Affiliate marketing is the referring of other companies products and services to your website viewers, in return for a commission of any sales your customers make. This is done through inserting partner company affiliate links within your website content, resulting in your visitors clicking through to your recommended product or service.
There are a lot of affiliate marketing websites out there that will aid you in this process, but not all affiliate marketing programs pay the same commission rates. I'm going to show you the best affiliate marketing programs for your online home business. My hope is to help you build your affiliate marketing business by using the best programs and websites in the industry.
What is an affiliate marketing program?
The hard part about affiliate marketing can be keeping track of all your affiliate links from each individual company you want to promote on your website. Luckily, there are a few industry leaders that have made this much easier by allowing you to gather and store all your affiliate marketing links and commissions in one location.
The following companies are the best affiliate marketing programs that I trust and recommend.
The Top Affiliate Marketing Companies
Skip using these companies at your own risk. They will make your life a lot easier and your online home business much more profitable.
Flex Offers
Flex Offers is one of the largest “umbrella” affiliate marketing companies in the industry and has partnered with over 11,000 well-known retailers around the world. Their approval process to get affiliate links seems to be much smoother and quicker than other companies. If I were to choose one company to start with, Flex Offers would be that company.
==> Click here to start your free Flex Offers affiliate marketing account
Commission Junction
Similar to Flex Offers, Commission Junction has been around for ages as well. Their retailers are many and it has been said that of the 500 largest retailers, Commission Junction has over 65% of the market for affiliate marketing links. I will say the approval process for new affiliate marketers seems to be a bit harder and longer process.
==> Click here to start your free Commission Junction affiliate marketing account
VigLink
VigLink is a newer and more modern affiliate marketing company. They have developed a way to make affiliate marketing even easier for bloggers and website owners. Rather than having to apply for each individual company to receive an affiliate link, they simply have you insert a snippet of code to your website, then scan the entire website on a regular basis. They then insert affiliate links for you to any and every company that has an affiliate program. Commissions are paid through the VigLink account.
==> Click here to start your free VigLink affiliate marketing account
Amazon Affiliates
Amazon affiliates is the affiliate program for Amazon.com. You can sign up as an affiliate for a free account, then you get access to their entire product mix, and can promote any product on your website. The nice thing with Amazon Affiliates is the number of products you are able to promote. The downside is their commissions are relatively lower than other companies. They usually pay up to around 10% of the sales. You do get however a 24-hour period that you will get paid for everything your referred customer purchases, whether it be the product you referred or a different one.
==> Click here to start your free Amazon Affiliates account
Rakuten (LinkShare)
Rakuten falls in the same category as Commission Junction and Flex Offers. They have been around for years. They partner with big retail companies like Best Buy and thousands of others. Their approval process is a bit strict as well, making the turnaround time to get new affiliate links a bit slower. Their commission rates are pretty much industry standard with any other affiliate marketing company.
==> Click here to start your free Rakuten affiliate marketing account
ClickBank
ClickBank is unique in that its an affiliate marketing company but just works with digital products. This includes training courses, ebooks, video courses, etc. They are great for referring online courses, but the downside to ClickBank is I have found a lot of their products are get-rich-quick companies claiming to sell people programs that will make them millionaires tomorrow (not all the products are like that, but a lot of them are).
==> Click here to start your free ClickBank affiliate marketing account
Which ones should you work with?
Eventually I'd say it's not a bad idea to create your free account with all the above. However to keep things simple, start with Flex Offers and VigLink. Those two will give you the quickest response on getting affiliate links, and have the largest variety of products. As your website or blog grows, then I'd consider adding the others to the mix.
I hope you have found this helpful in making your online home business more effective and profitable. What affiliate marketing companies have you found to be helpful for your website? Post your comments below!
Hei,
Thanks for the great post, I have explored a number of these myself and can agree with you in regards to Clickbank, I was looking through last week for something suitable to promote and it just looked like “Get Rich Quick” scheme after “Get Rich Quick” scheme.
Do you recommend trying to focus on a single company or just going with whoever you can find promoting an affiliate that you want to promote ?
Hi Tony,
I’ve found the most success when you focus on a handful of products that cover all the areas of your niche website. Rather than scattering a bunch of referral links here and there with tons of companies, your only getting a few clicks per link and it takes a while to see a conversion from a click. So by focusing on a handful of highly recommended products and focusing your website content on those few products results in more clicks for that handful of products, which means more conversions. Once you’ve done that, then you can scatter a few other links here and there to take advantage of the potential conversions, but your focus should be on a handful of highly recommended companies. It will give you more exposure, more clicks and more conversions. I hope I explained that OK haha! Great question, thanks for reading!
Good recommendations!
I’ve actually never used Flex! Seeing it as your first recommendation I’m starting to think I may have missed out. I’ve used CJ, Rakuten, VigLink, Click Bank, Amazon, Ebay and iTunes, and have found all of them to be fairly easy to use.
The best affiliate programs I have found in my niche (internet marketing) are these: Kinsta (a web hosting service that will pay up to $500 per referral + 10% monthly recurring commissions), HostGator (hosting that pays flat rate of $50), Wix (will pay flat rate of $100), Shopify (commission can range between $20-$2,400 per referral, + ability to develop and sell an unlimited number of webstores), PROOF (a social proof software a.k.a. Use Proof, will pay 40% recurring monthly, an amount up to $50 per referral), SEMRush (a marketing tool kit with between $40 and $160 per month, per referral, and a 10 year cookie to boot), Ninja Outreach (an email marketing software that will pay 50% per month, per referral up to $300), and I’m considering becoming an Instapage affiliate (landing page designer, recurring commission of 30% recurring, up to $68.70 per month, per referral).
Those are a few of the best affiliate programs in your (and my) niche that pay very well. With these higher ticket items they usually don’t convert until the blog is well-established.
I wondered, since we are in a similar niche, would you have any affiliate programs you would recommend to me?
Thanks!
Great recommendations, Jordan!
I currently use a lot of those you listed, and am excited to look into some of the ones i’ve never used before.
FlexOffers is my number one place for getting good affiliate links and recommendations. A great option for this niche to promote is Shopify. They have a great reputation, and large ticket items. Let me know what you think!
Best of luck!
Cameron