Top 10 Affiliate Programs For Bloggers and Marketers to Earn Online

Affiliate Marketing is one surest way to earn money from the internet. In fact, it is the simplest method to start making money online!

Before starting with affiliate marketing, you don’t need to create your own products before you can start selling, there are thousands of products online available on reliable stores online and you can start promoting and earn commission from every sales.

Majority of my earning comes from affiliate marketing and for about 3+ years and I have already earned a lot of $$$ by promoting and selling other peoples products.

To be frank with you, when you start with affiliate marketing, it will seems too difficult to make even a single sell, but once you get the hang of it,you will simply love affiliate marketing business.

When I started my affiliate marketing – I was promoting amazon products – It took me about 4 months before I made a sale! And that single sale made me believe me that affiliate marketing is REAL and not hype. I keep on improving, right now, i make over $1,000+ monthly from my niche sites promoting amazon products.

There are lots of affiliate programs that offer the opportunity for marketers to make money from promoting their products. But before you will proceed to chose an affiliate program, first you should set your priorities according to your passion.

How To Choose A Right Affiliate Program?

You can easily find affiliate networks relating to every niche. But you should know that every affiliate network is not highly converting and before choosing any program, you should have kept below mentioned points in your mind:

* It is a reputable brand (Ex: Amazon, Ebay, Clickbank, Template Monster etc). If it is not then research more about it on the internet. To get more sales, you make sure that people trust them. If they trust the brand then they will easily buy from them.

* How much commission they are offering? – It is a very vital point to consider while choosing any affiliate program. For example, Amazon offers 4 to 6% percent commission on every sale. On the contrary, Clickbank gives 50 to 75% commission on every sale you made.

But people have more trust on amazon as compare to clickbank. The point, I am trying to make here is that low commission doesn’t take you away from any affiliate program because the trust factor plays a very important role while purchasing.

* Payment Method & Frequency – It is very important for some affiliate marketers because most of the affiliate programs pay their affiliates through Paypal.

Maybe you know or not, Paypal is banned in some countries. But most of the programs offer other payment methods also like paying through check or direct deposit.

Payment frequency is also a key point to note that how many times you can get paid in a month, it is weekly,bi-weekly or once in a month.

* Read Reviews – If you personally don’t have any idea about the legitimacy of an affiliate network then google for it and read reviews about it.

Just type google query like this “affiliate program review” or “affiliate program consumer review”. You can easily ask about that program on different forums or from other fellow internet marketers. You should know the perspective of affiliates as well as buyers.

You can literally promote everything on the internet, Only if you are passionate about it. Just choose any network by keeping in mind the above mentioned guidelines.

Always choose reputable affiliate programs. So here are my top 10 affiliate programs that i have used personally and got some pretty good success.

1- Amazon Associates (My Personal Favorite)

Amazon needs no introduction and it is by far the biggest affiliate program that you would have ever used in your online business carrier.

It is a very diversify platform because it carries more than 1 million products in its arsenal. You can literally find products related to every niche. There are people who only work on Amazon products and earn a handsome income.

For me there is only one down side about the amazon affiliate program is the low commission rate. Amazon mostly offers 4 to 6% commission on most of the products, So it is better to promote high price products there to make some good commission.

But the great thing about amazon is that people trust this system and easily take out their credit cards for a purchase. If you sold more than 1 products at the same time then you can earn maximum 8.5% commission on it.

2- Clickbank

Clickbank is one of the best affiliate program that I have ever used. I love it because of the fact that it offers a higher commission up to 75%.

There is a lot of buzz about Clickbank that it is not converting well, I disagree with all of those people because for me it is one of the easiest converting network that I have ever used.

Yup! This is right, there are lots of useless products out there and new affiliate marketer start promoting them. At the end, they don’t make any sale and says that Clickbank is not working.

You have to promote only those products that have a good sales track record. As you may know that Clickbank is a digital products marketplace and having products like digital ebooks, video trainings, software, WordPress themes and plugins, membership sites etc.

How To Choose A Clickbank Product That Sells?

One thing you should know that your time is precious and only put your effort on worthy things. Here are my 5 ‘Golden Rules’ to consider while choosing a product on Clickbank:

* Well Written Sales Copy – Carefully read the sales copy from top to bottom and check for grammatical, spelling and paraphrase mistakes.

* What’s Your First Reaction – After opening the product landing page for the first time, it is appealing to you or not. Either the landing page has a clean and eye catching design or things are just messed up. If you don’t like the design then probably buyer don’t like the design either. Put yourselves in the shoe of buyers.

* Price Tag is Reasonable or Just A Hype – Ok, we assume that you like the sales copy so the next thing is to check whether the price tag of that product is deserving or it is a bit too high. Just think for a moment that you are a buyer, Will you purchase this product on this price tag?

* Check out the product sales track record – For much time this product is active, if the product was there for a quiet time then we will assume that this product looks promising.

* Gravity Matters – Clickbank gives every product a specific gravity on the basis of their performance. In simple words, gravity means that how many affiliate marketers got success while promoting specific product during the last 8 weeks. Higher the gravity, higher the chance of getting a sale and also higher the competition.

3- LinkShare

Linkshare ranked as #1 affiliate network in the year 2012 and 2013. They provide online marketing solutions for your products and services.

If you have a product or service and you don’t want to do all the messy and techy stuff like sales tracking and recruiting affiliates then Linkshare is the perfect choice for you. That is why companies choose linkshare for the purpose of brand promotion.

Thousands of high converting products make LinkShare a perfect choice for the affiliates. I would also recommend you to check out this network because you can find merchants related to every niche there. Toptenreviews.com has also chosen linkshare 2nd best affiliate program.

4- Commission Junction (CJ)

CJ is an another awesome affiliate network out there. I have a decent experience as using CJ to promote different niche products.

CJ is a California based company and owned by ValueClick, inc. CJ is satisfying merchant needs like linkshare by offering serices like media, sales tracking and affiliate recruiting.

Support is excellent and they ensure that their affiliate get paid owing to the effort they are putting to make a sale. For me, it’s worth a shot.

5- ShareASale

Ranked #4 by toptenreviews, Shareasale is a great platform for both merchants and affiliates. This Chicago based company has been in affiliate marketing business for well over 13 years now.

More than 2,500 merchant programs make it a perfect choice for any affiliate to work with it. Lots of positive ratings, performance and having hundreds of high converting products opens the opportunity window for the affiliates. What else you Want?

6- PeerFly

PeerFly is also one the best affiliate program that comes with highest payouts and best offers that converts well. Lots of popular brands are showcasing their products on peerfly network.

Their search system works pretty well and you can find high converting offers in a short span of time there. I like this system because of following reasons:

Highest Payouts
Lots of CPA , CPL , CPS Offers
Payment Frequency (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, 1 month)
Lead Generation Flat Sales Offers
The minimum payment threshold is $50 and payment method includes Paypal, check, wire and direct transfer.

7- Maxbounty

Maxbounty is similar in nature as peerfly but has more offers. As compared to above mentioned affiliate networks, it is a bit difficult to accept by them.

They have strict criteria while recruiting affiliates. Established in 2004 and having more than 16k active publishers (affiliates) make them one of the biggest CPA networks in the town.

8- Cyber Chimps

Cyber Chimps and Template Monster are two world biggest website template store and offers high end professional template for your site.

They are offering 30% commission on every sale you will make. Similar the case with TemplateMonster, world #1 template store with thousands of professional looking themes. If you can’t make a template by yourselves so what, just promote works of others and earn a solid 30% commission on it.

9- ITunes Affiliate Program

I am sure that most of you guys using iTunes to listen music, watch movies and tv shows but had you ever thought that you can earn money by promoting these music and movie apps.

Yeah!!! I am right, you can easily earn commission by referring iTunes apps to your friends and other people. You can join iTune affiliate program here.

10- Freelancing Affiliate Program

I have lots of friends who are enjoying full time earning by working on different freelancing websites. If you have some kind of skill and talent then why not use it to earn some extra bucks.

There are some websites on the internet that offers you to work for the others and get paid. Someone post the project and I do the project.

At the end I earn some $$$money. But this opportunity is for those who have some sort of skills like a web developer, software developer, database developer, SEO Expert, graphic designer etc.

But if you don’t have any of the above mentioned skills but you are good at marketing then just promote these freelancing websites and once someone joins the website by using your recommendation link, you earn commission on it. Some of best freelancing websites are freelancer.com, elance and odesk.

Final Thoughts

I know this article is a bit too long, but it is worth reading. All above mentioned affiliate programs have high positive ratings and i have used some of them personally. You can choose one or more than one affiliate network to fulfill your needs.