As newbie bloggers, first ambition may be to get approved from Google for their AdSense program. In 2012 I started my blog and after 5 months first time I applied for Google Adsense account but they rejected my application. After one month I applied again, this time, Google approved AdSense account, now I’m getting a decent revenue from that.
Is Google Adsense is the only source of income for Bloggers? Definitely not. Maybe you know about affiliate marketing. A lot of bloggers making tons of dollars every month through affiliate programs. Affiliate program is a great way to make money on the Web. So what is an affiliate program? As web definitions, it’s a type of performance based marketing. The Affiliate marketing networks have 4 core players they are the merchant, network, publisher and the buyer or customer.
If you have a blog with a good amount of visitors if you work properly, you can earn a decent amount of money from affiliate programs. You can promote the product in many ways, such as just display ads of the product or write an article about the product the benefits of the product like that and just link to the products that you talked about. When your readers click on the link and buy the product you will get the commission for the sale that referred by you. Commissions are different, some companies paid the publisher 5% of sales some companies paid up to 50% of the sales and some rare companies will pay you up t0 80% for single sales. Some programs give a referral fee to the publishers.
Ready to try affiliate? The next step is choosing best trustworthy affiliate programs who pay your commissions properly. A lot of companies have their own affiliate network, but we want to choose the right programs. Here we go with best affiliate programs for small and medium sized blogs.
1. Amazon Associates
Amazon.com who shows to the world about what is an affiliate. Is it really possible to make money with Amazon Affiliates? Yes and its possible. Almost every person in the US, UK, and other European countries they have an Amazon.com account and through online Amazon, Inc sells tons of products. From Books to Advanced computers from mobile phone to Kindle users can buy everything under the sky from Amazon stores.
One of the world’s popular Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net using Amazon Affiliate programs from near 10 years. Since 2003 he made $420,000 from Amazon Affiliate programs. Your blog is small or medium you can try Amazon networks because it’s trustworthy and they have a wide range of products.
It’s easy to get approval from Amazon affiliates. Most Bloggers dropped the network because amazon paid 4% commission for the product sales in the beginning and for most products can go as high as 8% depending how many products you sold out. Don’t just think about a book sale just worth $10 or $20, think about higher value products like Television, Cameras and you will get paid good commissions.
Why can you opt Amazon affiliates? It is a trusted brand for buyers, they don’t rethink to buy a product from Amazon stores if they like their product. Amazon had a wide range of products some in one visit your referral customer may buy more than one product you will get the commission for anything he buys in 24 hours.
Also, read how my friend Shashank Gupta made Rs 50,000/- from Amazon Affiliate Program in his step by step guide.
2. Rakuten LinkShare
Rakuten Japans largest eCommerce business company. Rakuten LinkShare corporation runs their Affiliate marketing and Lead Generation. According to the reports of Blue Book top 20 Affiliate Networks LinkShare took the number-one spot with over 10 million affiliate partnerships.
Now LinkShare offers over 2,500 affiliate programs and once your account gets approval you can apply to any products if they approved your website you can show their ads. You need to get approval from LinkShare for your each website or blogs. Individual sites will need to apply to individual programs.
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LinkShare is a trustworthy network and I recently received their payment cheque. Once you have received a cheque from them, then you can opt for direct deposit.
Also, LinkShare offers referral programs. The company pays $1.50 for publishers if they refer someone to their network.
3. ShareASale
With more than 3,000 merchants of affiliates, ShareAsale is one of the popular and widely used Affiliate networks. The affiliate marketing network founded by Brian Littleton in Chicago, the USA in 2000. For Bloggers who targeted Blogging related sales ShareAsale.com is the best place.
ShareASale.com offers a wide range of program categories like Webmaster Tool related products, Marketing, General Web Services, Family, Domain names and Hosting etc. One of the popular WordPress StudioPress genesis frameworks is a part of ShareAsale network. You can promote the product as banner ads or through deep links.
The payment threshold is $50 and the payment made via cheque or direct deposit to your bank.
4. ClickBank
One of the popular old affiliate network. May be if a blogger plans to start affiliate programming he will start with ClickBank. Anyone can easily register and get approval from ClickBank.
On Clickbank, you can promote any product you are interested. Clickbank merchants never say no to your requests. ClickBank offers you more than 45,000 digital product to promote as an affiliate and a high commission of up to 75%.
Compare to other affiliate programs Clickbank allows users can use any promotional method to promote the product like paid ad traffic. There are no more restrictions on product promotions. Now Clickbank provided services in over 200 countries.
5. Commission Junction
The webs favorite affiliate program and one of the oldest started in 1998. Operating worldwide and largest affiliate marketing network in North America. The company is owned by ValueClick Inc founded by Santa Barbara. Commission Junction (CJ) also offers PayPerCall program gives users commission for the leads they generate.
Fortune 500 like companies are customers of commission junction. A trusted network by millions and every merchant has tons of marketing materials and banners. Unlike ClickBank in CJ, publishers want to manually apply to individual merchants.
Other Networks?
A lot of companies run affiliate programs. Here I wrote about best affiliate programs and trustworthy networks any small and medium sized bloggers can run. Other popular Affiliate networks are Pepperjam, MxBounty, RevenuWire, eBay partner network, Avangate, etc. Try your best network that suitable for your blog and your promotion methods.
