Criteria For a Good Affiliate Marketing Program

Affiliate marketing is a method of making money by adding links to products or services in your blogs and social media posts. You will get paid when someone clicks the link or buys something through that link.

Having your website is a requirement for most affiliate programs as it will be the medium of putting the affiliate links to the products. Your promoting product or service should be relevant to your niche or category. 

Before starting affiliate marketing, you should build a wide audience on your website so that your link gets more clicks and promotions. 

Most affiliate programs provide marketing and promotional tools to help with your publicity and reach more audiences. If you decide to advertise your blogs, you have to do it on your own, as affiliate programs usually don’t support your advertising campaigns financially.

What are Advanced Affiliate Programs?

As you advance toward your career, you want to choose the best and most reputable programs which pay the best. Your experience will help you easily choose these programs, but as affiliate programs have become common, spam or fake pages are also increasing.

Advanced affiliate programs will provide you with the best strategies and techniques to retain your existing wide audience and find ways to increase your income. When you have enough experience, you will work less and be paid more. You might collaborate with well-known websites and businesses to promote or advertise their goods and services.

Your journey of finding an audience will end, and people will be directed to your website through your old blog posts, which performed well. 

You will send promotional emails to your existing audience and offer them discount codes when they buy products using your link.

Down below, you’ll find a list of the best programs that are suitable for advanced level:

● SEMrush

● Bluehost

● Elementor

● GiddyUp

● ClickBank

● Widitrade

● M4trix Network

● CJ Affiliate

● Hostgator

● Cloudways

● Affiliaxe

● Algo Affiliates

● Fiverr Affiliate Programs

The Best Affiliate Programs to Begin With

Before selecting an affiliate program to sign up for, you should consider which niche is getting more popular and whether it aligns with your website. Don’t go for trending topics, as they have high traffic for a while and then become extinct.

Knowing what niche to choose will allow you to set goals for yourself and generate more ROI. It will make a clear path for you so you can concentrate better and not get derailed from your track. 

Try not to apply strategies that others or more experienced people are using. Your journey is different from others. You won’t get more audience on your tech blog if you apply techniques used for a health and wellness blog.

You should still look at the guidelines. Knowing the basics, how the system works, what things should be avoided, and what should be done are necessary as they will help you cement your feet in the market.

Things to Consider Before Selecting Affiliate Program

Before selecting the top affiliate program, you must consider a few things. You can find the conditions below:

The Offer

As a beginner, you shouldn’t go after high-ticket affiliate programs immediately because they usually have strict criteria, and with your inexperience, you might not fulfill them. But you shouldn’t choose an underpaying program either. Know your worth, calculate how much time and energy you will put into the articles or blog posts, and then choose the program that provides you value and money for your hard work.

Quality of Products

Before endorsing a product or service to others, it is advised that you test it first. It builds your credibility and will help you grow your audience accordingly.

Don’t go for programs that provide the low-quality product but are paying high money. That is a red flag; they might misuse your credibility and hard work.

Convenience

A good affiliate program always provides helpful tools for marketing and promotions to its affiliates. Read the reviews left by other affiliates about how good the program is. See if they make use of the analytics and real-time data.

Also, notice if they support their affiliates by providing a support email or helpline. If they value you, they automatically value your service and might increase your commissions eventually. Only join those programs which make communications and services easier for you.

Payout Structure

This is a crucial factor. The greatest options are businesses that are open and honest about their payment methods. They should provide you with a detailed sheet where all your blogs are listed according to the links, when your payment is due, the criteria for your payment, and through what means you will get paid.

Always read the complete terms and conditions fine print, no matter how long. If there are any hidden conditions or criteria, you should take your exit from that company because they will annoy you later on, and you won’t have any solid ground to speak against them.

Affiliate Programs for Beginners

We have discussed the methods you should choose before selecting an affiliate program. We personally like some affiliate programs, and we encourage our readers to join them as they are hassle-free and beginner-friendly. 

For your better understanding, we have listed their positive and negative aspects so you can choose which aligns with your goals better.

Affiliate Program	Details	Positives	Negatives
Amazon Associates	Being an e-commerce store, Amazon lines you up with some of the best networks selling products on their platform.	●     Payment On Time ●     Easy Use ●     Tutorials Available ●     Diversity of Products	●     Strict Terms & Conditions ●     Comparatively Lower Payouts ●     Short Cookie Duration ●     Absence of an Affiliate Manager
Impact	It helps businesses to grow partnerships.   They support the following partnerships: Ambassadors, affiliates, social influencers, and mobile apps, among many others.	●     Variety of Niches ●     Best User-Interface and Dashboards ●     Guidelines for Beginners ●     Fast Acceptance	●     Error in Functionality ●     Backend Issues
ShareASale	It works with Awin networks and provides lucrative technology to help affiliates and sellers to find a common place for working together.	●     Over 1000+ Merchants Available ●     Wide Selection of Categories ●     Smooth Application Process ●     Availability of Metrics	●     Outdated Portal Interface
ClickBank	Being one of the biggest affiliate programs in the market with over 6 million clients worldwide, Clickbank provides a great opportunity for affiliates to work here and widen their reach.	●     Prior Approval of Merchant Not Required ●     Recurring Commissions ●     Amazing Payouts ●     On-Time Payment	●     High Competition ●     Saturated Platform ●     Return rates are High ●     Interface is Outdated
Rakuten	Rakuten has more than 150,000 authors and brands worldwide, which makes it a good place for beginners to start their affiliate marketing careers.	●     Interactive Dashboard ●     Unique Performance Metrics ●     Helpful Account Managers	●     Metrics are not Shared with the Affiliates ●     Low Approval Rate ●     Not the Best Commissions ●     Interface is Outdated

How to Choose an Affiliate Network?

The choice of an affiliate network will decide the success of your website. Your audience will get the wrong products if you sign up with a disreputed affiliate network that promises you big money. It will make them stop trusting your website and credibility.

Choosing an affiliate is based on a lot of factors. The main ones should be their payment structure, how they manage the analytics, and whether they pay your money on time. We have listed some more in detail below:

Quality is Greater than Quantity

If the company or brand brags about the fact that they have a lot of publishers and are a big program, then it must be a red flag. Because the more people in a company, the lower the paycheck, the slower the customer service, and there might be delays in payments.

Method of Working

If your affiliate is based in the U.S, then they will use a tracking and analytics system suitable for the U.S demographics. There's a possibility that their clicks won't be recorded if your audience is located elsewhere in the world.

So, make sure you know the company's methodology and how they process information. If there is a dashboard present, that's a huge plus. You will be able to monitor the analytics, and you can estimate the money earned as well.

Transparency

Some “black box networks” hide information from their publishers. They don’t tell them from which website the traffic is coming. You will be handed an invoice at the end of the week or month, which wouldn’t disclose the audience’s information. So, you’ll be clueless about your website's traffic and might get underpaid.

Binding Fee

An affiliate program will never ask its affiliates for fees or money for signing up. Affiliate marketing is based on performance, meaning they will pay you based on the number of clicks or buys you get. 

If they ask you for a fee, they cannot guarantee traffic to your website. Give your affiliate program 3 months, and if everything is still deserted, move on to another one.

Best Gaming Affiliate Programs

If you are a gamer or have been around gamers, you would know that they are willing to spend unlimited amounts of money on this hobby. Games are expensive, but true gamers always find ways to complete their collection and enjoy their hobby.

For this reason, the gaming industry is always booming. A gamer won’t step back if a game is paid or if there are any in-app purchases. So, gaming affiliate programs always pay a high-ticket price to their affiliates, and that is why gaming is a good niche to get in.

Following are some of the best gaming affiliate programs for you to choose from:

Gaming Affiliate Program	Commission Rate	Cookie Duration
Razer	1%-20% per sale	15 Days
Final Mouse	25% per sale	30 Days
Bose	2%-3% Per Sale	30 Days
Logitech	4% Per Sale	30 Days
Green Man Gaming	2%-5%	30 Days
Kinguin	5%	30 Days
Fanatical	2% – 5% on video game sales	30 Days
Astro Gaming	5%	30 Days
Zygor Guide	50%	60 Days
Modded Zone	5% per sale	90 Days

5 Recommended Blogger’s Affiliate Programs 

The best way to monetize your blog if you don’t sell products or services is through Affiliate Programs. Many affiliate programs cater to bloggers and help them make considerable money.

But make sure that the niche should be related to your website or exactly like it because your audience might get confused if you put together a lot of things. They might question the credibility of the information, and your bounce rate will rise.

Below are five of the best affiliate programs that we found suitable for bloggers:

1. Hubspot

Commission Paid: 100% of the first month’s revenue or recurring 15%

Cookie Lifetime: 90 Days

Hubspot is one of the most credible CRM platforms providing marketing and promotional tools to thousands of users every day. Its plan ranges from $50 to more than $3000 per month, and customers readily buy these plans, so the payouts increase rapidly.

Hubspot gives you the choice of two payout methods:

● A one-year 15% recurring rate

● A flat rate matching up to 100% of the first month’s revenue

When you join HubSpot's affiliate program, you gain access to a vast, distinctive inventory, all of which are meant to help you produce the best possible income with a fixed-rate matching up to 100% of the first month's earnings.

2. ConvertKit

Commission Paid: 30% Recurring

Cookie Lifetime: 30 Days

ConverKit is a new email marketing platform that provides a landing page and sign-up form templates and assists with email campaigns for brands or companies so they can increase their customer base.

Their affiliate programs are primarily for customers who can recommend ConvertKit’s products to their website and audience base. For every paying customer or webinar subscriber, they pay a 30% lifetime commission rate.

There is no cost to sign up for the program, and the earning potential is a very enticing offer, with options ranging from $29 per month to more than $2,000 per month. 

3. Elementor

Commission Paid: 50% per sale

Cookie Lifetime: 45 Days

Elementor is the producer of 7% of websites worldwide due to its unique drag-and-drop builder. Users can customize their WordPress website building with a plethora of widgets, design tools, integrations, and website templates.

As an Elementor affiliate, you will make 50% of each sale. Five price series, ranging from $49 to $999 annually, are available for the software. Affiliates can proactively advertise different plans to targeted groups due to the wide range of pricing tiers.

Affiliates can make up to $10,000 per month through Elementor’s affiliate program, so that it can be a profitable choice for many.

4. Sendinblue

Commission Paid: €5 for each account creation & € when someone buys a subscription

Cookie Lifetime: 90 Days

It is a digital marketing platform that interconnects its users and businesses through CRM, chat, email marketing, and marketing automation, among others. With 175,000 users worldwide, Sendinblue is a rapidly growing platform.

It has separate earning streams for bloggers and agencies.

Due to its free and reasonable pricing plans, Seninblue provides an appealing revenue possibility for bloggers and publishers as they will receive €100 for each paying customer. 

5. Teachable

Commission Paid: Recurring 30%, which can add up to 50% with bonuses

Cookie Lifetime: 90 Days

Teachable is a credible platform for creating beautiful and interactive courses for schools and other educational purposes. With 186 thousand active courses and 18 million students, Teachable is usually the first choice for most organizations looking to make sublime courses for its students.

Teachable is appropriate for a wide range of specialized areas, from Facebook ads to advice on cake baking. A recurring 30% commission pays for the referral's monthly subscription price through Teachable's affiliate program. You can make $150 each month through the pricing tiers of $29 to $499 each month.

Ending Statement

If you want to monetize your blogs, you can use the affiliate marketing option. You shouldn’t worry about what niche to choose as you can get a wide selection of them. Just make sure you choose the category that best represents your website. Always research the market before choosing an affiliate program, so you don’t waste your energy and time. 

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