Most novice digital marketers think choosing an affiliate network is an easy task, but nothing could be further from the truth Therefore, as a first step towards your affiliate journey, it is crucial to know what are the best platforms you can choose to take a step forward in your mission to make money online, without having to leave home.
Thanks to the internet, now anyone with a reasonable audience base can be a brand ambassador of any product or company as part of an affiliate marketing campaign.
Credibility matters the most in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. Contextual content blended with personalization and incentive makes affiliate marketing highly effective for both companies and customers. You just have to be an effective channel between companies and consumers to start earning money. But before you venture into this dynamic world of affiliate marketing, first learn why the concept of affiliate marketing is going to stay in the future.
Why Affiliate Marketing is Important for Publisher Revenue Strategy?
A recent report suggests that that spending on affiliate marketing is likely to cross the $8 billion mark in 2022, that too only in the U.S. Thanks to increasing access to the internet in emerging economies and changing consumer behavior, add with the ineffectiveness of traditional marketing tools, affiliate marketing is going to be more are more popular in coming years. Whether you are an individual publisher, cash-back publisher, web content publisher, discount code publisher, you can earn big money by being in the game creatively.
Your affiliate earning could vary depending on whether you are a beginner, intermediate affiliate, or high-level affiliate and how much time and energy you are ready to invest. As a beginner, you might lose some money in the early days, but by the time you reach low-level affiliate status you will be earning anything around $300 per day. Intermediate affiliates earn up to $3000 per day, whereas high-level affiliates earn anything above $3000 per day. Super affiliates, although there are very few, earn anything above $10,000 per day.
First of all, spend some time finding the niche you want to target. Ideally, your niche should be the area that keeps you motivated and engaged. Once done with your niche identification, you should create a blog to post relevant content and affiliate links. It is all about moving traffic, so follow SEO fundamentals to improve the discoverability of your blog. Don’t forget to make it responsive to mobile devices, you know the reason. Despite all, it will take some time to see your first dollar.
It normally takes 6 months to a year to start making profits from the affiliate network. Meanwhile, it is better to focus on producing quality content, optimization, and promoting across social media platforms. With the right marketing strategy and the best affiliate platforms, you can expect to earn quicker and faster.
5 Best Affiliate Platforms in 2021
Awin
Awin, with over 13,000 different merchants, is one of the best affiliate marketing platforms. Headquartered in London, the platform offers a variety of tools that can help you boost your affiliate marketing campaigns. The merchant list of Awin is pretty impressive and has an easy to use interface.
- Minimum Payout: $20
- Wide range of physical and digital products for almost every niche
- The rejection rate is a bit high
- $5 sign up fee, although refundable on approval
Lemonads
Lemonads is one of the leading players in the affiliate marketing space with over 10,000 affiliate programs available across 200 countries. Lemonads has been listed by the Financial Times as one of the 1000 European companies with the most growth in 2020. Unlike other players, this affiliate platform is the only network that pays affiliates weekly.
- Dedicated and expert support
- Real-Time Monitoring of Performance
- Worldwide partners
- Weekly payment above $100 via wire transfer, Paypal or Paxum
- Easy to use self-served platform with real-time performance monitoring and tracking
CJ Affiliate
The erstwhile Commission Junction, CJ is currently one of the most popular affiliate platforms. You have over 2600 merchants of all types and sizes to connect. Along with some of the big brands like Office Depot, Priceline, GoPro, IHG, and Grammarly, you have several small merchants to start affiliate marketing smoothly.
- A nice back-end dashboard to help you manage your affiliate marketing effort
- Deep Link Generator
- Real-Time Transaction Monitoring
- Minimum Payout: $50 for direct deposit or $100 for check
Rakuten Advertising
With big names like Walmart, Papa Johns, Best Buy, and Macy’s in the merchants-list, Rakuten Advertising offers you a decent mix of big and small merchants to start your affiliate journey. Formerly LinkShare, this affiliate platform has over 1,000 merchants and an easy to use interface with advanced ad display features.
- High-quality Analytics
- Simple sign-up process
- Customer support
- Secure platform
ShareASale
Since its creation in 2000, ShareASale has become the leading provider of successful affiliate marketing solutions. One reason for its success is that ShareASale provides fast and efficient tools, producing accurate and optimized results for its customers.
The platform offers advanced technologies that allow companies to develop their affiliate program. It also allows you to intervene from the structuring of campaigns, to the development of advertisements and data flows.
To also assist the seller in properly observing the behavior of a buyer, ShareASale provides data on all the behavior of its visitors, causing affiliates to adopt specific strategies, in relation to their target audience.
- Real-time click tracking
- Affiliates segmentation
- Wide range of niche for both physical and digital products
- Easy to use for affiliates with multiple websites
- Minimum payout: $50
Crucial steps to success in affiliate marketing
You will always have to know the product very well and the public to whom you are going to promote that product. Hence the niche in which to choose to work is crucial. The affiliate platform is the essential tool to support you in conducting campaigns (follow-up links, tracking, etc.).
Finally, the concept of “cookies” is essential in affiliate marketing. Cookies are used to evaluate an attribution linked to a conversion. This is because cookies collect useful information about the path of a potential customer who clicked on your affiliate link, showing where he came from, as well as his actions on the site itself.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of our review of the 5 best affiliate marketing platforms of 2021. This detailed guide will serve as a reference for choosing the affiliate platform that will help you to configure and manage your affiliate marketing system in the best possible way. .
It is important to know right away that no two affiliate marketing platforms are the same. Therefore, make your choice based on your market niche, preferably one that dominates and that already has a defined target audience.
Now knowing in detail all the advantages and disadvantages of the best affiliate marketing platforms, choose the platform that will give you the best possible conditions to become a profitable online affiliate. Earning by selling the products or services of major global companies, without leaving your home!