Affiliate Networks

An affiliate network acts as a broker between companies that want to advertise their services or products and websites (such are yours) that are willing to display those advertisements. Some companies pay per click, but it is more usual to pay a commission on any sale (or lead) generated from an advertisement on your site.

The following is a list of affiliate networks, each are different so its worth spending the time to identify which is best for you:

www.google.com/adsense

Google AdSense is a very popular and effective means of running targeted ads on your website.

Google AdSense provides context sensitive advertising for each web-page. What this means is simply that AdSense decides what it thinks are the best adverts to show for your page for the current visitor. For individual pages, well targeted ads from other networks should be able to out perform Google AdSense. The trick is to identify appropriate ads and that can be difficult. So for pages where you are unsure of the best ads to run on the page then Google AdSense is hard to beat.

AffiliateWindow.com

A UK based affiliate network that pay in pounds Sterling. They have a large list of affiliate programs and offer good commissions, mostly UK with some European names. They also provide the option of providing contextual advertisements, although these are based on keywords you supply rather than derived from the context of each web page.

www.cj.com

Commission Junction. Quite possibly one of the largest affiliate networks. Mostly American companies, but expanding to include companies from other countries. Commission only.

 

European affiliate network. Gateway site can be configured to suite a number of different European languages.

www.clixgalore.com

ClixGalore is a worldwide affiliate programme. They operate regional websites in the USA, UK, Australia and Japan. Operates both pay-per-click and pay-per-sale.

www.simply.com

Simply provide context sensitive advertising for your website. So they try to match the best ads for the content of your pages. If they cannot find any suitable ads then they display advertising from Google AdSense (theirs not yours!)

When trialled on this site they performed only about half as well as Google AdSense.

www.adnetwork.net

AdNetwork.net provide content advertising for your website, so they do their best to serve up the best ads for your site.

When trialled on this site their performance lagged behind Google AdSense.

www.cpaway.com

CPAway a USA based affiliate network (based in Florida), and they run campaigns for visitors from the USA, Canada and UK as well as some which are for Internationals (i.e. not country of origin specific).

They vet every application so the application process is not quick. They also ask for more information as part of this vetting process than any other network reviewed to date, presumably not all of which is strictly necessary as our reviewer declined to give some information and was still approved.

Once approved you are assigned your own affiliate manager should you wish to avail yourself of their services. They also send out regular campaign updates by email to inform you of what offers (i.e. ads) are expiring and which ones have been added to their network.

Click2Sell.eu

Click2Sell offers money making opportunities with its free online affiliate program network.

Merchants can add products to their marketplace and start selling, running an affiliate program and accepts payments instantly. Promote your products online and develop your online business. Track keywords and find out why buyers buy your promoted product. Track every aspect of your campaign with powerful buyer tracking system.

Affiliates can earn money online promoting great products.

http://uk.omgpm.com/affiliate/

A leading affiliate marketing network for financial services and insurance programmes. They also provide a content service, providing appropriate ads to a site according to the site's content.

Whilst this is the UK site, there have sites specific to a number of countries: Australian site at http://au.omgpm.com, French site at http://fr.omgpm.com,  German site at http://de.omgpm.com, Indian site at http://in.omgpm.com and Polish site at http://pl.omgpm.com.

www.fastadvert.com

Pays 1$ per 1000 banner-impressions, minimum payout 100$ (i.e. after 100,000 banner impressions, that's a little less than 3 years at 100 impressions a day or a little over 3 months at 1,000 impressions a day.) Be aware that the site generates pop-ups (and pop-behinds), using it may therefore annoy your visitors and will not be acceptable if you are trying to meet WAI accessibility standards. Does not pay for clicks or sales.

www.webgains.com

WebGains is a UK network working with both SME and blue chip clients (Cadbury's, One Tel, Cloggs). They offer 24/7 support and pride themselves on their service and advanced in depth reporting. Webgains offers the personal touch that is very much focused on producing results for both merchants and affiliates alike.

http://stellarads.directtrack.com

StellarAds is a newer network providing a CPA network that offers a wide variety of campaigns in multiple categories. For the most part, StellarAds caters to a US audience.

http://clickbank.com

ClickBank is a very popular network for both buying and selling products and services. It is very popular with smaller websites that have products to sell because it is very simple to set up.

www.firelead.com

Affiliate network started February 2007. Unlike most affiliate networks FireLead vet all applications, but in my experience this was very quick.

www.trienta.com

An affiliate network with campaigns from all over the world.

www.theslice.co.uk

A long established UK marketing company which has more recently moved into the affiliate network arena. They provide schemes for advertising in emails (although you will need to contact them for this as you can only earn commission on newsletters which they have approved), as well as conventional pay per lead and per sale.

www.adunleash.com

AdUnleash Advertising Network. AdUnleash allows advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ad space in a self service advertising platform. Featuring PPC and CPA bidding options and a powerful optimization technology. Their system works to automatically find the highest and most effective CPM yields.

If you know of other affiliate networks (not individual company affiliate schemes) that you would like to see listed on this page then please e-mail: feedback@cryer.co.uk.