Top 10 Places To Find The Best Affiliate Programs For Beginners

As a beginner affiliate marketer, you should be selecting affiliate products from the networks that actually want to work with you and help you grow in your career. In this blog post, I will share with you, which networks I consider to be beginner affiliate-friendly, so you can find the best affiliate programs for beginners.

Before you read on, consider checking out my blog post for beginners, that teaches you how to start affiliate marketing today.

When deciding on the product to promote there are a few things that you should consider before you actually start investing time or money in promoting it.

This post will help you with those criteria so you can be sure you are investing your time and effort in producing content around these products that will convert and pay you the best commissions.

What you should consider when choosing your products:

The commission rate commissions should be at a level that you are comfortable with and is going to give you a good return on investment. When looking at the compensation plan, consider how many people will need to see this product in order for you to get a sale and how much you are going to achieve when you make a sale.

Usually products that have a higher commission rate are more difficult to sell and require greater effort put in compared to products that have a smaller commission.

Whilst the effort is greater, that only means you will need to add more value to your affiliate marketing funnel in order to convince your target market to take action which will lead to a conversion for you.

One way to achieve this, is through the use of bridge pages.

Recurring commissions this is how you create passive income when the product that you promote has a subscription base. Recurring commissions are great because it means you only need to do the work once and you will probably gain a lifetime customer who will contribute to your income every month.

This does not mean that products that do not have recurring commissions should be avoided. It simply means that you will have to continue looking for customers to enter your sales funnel or visit your website to keep a steady flow of income each month.

Grab Your Step By Step Guide To Making Money With Affiliate Marketing

High conversions before promoting a product you should do your research to find out how marketable the product is. Is the product a good one? What are people saying about the product? What do other marketers say about the ease of promotion?

These are some questions you should be asking yourself before you jump in to promoting a product.

Ease of approval most affiliate programs and networks are easy to join if you can show that you have a proper website and that you have a sound marketing plan to promote the product. Other affiliate programs require you to be a paid member of the product before you start earning commissions. That way there is no approval process, but the commission structure is higher in that you can earn very handsome payouts.

With these criteria in mind I have handpicked some of the best affiliate programs for beginners, if you are now starting affiliate marketing or even writing as a blogger.

Top 10 Places To Find The Best Affiliate Programs For Beginners

1. Clickbank 

Clickbank is the best known marketplace to find products that you can promote on your blog or website and in an affiliate marketing campaign.

It is one of the oldest platforms and widely used by marketers when they want to make extra money.

With its search and category features you can easily find any product that resonates with you within your niche.

It is simple to start promoting products on this forum because you do not need to be approved. You can simply create a free Clickbank account and immediately have access to tons of products that you can promote.

In order to do well with Clickbank products, pay attention to the gravity score of the product. That tells you how popular it is amongst other marketers.

Popularity determines how well a product converts. It also means that there is more competition.

As a beginner it is important that you understand how much research plays a part in you selecting the best affiliate program that actually converts with cold traffic.

So before choosing a product, be sure to carefully go through Clickbank’s metrics to make sure you are choosing a product that has the best chance at success.

I always aim for products that have a gravity score that falls between 50-100. Anything over 100 means that it is highly competitive and if you try to break through as a beginner you are likely to be up against skilled marketers.

Clickbank automates the entire sales process. They deal with all customer refunds and you can see how you are performing from the analytics within your dashboard.

You can receive payment from Clickbank via direct deposit or check depending on your country.

To join Clickbank as an affiliate, sign up here. 

2. ShareASale

This is an affiliate network like Clickbank which houses numerous products that you can promote depending on your niche.

ShareASale is great for pay-per-lead products and pay-per-sale products.

What is pay-per-lead? This is a system whereby you are paid for any lead that you direct to the merchant’s website. In order to qualify for the payment you may have to provide leads who confirm their email address with double opt-in or provide a name, email address and contact number. Leads may also have to sign up for consultations in order for you to qualify.

What is pay-per-sale? This is whereby you promote a product and get paid following the sale of the product.

To start promoting products on ShareASale you must apply to the merchant whose products you are interested in. Therefore it is still possible that even though you are accepted to ShareASale as the affiliate network, you can be declined by a specific merchant who owns the affiliate program.

If you are declined then do not be despondent as there are many other similar products that may fit the description that you want.

Always be sure to consider the amount that you will be paid per lead or per sale in order to get the best return on investment.

Be mindful of the merchant’s terms and conditions to see what type of traffic is allowed because you can be terminated if you provide traffic that does not meet the merchant’s criteria.

To join ShareASale sign up here.

3. Panthera Network

This is an affiliate network which you must apply to, to get started.

Once you have applied and are accepted, there is no further application to be made to promote the product of your choice.

The network is an easy to use one as you can simply search for the desired product and you are provided with your affiliate link to share with your audience in a campaign, on your blog or website.

When applying for Panthera Network, the best and quickest way to get accepted is to contact the affiliate manager by phone.

The reason for this, is because you can have personal contact with the affiliate manager in the event he/she has questions about your objectives when using the Panthera Network.

When I first joined Panthera my application was approved within 10 minutes and although there was a small objection to the number of visitors to my site (as it was fairly new), I still got accepted because I took that extra step, contacted the affiliate manager and discussed my aims with him.

I would strongly recommend that you do the same. Their contact details are provided in the email that you receive once you have completed your application.

To join Panthera Network sign up here.

Grab Your Step By Step Guide To Making Money With Affiliate Marketing

4. Amazon Associates

You really cannot lose with Amazon Associates, although I have seen people who advise against relying on Amazon Associates as a way of earning a substantial income as an affiliate.

If your goal is to make a full time income with Amazon Associates then it is possible to do so.

Your niche simply needs to be a profitable one centred around high-cost products.

Amazon Associates is not great for low cost products unless you intend to send millions of visitors to your website to produce thousands of sales per month.

My advice therefore is to focus on a product and niche where the cost of the product is in the range of $1000 and upwards.

After researching the internet, I have found some examples of successful Amazon affiliate websites which you can use as inspiration for your own blog or website.

Lucieslist.com is a baby product reviews and a survival guide for new moms to help them cope with new parenting tasks.

Outdoorgearlab.com is an outdoor gear reviews website which helps buyers decide on the best products for their outdoor activities.

Snapsort.com is a digital camera and comparison reviews website to help customers quickly determine the best products for their needs.

Thisiswhyimbroke.com is a website featuring odd and innovative gift ideas. They are not a reviews website but simply list some of the products that are unusual that they have found on Amazon.

Thewirecutter.com is a gadget, gear and electronics reviews website that helps the customer figure out which product they should get for their needs.

As I mentioned before, in order to be successful with Amazon Associates you either need a high-trafficked website or a website where you are promoting high cost products.

Amazon is free to join and the approval process is quite easy. When you submit your site for approval, ensure that it is live. It does not appear to be the case that the website needs a lot of traffic to get accepted into Amazon Associates but it must already have some content on it.

Also you must ensure that you strictly comply with Amazon Associates program policies as if you do not, you risk losing your account and forfeiting any commissions that you may have already earned.

What I like about Amazon Associates is although you may have referred a customer to their site for a particular product that you recommended, you will still get paid from that referral if the customer buys any product from the Amazon site within 90 days.

To join Amazon Associates as an affiliate sign up here.

If you are interested in learning how to build niche affiliate websites, where you can promote Amazon Affiliate products, my interview with Affiliate Marketer, Leon Angus will help you. He makes money from Amazon Affiliates using niche affiliate websites and gets traffic to his website by search engine optimisation.

5. CJ Affiliate by Conversant 

You may know this network as Commission Junction.

It is similar to the ShareASale network in that you must apply to the respective merchant in order to start promoting any affiliate products.

Application to the CJ Affiliate network is a simple process. Like any other network, it is a good idea to ensure that your website is live and that you have a clear marketing plan before completing your application.

To be honest, I have not used CJ Affiliate as much as I would like to. Once I got into the CJ Affiliate program and applied to a few affiliate companies, it took a little over two weeks to be approved by those companies.

This is not a poor evaluation of CJ Affiliate but rather of the specific companies that I applied for.

I did find however that when I sought out the same companies on another network, I was approved a lot faster. Sometimes I did not have to make an application to the company as is the case with Panthera Network.

CJ Affiliate does support all types of commission models. They include pay-per-action and pay-per-sale.

It is a solid affiliate marketing platform hosting every type of product that you can think of for whatever niche you are interested in.

To become an affiliate of CJ Affiliates sign up here.

6. Rakuten Marketing

I have only recently joined Rakuten Marketing so I have not had time to assess the features of this affiliate network.

It is a reliable network as it is among one of the oldest affiliate marketing networks in the industry.

Rakuten is free to join.

It hosts over 1000 merchants so there is bound to be some product within your niche that you can include in your portfolio.

If you see the name Linkshare anywhere on the interwebs then this is reference to Rakuten as they re-branded their name recently.

To join Rakuten Marketing as an affiliate sign up here then click “Publisher Sign Up” in the top right hand corner.

7. FlexOffers

I  love FlexOffers. In fact they are one of the affiliate networks that helped me earn over $10k in affiliate sales by promoting one of their products. 

Like the other above networks, FlexOffers provides a connection between affiliate marketers, bloggers and advertisers. They help advertisers get their products out on the market and help affiliate marketers and bloggers make money from reputable brands and products.

FlexOffers has over 12,000 affiliate products in a wide range of categories that you can select from. You must have a website that you own in order to join this affiliate network.

Once you have been approved, you can search their advertisers and select the ones that best relate to your niche.

You also get your own affiliate manager so if you have any questions about your account or an affiliate product, you can speak directly to them.

As to payout of affiliate commissions I had to wait approximately three months to receive my commissions. Like most affiliate networks, FlexOffers’ payment terms require that they receive payment from the advertiser before they can pay you. 

This results in you, as the affiliate, having to wait months to receive payment. This was the only thing that I did not like about this company.

FlexOffers does have a Revshare program, which means that if you refer someone who is approved as an affiliate, you can earn a certain percentage of whatever sales they make.

To join FlexOffers, you can start here.

Make sure that the information you provide about yourself and your website is accurate. The review process does take approximately three to seven business days but if it crosses this you can always follow up with them.

8. Clickfunnels Affiliate Program

Clickfunnels is owned by Russel Branson and is an in-house affiliate program. This means that it is a product by itself and you must go directly to the company to join as an affiliate.

The difference with the affiliate networks and affiliate programs is that you may join affiliate networks and find numerous products under one umbrella that you can promote.

With affiliate programs you can join directly with the company so there is no middle man.

You do not have to be a customer of Clickfunnels to become an affiliate.

However it will be to your advantage if you understand how Clickfunnels work so that you can promote it, when recommending it to your audience.

This is why most websites get trust from their audience because they have used the product themselves and can provide the best user guidance to help the customer make the right decision about whether the product is for them.

You are able to earn 40% commissions from each sale that is made of the Clickfunnels product. This equates to either $38.80 or $118.80 depending on the product plan that the customer purchases.

Commissions are recurring as Clickfunnels is a subscription based product.

They also have a Dream Car Contest where if you refer 100 active members to their software, this entitles you to a $500 monthly check towards your dream car.

If you refer 200 active members then you are entitled to receive a $1000 monthly check towards the reimbursement of your dream car payments.

To join Clickfunnels as an affiliate sign up here.

9. Aweber Affiliate Program

Aweber is an email autoresponder service and is widely used by marketers and bloggers to communicate with their email list. 

If you teach your audience about list building or email marketing, Aweber is an ideal product for you to promote and recommend within your content.

For example, you may have created a blog post on “How To Build An Email List of 1000 Subscribers” where you can recommend Aweber as an email marketing software to build that list.

You can also create content specifically around Aweber reviews or promote it as part of your affiliate marketing funnel.

It is free to join the affiliate program and you earn 30% commissions from each sale that is made.

Aweber has a structured price plan.

So the bigger a customer’s email list, the more money they pay for their subscription.

This will therefore impact on the type of commissions you earn with Aweber depending on the purchase plan the customer chooses.

You will continue to earn commissions on this product as long as the customer continues to use their account. This makes it a great source for passive income.

To join Aweber as an affiliate sign up here.

Grab Your Step By Step Guide To Making Money With Affiliate Marketing

10. The Social Traffic Blueprint Affiliate Program

The Social Traffic Blueprint Affiliate program is a program that is associated with the Facebook Ads course presented by Jon Penberthy and Jubril Agoro.

You get the chance to earn while you learn. If you want to know more about how to use Facebook ads to drive traffic to your business, then this is a great investment to help you succeed with Facebook Ads.

At the same time you can sign up to their affiliate program and promote the course to other marketers who want to learn how to use Facebook ads as well.

The Social Traffic Blueprint program allows you to earn up to $400 per sale.

This is a great affiliate product if you want to earn a high commission payout.

In order to start promoting this product you must be a course member. The course actually costs $997 and comes with group coaching, access to their private Facebook group, 24/7 support and lifetime access to the course and updates.

To take part in the course and become an affiliate join here.

Final Thoughts

Joining the best affiliate programs for beginners is easy if you are looking to monetise your blog or website or simply promote these programs as part of an affiliate marketing campaign. The easiest programs to promote are those which are proven to convert well.

My handpicked selection of programs and networks will help you choose some of the best affiliate products, that you can have on your blog or website to add content to it.

Some great ways to promote affiliate products are in “How To” blog posts or List blog posts. If you do not want to use a website or blog, you can also promote affiliate products with traffic sources such as Bing Ads or Facebook Ads.

Now that you’ve joined some affiliate networks of your choice you should check out my ebook on How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Huge Blog or Website 

It’s the perfect solution for those who are looking to promote an affiliate product, but really don’t want to create a traditional blog. This ebook teaches you how to do affiliate marketing or promote any product with small valuable blog posts.

Plus it comes with a bonus freelancing guide that teaches you how to get other people to pay for your business costs and how to use free traffic methods to promote your content fast for incredible results.

You can check it out by clicking here!

Remember that the most difficult part of any business is showing up. Make sure and show up today to get the best chance at success.

Don’t wait too long to invest in you.

Cheers,

P.S Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments whether there are any other affiliate networks you have joined and which one?