout thresholds.
And if you’re a beginner, check if the platform offers relevant tutorials and guides.
How to earn money from Minecraft and other game servers
We asked Nick Gillett, Co-Founder and Managing Director at PlayerLands, an online platform that allows developers to monetise their games, and players to buy and trade virtual goods, for his views on how almost anyone can earn money doing what they love doing best, playing games.
Block-based gaming juggernaut Minecraft celebrated its 11th anniversary this year. That’s 11 years of digging, crafting and building that has seen Minecraft become the best-selling video game of all time with more than 200 million copies sold.
For reference, second-placed Grand Theft Auto 5 sits way behind on 135 million copies sold. Nothing else comes close at least on desktop. With that kind of pulling power, it’s no surprise Microsoft forked out $2.5 billion to acquire Minecraft from developer Mojang in 2014.
Incredibly, the momentum behind Minecraft shows no signs of slowing. In fact, powered in part by the vast numbers spending more time at home under pandemic measures, Minecraft saw a 25% increase in new players earlier in the year, and a 40% spike in multiplayer sessions.
But Microsoft isn’t the only one licking its lips as new gamers roll in, hungry for extra content and customised items. Players who run their own servers, which enable Minecraft’s giant community to interact and communicate with each other in a single game world, can also offer new and unique experiences.
It’s an enticing opportunity for any content creator, and even for hobbyists and students who may find they have extra time on their hands and wish to monetise their creations by selling in-game items to fans and followers.
The problem is that handling the admin behind content – processing payments, integrating APIs, and managing security just to name a few issues – can be a slow and strenuous process.
The good news for Minecraft server owners, as well at those involved with other games like Rust, CS: GO and Ark, is that new platforms designed to offer a store-front experience are now available to handle the virtual hard work.
These stores are pre-integrated with leading payment partners, so server owners can have them up and running and taking money in a matter of minutes. What’s more, they have anti-fraud features built-in to ensure that payments are not at risk.
As we head towards what is expected to be a very digital-based winter in the UK and the UK, audiences for Minecraft and other server-based games could grow further still.
Despite the challenges of COVID-19, one positive for any content creator is that there is a huge audience ready to be entertained. Similarly, a positive for any player is that there is a massive amount of content ready to be explored. Let’s connect the two with a simple and secure platform, ensuring many memorable gaming experiences for this year and beyond.
The best affiliate marketing software: How we test
We analyzed many affiliate marketing platforms to narrow down the best ones.
To start with, we looked at the ease of registration — whether the registration was free or paid, and if it required your website to receive a certain amount of traffic. We looked at the product catalogs and assessed their diversity and quality. We considered the payout thresholds and commission rates across numerous product categories to determine which platforms offered the best rates.
We also looked at the interface of the platforms to check how easy they were to use, and whether they offered comprehensive tutorials and learning programs
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03
How You Can Generate More Revenue With Affiliate Marketing

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By Alex Brown, an 8-figure e-commerce entrepreneur & growth accelerator. Co-founder of The Beard Club.
Getty
If you’re building an e-commerce brand then you know first-hand how expensive it has become to acquire new customers.
Not only that, but being dependent on any single channel or platform (Facebook, TikTok, etc.) is a huge risk to your business (such as if your account gets flagged). Channel diversification is absolutely crucial for scaling your brand, and one of the most neglected channels might be your new best friend: affiliate marketing (partnerships).
Here are 10 fundamentals that guided our eight-figure e-commerce brand to an additional $1M in seven months through affiliate marketing—and how you can do it, too.

1. Play the long game. Aim to create relationships that will last a lifetime, because the stronger they are, the more business they can bring you from them and their peers.
2. Have great products and a great brand. It sounds simple, but the biggest partners in your space won’t promote something they don’t believe in.
3. Have great offers. Offering your affiliate’s audience 10% off their first purchase is a recipe for mediocrity. Get creative with offers, and consider what you might be able to offer for “free with purchase” for that partner’s audience, for example. It can convert 50-200% higher than a percentage discount, in my experience.
4. Pay well. Most people only want to pay an affiliate 10% of a $100 sale but will give social media platforms $50 for that same sale. That just doesn’t make sense!
5. Pay on time. The faster you can pay, the quicker they will likely promote again.
6. Build high-conversion landing pages. You should continually test and optimize direct-response sales funnels for affiliates, not just send traffic to your website.
7. Customize. The bigger the affiliate, the more you should be willing to create a customized funnel and customer journey (having their face, logo, name, etc.).
8. Know your audience. Create assets, landing pages and email copy that is specific to the kind of traffic they will be sending. For example, speak to the concerns of a health and fitness audience differently than you would a new mom audience.
9. Reciprocate. Wherever possible, find ways to send traffic to their website in return—whether through social channels or your own email list. Just be careful that you’re doing it according to your ESP’s guidelines and in a way that doesn’t look like a cheesy list swap.
10. Make the most of every buyer. Do everything you can to build a relationship with customers and leads, increase your average order values and, most importantly, increase your lifetime value. This means remarketing to your list continually so that you can afford to pay your partners even more.
    Bonus: Retarget. Combining search and social ads with affiliate marketing can create a "halo effect." Typically, the more channels you have running, the better all of those channels will perform. You may be able to pay more than you think for affiliate traffic. Often, when a partner promotes, it can drive down the cost of search and social ads considerably. The more affiliates promote, the more profitably you can spend on other channels—just keep an eye on your overall company return on ad spend, or ROAS, week over week to be sure.
    As I alluded to in number 10, customers rarely see your product and buy on the spot. Today’s customers need to know, like and trust you to give you a try—which means multiple touch points using multiple channels. Diversifying your traffic sources can make all of your various traffic sources perform better.
    The caveats with diversification are that you will need solid attribution software and really strong fundamentals (like good products, compelling offers and high-conversion sales copy)—otherwise, you are just spending more money in more places.
    As some closing words of encouragement, whether your brand is doing eight figures or you are just starting out, the most essential thing is to just get started. Most of what we try as marketers doesn’t work, but as you weed through what doesn’t, you can find what does!
    
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