Our list of the top affiliate networks for affiliate marketers to connect with thousands of brands.
Affiliate networks are a great way to explore affiliate programs and eventually find the ones that you will implement in your affiliate marketing strategy.
This list will go over the best affiliate networks. I did my best to rank them from best to worst. Here are the factors I used to rank them:
Just because one is higher on the list than the others doesn’t mean it is the most profitable. I recommend trying these affiliate networks out for yourself and seeing which ones you prefer. After all, they are free to join.
Affiliate networks are not to be confused with affiliate programs, as they are two different things.
Affiliate programs are systems where affiliate marketers can earn commissions for promoting sales and other actions such as sign-ups or free trial activations. Businesses pay affiliates to complete these actions because it benefit them.
Put simply, affiliate programs are created by businesses to get more customers through promotions done by affiliate marketers.
Affiliate networks are platforms that host a lot of affiliate programs. Affiliate networks make it easy for affiliates to find affiliate programs, as once you join an affiliate network, you can easily join the affiliate programs that are on it.
Amazon Associates is the go-to affiliate program for many affiliate marketers. Because Amazon is one of the most trusted websites to order products from, affiliate marketers can find great success with it.
The Amazon Affiliate Program allows affiliates to earn commissions by promoting other people's products on Amazon. To earn a commission, you must send a qualified buyer to Amazon through an affiliate link and have them make a purchase within the cookie life.
The cookie duration for the Amazon affiliate program is 24 hours. This means that someone who clicks on your link has 24 hours to make a purchase that qualifies for a commission.
Despite the huge range of products, it won’t work for every niche, as some niches are better monetized with digital or SaaS products.
One downside to Amazon’s affiliate program is that the commission rates for items are low for most categories.
With over 10,000 advertisers using FlexOffers, affiliates have a lot of brands to choose from. Keep in mind that once you are accepted into FlexOffers, you will still have to apply to each brand you want to partner with.
FlexOffers stands out as an affiliate network in the aspect that it offers partnerships with many top-name brands such as The Motley Fool, Sephora, Nike, Lowes, HP, Dell, Kohl’s, and Samsung.
On top of the great brands, FlexOffers has a straightforward user interface. However, I have noticed that some of the pages look quite outdated in terms of design. At least they still get the job done.
Impact is one of my favorite affiliate networks for several reasons. Affiliates who join the affiliate network get access to over 5,000 affiliate programs to join. Joining one of these programs is as simple as writing a quick paragraph that explains your promotion methods and why you want to join.
Impact’s user interface is one of the best I have seen from an affiliate network. Things are easy to find, and the programs are easy to sort through.
Impact also has a reporting tool that shows you how your affiliate programs are performing. From here, you can view analytics for all kinds of things, like your conversion rate, income from each program, brands, categories, products, and more.
Another notable feature is that there are many brands that you can pre-qualify to work with. This means that upon getting an account for Impact, you will have brands that you can start promoting right away.
CJ Affiliate is another top affiliate network. They have over 3,000 affiliate programs to choose from. They also have a well-built and easy-to-use interface.
Finding affiliate programs on CJ Affiliate is very fast. All you have to do is sort by the category your niche is in, or just enter in the name of the brands that you would like to promote. You can also sort by EPC (earnings per click), which is extremely useful.
I find EPC to be one of the best metrics for determining a good affiliate program. When searching for programs, they also show a 1-5 scale of earnings for each one to help you compare with similar programs.
The CJ Affiliate Network has a great reporting and analytics feature that makes it easy to track your clicks and conversions across different programs.
Many well-known brands have joined the network, so you shouldn’t have a hard time finding the best ones for your niche.
Fiverr is one of the most popular places to find freelancers. The Fiverr affiliate program allows you to earn commissions by promoting services.
If your audience is looking for services rather than products, this program is definitely worth considering. Keep in mind that Fiverr only offers services that can be performed online.
The Fiverr affiliate program offers a solid commission model with long cookie durations. To start, they offer commissions for Marketplace Gigs, Pro Services, and the Logo Maker.
Assuming you are promoting the marketplace services, you will earn a 25% commission for a customer's first order, and then 10% of every order they make for the first 12 months. This means that if you find a customer who is willing to spend a lot on digital services over time, there is a lot of earnings potential.
Rakuten Advertising has been in the affiliate marketing space for over 25 years. They have over 1000+ brands on their network, made up of many popular names.
Rakuten’s affiliate dashboard and tools are nothing special but get the job done. The analytics dashboard shows your AOV, conversion rate, sales, and total commissions over time to give you an idea of how your affiliate strategy is working.
To sign up for Rakuten, all you need to do is navigate to their website and fill out a quick form. Signing up is completely free for affiliates and advertisers.
Awin is another affiliate network that has an insane amount of partnered brands (over 30,000). However, from what I noticed searching through them, many of them are smaller-sized businesses.
While you can still earn by promoting small business affiliate programs, they may be more difficult to earn from as they have less established trust with whom you promote them.
I am not a big fan of Awin’s user interface, especially the program search. They only have 4 different sectors you can sort from, finance & insurance, retail & shopping, telcos & services, and travel. Each of these sectors has thousands of programs and is extremely broad.
You will have to have a specific affiliate program in mind if you don’t want to waste hours looking for affiliate programs. Another downside to the Awin affiliate network is that there are not a whole ton of well-known brand programs on the network.
ShareASale is another well-known affiliate network that helps connect brands to affiliates. ShareASale is owned by Awin; however, they are still separate and don’t have the same programs.
ShareASale has a clean dashboard that makes managing and finding affiliate programs easy. In addition, the sign-up process is quick and simple. They just ask for a website along with a description of it as far as qualifications.
Similar to its parent company, Awin, ShareASale has a lot of affiliate programs. Some notable brands ShareASale has are Etsy, Freshbooks, WP Engine, Namecheap, and Grammarly.
Similar to the Amazon Associates affiliate program, the eBay Partner Network allows affiliates to earn by promoting a vast network of physical products.
eBay’s commission rates are not the best. Depending on the category of goods sold, you will earn anywhere from 1% to 4% in commissions. Any affiliate links from the eBay Partner Network have a 24-hour cookie duration.
A benefit of using the eBay Partner Network is that there are many different product categories in which you can earn commissions. This means that it could work in many different niches.
One thing I don’t like about the eBay affiliate program is that many eBay listings are auctions. This is a problem for affiliates, as auction products won’t last long enough to be put in content. In other words, by the time an auction finishes, your content for the product will be irrelevant.
ClickBank is one of the most prominent affiliate networks to exist, as its launch dates back to 1998. Many affiliates have found success by promoting products from Clickbank. ClickBank hosts a variety of physical and digital products.
After joining the ClickBank affiliate network, you will be able to start promoting products from the marketplace. ClickBank products have a distinct feel, as many of them are spammy-looking. This could partly be caused by the age of the network, which still has older product offers on it.
To make things easier, you can sort products by category. To be clear, you won’t find any big-name brands on ClickBank.
ClickBank stands out in the stats that it displays for each affiliate offer. They offer a “gravity score” that is unique to the Click Bank network. In short, the gravity score measures the success and popularity of the offer. They also show an average conversion value to make it clear how much affiliates are earning for every conversion they generate.
I just came across the AvantLink affiliate network recently. I found that many popular outdoor affiliate programs use AvantLink.
In total, AvantLink hosts 1,000+ affiliate programs. To sign up for Avant Link, you will need to be based in the United States, Canada, or Australia.
Upon diving deeper into AvantLink, I found that they have quality affiliate programs from big brands including Honey, REI, Patagonia, and Stanley.
If you are a content creator in a niche related to the outdoors, this affiliate network is worth joining, as you will have access to many top outdoor brands.
Now that you have a list of affiliate networks, start joining them and see which ones you like the most. Your audience and content strategy will be the two biggest factors in finding a profitable affiliate program.
Although affiliate networks are a great way to find affiliate programs, one affiliate network will never have access to every affiliate program. This is why you should consider looking for programs outside of your affiliate networks.
To help you in your search, check out our lists of recurring, high-ticket, and beginner-friendly affiliate programs.
