This page is a guide to affiliate marketing in Australia for publishers, content creators and website owners looking for affiliate programs, advertisers and partnership opportunities.
Affiliate marketing – increasingly called affiliate and partnership marketing — allows publishers to earn revenue by referring customers to advertisers through tracked links. Depending on the program, publishers may earn commission for sales, leads, bookings or other actions.
Are You a Publisher?
You may be a publisher without thinking of yourself as one. If you run a website, blog, newsletter, social media account, YouTube channel, podcast or other online audience, affiliate networks generally regard you as a publisher, affiliate, creator or partner.
Influencers and content creators can use affiliate marketing in exactly the same way as traditional website publishers – recommending relevant products, services, tickets, travel or experiences and earning a commission when their audience buys.
Affiliation Marketing
An affiliate program allows a publisher (like us @ Ripefruit), to promote a business’s products or services on its website and earn a commission for successful sales. The publisher places specially coded HTML links on relevant web pages that track visitors referred to the advertiser. If a visitor completes a purchase, the referral is recorded and the publisher receives an agreed commission based on the sale.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks manage programs for multiple advertisers (merchants/brands/advertisers) within a trusted platform. They act as the intermediary between advertisers and publishers, providing the technology to track referrals, record sales, manage commissions and process payments. This allows advertisers and publishers to work together through a single, reliable system.
Affiliate Networks & Partnership Platforms
Affiliate networks and partnership platforms connect publishers with advertisers and brands and best placed to manage publishers’ inventory of advertisers.
Full Disclosure: *Learn More links below include a tracking code that may generate a small return – yep, $ for us.
impact
impact is one of the best international networks with a huge range of recognised brand name advertisers’ coupled with an excellent management interface.
impact: Automate every type of partnership and scale to all new levels. Partnership automation lets you expand your program and scale every type of partnership, including affiliates, influencers, strategic business partners, mobile apps, publishers, and more.
Grow your business rapidly with the Partnership Cloud
Commissionfactory
In our view, Commissionfactory (AWIN) is the best affiliate group operating in Australia with a slick professional platform. 100s of Australian brand name advertisers with campaigns across all industries.
Excellent code generation, feeds, reporting, regular monthly payments and publisher support.
Commissionfactory was created by affiliates for affiliates. This inside expertise lead to the creation of an industry leading platform. The network was built from the ground up with ease-of-use, simplicity and great form and function as its core. The goal has always been about building successful relationships between Affiliates, Advertisers’ and Agencies through transparency, quality and delivering a high level of service.
- commissionfactory.com: Learn more – not affiliated
Awin: Affiliate Window
Awin is a global affiliate network best suited to Euopean publishers’. The Awin group has 15 offices worldwide, 1,100 employees, 225,000 contributing publishers and 16,500 advertisers around the globe. Awin is considered reputable and trustworthy, with good reviews.
Part of the Axel Springer and United Internet Groups (Germany), Awin is a global affiliate network.
Awin global affiliate marketing network empowers advertisers and publishers of all sizes to grow their businesses online.
- awin.com: Learn more – not affiliated
FlexOffers
FlexOffers is your all-in-one performance-marketing engine—uniting 12,000+ advertiser programs and 75,000+ publisher opportunities under a single, streamlined platform. We empower publishers to maximize earnings and enable advertisers to expand their reach with unmatched precision and scale. Grow with a partner built for limitless performance.
Network: Earn exclusive commissions by promoting products and services through our partner marketing platform.
CJ Affiliate
One of the oldest and best-known affiliate networks, US-based CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction) was once one of the industry’s leading networks.
Today, its focus is largely on the US market. The publisher interface is extensive but can be cumbersome, slow and difficult to navigate.
CJ has never worked particularly well for us, largely because of its strong US advertiser focus. However, publishers targeting US audiences may find it worth considering.
- CommissionJunction – not affiliated
Affiliate Programs & Advertisers
These platforms work for us:
- Amazon – growing (fast) in Australia.
- eBay– Once upon a time, eBay was a fabulous program generating big $$$. But, after doing all the heavy lifting making ebay a household name, they ‘adjusted’ the commission structure that saw our hardwork go from over AU$2K a month to a couple of $hundred a month.
- Fishpond – Australian & NZ book sales with deep linking.
- Partnerize – Global affiliate and partnership management platform connecting publishers with major brands and advertisers. Strong international presence with opportunities across retail, travel and other sectors.
- PartnerBoost – Affiliate and partnership platform connecting publishers and creators with brands, including merchants selling through major marketplaces. New to us and currently (8/2026) being evaluated.
- Slice Digital – Fast-growing platform (New Zealand)
Ticketing & Tours
This new vertical is fabulous (for some publishers) depending on your content.
- getyourguide.com – Aimed at travel writers but works well for publishers.
- thebigredgroup.com.au: Big Red Group – RedBallloon, ExperienceOz and TicketMates
- tiqets.com: Tiquets – affiliate portal with 1000’s of brand name links and widgets.
- viator.com: Viator – Highly recommended affiliate travel & tours.
Other Publisher Revenue
Google Adsense
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Google’s Adsense program changed our entire business model. We went from a small design consultancy to a publishing network thanks to Adsense.
Who is it for? Publishers with websites or online content who want to earn revenue by displaying advertising relevant to their content and audience.
Simple code generation and Google does the rest by displaying ads based on the page content.
Excellent tracking, reporting and regular monthly payments.
This is not a referral program but a recommendation from a 22+ year partner.
- google.com/adsense: Learn more – not affiliated
Affiliate Marketing on Ripefruit Network
We are Ripefruit, an Australian online publisher and the people behind this page, Only Melbourne, Only Australia and our network of Australian city websites. We’ve been working with affiliate marketing for more than 25 years.
The networks and programs discussed on this page are ones we’ve encountered, considered or worked with as publishers ourselves. Our comments are based on our own experience — what works for us may not necessarily work for every publisher.
After joining a network, please let us know.
- Advertising (Listing) on the Ripefruit Network | go here
- PPC (pay-per-click) on the Ripefruit Network | Google Ads
- Affiliate Marketing | impact, CommissionFactory and FlexOffers
Creators: Your Audience Has Value Beyond Views
If you have 500, 5,000, 50,000 or 500,000 people following your content, you’re more than a content creator — you’re also a publisher with an audience that advertisers may want to reach.
This applies whether you’re on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, OnlyFans or other creator and subscription platforms. Many creators concentrate on earning money from views, subscriptions, tips and paid content, but affiliate marketing can provide another source of income.
You don’t need to become a salesperson. If there are products or services genuinely relevant to your audience, you can recommend them using an affiliate link and earn a commission when someone buys.
The important bit is relevance and trust. Fifty thousand engaged followers in a particular niche can be considerably more valuable to the right advertiser than a much larger general audience.
Advertiser Scrutiny
Every advertiser (brand/merchant) needs to be scrutinized. Is it a good fit for your website? Visit the advertisers’ website, take a look around, and verify claims (TrustPilot), delivery and T&C. Remember, you are referring the advertiser to your readers’/customers. Newer, inexperienced advertisers launch programs that may not last, meaning the affiliates’ work and time has been in vain. Do not rely on the network = due diligence!
There is a never-ending list of advertisers offering programs. Before applying, ask yourself: do the products and services offered by the merchant relate to your readers. A blog about food, is not going to connect with Car Tyres.
If your visitors are in Australia, then international (US/UK) based affiliations are unlikely to generate sales. On the flip side, advertisers’ will reject publishers they don’t believe are a good fit. There is little point aligning with an international advertiser if your traffic is from another country. The referrals and traffic won’t realize any sales.
Monitor sales for approval and subsequently payment. We’ve seen sales rejected/voided with no explanation. Frustrating at best, it can happen but, it should be a low percentage. Advertisers’ that generate lots of click-throughs but not sales are suspicious at best. Beware of advertisers that urge customers to call (telephone) as sales may not recorded as affiliate sales (no commission).
Many years ago, a very successful campaign in the UK which generated thousands of pounds in sales, never realised one penny of the £4,249.25 commission owed, because they didn’t pay.
Affiliate Network Scrutiny
Sorry, but do not believe network marketing claims. The networks focus is advertisers’ not publishers’, influencers and affiliates.
Beware: New Networks
In 2023, we saw an influx of new “affiliate networks” that claim to work with Google! They never do! One alarming request from these networks is “Google access” (are you serious?), another request is DNS changes to facilitate live bidding. Not only are these dangerous, they are aimed at US advertisers.
Beware: Rakuten Advertising
Rakuten boasts a 150k-member global publishing network, but in our experience, Rakuten has shown little interest in supporting Australian publishers. Support for publishers is non-existent and frankly, baffling! Give these time-wasters a big miss. see TrustPilot
*Strange: Linkby
June 2023, after several emails asking us for data, links, etc we received this… Unfortunately, your publisher application has been rejected for the following reason(s): Not a publisher.
*Shhh.. we better not tell our partners!
Gone but not forgotten
- clixgalore.com.au – experienced but not the platform it once was
Coming Soon
- Cookie Deprecation – the tracking method for most affiliations is cookies. All search engines are deprecating cookies. Without cookies, publishers won’t generate sales.. learn more
- Commission Rates – we are seeing more and more rates falling. They start at one percentage, but then slowly fall. Yes, they let you know, but 1% doesn’t sound like much until you realise, successive rate drops and they are now paying 2%. Ripleys believe it or not, one affiliate dropped to zero.
Feedback
We are more than happy to hear from networks, publishers, merchants about experiences with affiliate marketing: Messsage Here