Website owners (publishers) looking for revenue streams have three options:
- Advertising – Google Adsense, Bing Ads
- Affiliations – Commission, Pay-Per-Click
- Products/Services – Marketing retail
Affiliation marketing is an excellent revenue source for publishers.
Publisher*
A publisher is a website owner with a sizable audience of visitors.
What Is Affiliation?
An affiliation program is when a publisher promotes a product or service on its website and generates a commission when a sale is made. Some affiliations pay per lead/click but generally affiliation programs are percentage based schemes.
The affiliate embeds html code into a web page that shows the advertising and tracked. When a sale is made, the affiliate is rewarded with an agreed percentage.
Affiliation ‘networks’ manage multiple advertisers’ (merchants/brands) in a trusted environment. The network acts as the connection between the advertiser and the affiliate. It saves affiliates having to manage individual advertisers’ accounts, chase payment or deal with different code and reporting systems.
Affiliation Networks Reviewed
Australia is spoilt for choice when it comes to affiliation networks and independent advertsiers.
The information below while aimed at Australia, also includes international affiliation information as well.
Disclosure: Links include a tracking code that may generate a small return (known as revenue sharing).
impact
impact is a very good network with a broad range of brand name advertisers’ coupled with a 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
clixGalore
clixGalore have been around a long time. Not the sexiest interface but good advertisers’ that generate sales.
A wide variety of merchants along with deep-linking mean you are able to directly target individual products.
clixGalore: Affiliates, turn your valuable web site traffic into money now by joining Affiliate programs and driving customers to the many thousands of Merchants using the clixGalore Affiliate Marketing network to advertise their business.
Start earning commission now for the sales you generate for our Merchants.
Commissionfactory
In our view, Commissionfactory is the best affiliate group operating in Australia with a slick professional program.
Hundreds of top Australian advertisers’ with multiple campaigns across all industries.
Excellent code generation, feeds, reporting, regular monthly payments and publisher support.
Join 500+ brands utilising the power of affiliate marketing
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.
Awin: Affiliate Window
Part of the Axel Springer and United Internet Groups (Germany), Awin is a global affiliate network with ShareASale and Commission Factory.
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.
Awin global affiliate marketing network empowers advertisers and publishers of all sizes to grow their businesses online.
ebay Partner Network
Once apon a time we loved this program. But, after doing all the heavy lifting making ebay a household name, they ‘adjusted’ the commission structure that saw our hardwork go from over $2K a month to a couple of $hundred a month.
eBay continues to promote: You can earn a lot of money in the eBay Partner Network, by driving high quality traffic to eBay or one of our partners.
The admin is a bit of clunky and slow plus we’ve heard that eBay can be uncommunicative with new publishers’, so be patient.
ebay Partner Network: Earn money by driving traffic and prompting sales across one of the world’s largest and most diverse marketplaces.
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.
Not a typical affiliation, but PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising appears on your website.
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.
More Affilate Networks & Advertisers’ (Merchants)
These work well for us:
- Amazon – growing (fast) in Australia.
- AvantLink – marketing, multi-channel analytics, referral tracking & technology platform for web retailers and publishers.
- AWeber – Mailing List management – *Highly recommended*
- Big Red Group – RedBallloon, ExperienceOz and TicketMates
- Booking.com – hotel reservation network (in our opinion, the best of them)
- Clickbank (network) Full of potential products in an array of niches (USA)
- Fishpond – Australian & NZ book sales affiliation with deep linking.
- getyourguide.com – Aimed at travel writers but works well for publishers.
- ShareASale (network) find advertisers’ for your web site. (USA)
- Slice Digital – Fast growing platform with some very good advertisers’ (New Zealand)
- Viator – Highly recommended affilate products, experiences (travel & tours).
Click here to see ALL our Partners
CommissionJunction
One of the oldest affiliate networks, US based CommissionJunction is very well known. Once a leader in the pack, it has endured ups and downs and now largely aimed at US markets.
A huge unwiedly admin interface that is slow and buggy. It’s never really worked for us mostly due to USA based advertisers’.
Advertiser Scrutiny
Every network and advertiser (brand/merchant) needs to be scrutinised. Is it a good fit for your website? Visit the advertisers’ website, take a look around, 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 affiliate programs. Before applying, ask yourself: do the products and services relate to your readers. A blog about food, is not going to connect with Car Tyres beside it not being a good look. If you’re visitors are in Australia, then US and UK based affiliations are unlikely to work. On the flip-side, advertisers’ will reject publishers they don’t believe are a good fit.
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 is suspicious at best. Beware of advertisers’ that urge customers to call (telephone) as sales may not recorded as affiliate sales (no commission).
There is little point aligning with a international affiliate advertiser if your traffic is Australian. The referrals and traffic won’t realise any sales.
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.
Beware: Rakuten Advertising
Rakuten boasts a 150k member global publishing network, yet has little interest in affiliates outside the USA. Support for publishers is non-existent and frankly, baffling!
Give these bozo’s a big miss. see TrustPilot
Beware: new Advertising Networks
In 2023, we’re seeing an influx of networks that say they work in tandem with Google! They never do! One alarming request is Google access, another is dns changes to facilitate live bidding. Not only are these dangeous, they are aimed at US advertisers not Australian.
*Strange: Linkby
During June 2023, ater several email messages asking 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!