Here you will find a list of affiliate programs you can sign up for. Signing up for affiliate programs are pretty easy to do. Affiliate programs will have you fill out your name, company name (if you have one), your SSN or EIN, address, website address (URL) which is your domain name, sometimes a description or category your affiliate site falls into, and of course how you want to get paid. Some affiliate programs will allow you to choose from a check, direct deposit, paypal, and a few other options. Some will only give you 1 of these, some offer more ways to get paid.
You need to remember that NO AFFILIATE PROGRAM SHOULD CHARGE YOU ANY KIND OF MONEY TO USE THEIR SERVICE! If an affiliate company is wanting to charge you any amount of money to use their affiliate program, LEAVE THEIR WEBSITE! They are a SCAM!
What is an Affiliate Program?
An affiliate program is a site you can use to get products to place on your website, well ads for products. Companies selling products or services, known as the advertiser, will use affiliate programs to help advertise their products and services. They set an amount that they pay the publisher, which is you, for selling their products. Sometimes this is a set amount of money, sometimes it’s a percentage of the sale. You can get this company’s ads for their products whether it’s an image ad, banner, text link, and place it on your affiliate website. When someone on your site clicks this ad, they get a tracking cookie that stores on their computer. This tracking cookie tells them you are the one that sent that person to their website. Now this person buys something on the company’s website, the company will give you an affiliate commission for selling their product for them.
For example Amazon has an affiliate program, I can place any product on Amazon and advertise it on my website. If and when that person purchases anything on Amazon, Amazon will know I made that sale for them and award me with a percentage of the sale. You never see any products, inventory, shipping, or customer service, you do nothing except advertise their products on your affiliate website. Cool huh?
Types of Affiliate Programs
There are different types of affiliate programs. The types of affiliates are determined by what they pay you for.
There is pay per sale,which is where someone has to buy something from your affiliate for you to get your commission. Like the example above.
There is pay per impression, which is where you get paid for impressions. An impression is when your affiliate’s ad is displayed on someones screen. Most affiliates that pay per impression are paying for every thousand impressions. So every thousand times people view your website you get your commission, just by people seeing the ads.
There is pay per lead. Pay per lead is when the affiliate program gets a sales lead, a potential sale. Usually like a free registration, free trial, or signing up for a news letter.
Some affiliates are doing pay per call. You want to guess what they pay you for? That’s right, you get paid for calls.
Finally there is pay per click, which is where you get paid every time someone clicks the affiliate ads.
List of Affiliate Programs
Chitika – An online advertising network that offers pay per click and pay per call ads. The minimum payout is $10 for paypal and $50 for a check. I have my account set to paypal, so I can’t tell you how long it takes to get a check as I have my payouts going to my paypal account.
Amazon Associates – This is Amazon’s affiliate program which is pay per sale. They pay 4% – 15% of the customers total in commissions on all of their products on there website. If someone buys 20 items totaling $200 you will get $8 – $30 commission depending on your percentage. You start with 4% after you sold X amount of items you get bumped up to 6% and the keeps repeating. Every month you get reset to 4%. Amazon pays you direct deposit, amazon.com gift cards, or by check. Minimum payout is $10 for gift certificate or direct deposit and $100 for a check. I suggest you do direct deposit or gift certificates as they charge you $15 to mail you a check. Amazon affiliate program holds your payments for 60 days in case someone returns a product.
Commission Junction – This is a large affiliate network, companies that don’t want to handle their own affiliate program like Amazon does can sign up here and have people advertise their products. Once signed up at Commission Junction you can select which companies you would like to advertise for. Minimum payout is $100, paid via direct deposit or check. The type of affiliate is different for each company within Commission Junction. The majority is pay per sale and pay per lead, but their are some pay per call and pay per click ads available.
Google Adsense – This is another pay per click program to earn revenue from your website. They are also probably have the largest amount of advertisers, so no matter what your site is about, they should have ads for you. Google’s ads are automatically generated for you based on the topics of your website. If your website is about gardening, they will show gardening ads to your website’s viewers. Google’s minimum payout is $100 for direct deposit or check. Google AdSense holds your payment for 30 days to make sure there were no invalid clicks.
There are plenty more affiliate networks and affiliate programs on the internet, but I have not tested out any others enough to judge their performance, ads, tracking, or if they even pay their affiliates. If you have any doubt try them out, if they don’t pay you get rid of them and comment below to notify others. Just remember never pay an affiliate program! That is a for sure sign of a scam!
Some affiliates will want to see your site before they approve your site. They can deny you, but it’s no big deal, you can reapply after you work on your site some more. Some advertisers want you to have your website up and running and full of content before you start signing up, but I’ve never had too much of a problem. Just make sure you have a little bit of content before applying for AdSense. After you’ve applied to all the programs you want to use, your done with the affiliate programs for a little while. Time to move onto building your website and writing content.