2020 E-commerce Website Affiliate Marketing Guide

Affiliate programs are of great importance for a brand to become bigger and stronger, especially for products with a long consumer buying process. Through extensive online and multi-channel exposure, users can make decision-making time shorter To complete the conversion as soon as possible. The affiliate marketing industry, like all other industries, is full of competing for affiliate networks of all sizes, providing similar services and solutions, so advertisers have more choices. Knowing how to choose one or more suitable alliances Platform can avoid some common pitfalls.

ShareAsale

Company introduction: Note for 18 years of affiliate marketing. Currently, The network serves 4,500 advertisers and over 100,000 active publishers generating more than 12m transactions a year, making it the third-largest affiliate marketing network in the US. Most of the publisher accept Pay-Per-Sale advertising, and some support LEAD and CPC. Shareasale focuses more on small and medium advertisers. Awin acquired ShareASale at the price of $35M in Jan 2017. but the two platforms still operate independently. The acquisition offers both networks a mutually beneficial partnership. ShareASale’s market reach, brand equity, and reliable product offering, coupled with Awin’s strategic account management, custom solutions, and global reach, offers a broad spectrum of solutions to advertisers and publishers depending on their needs.

Established time: 2000  

headquarter: Chicago, US

Member status：100,000 publishers, 4,500 advertisers

Affiliate type：Content, Social media, Deal , Coupon/cashback

Main areas: United States (covering 80% of affiliate resources in the United States), Canada and the United Kingdom

Website monthly visits: 7.5M

Charging model: SAS account opening fee of $ 550, minimum deposit of $ 100 required for account recharge, a total of $ 650 (ShareAsale affiliate platform commission = publisher commission * 20%); and FTP service fee (data feed service for collaborators in the project): $ 1 / AFF, paid by merchant

Payment: prepayment mode, support online PayPal top-up, bank transfer; if the balance of the merchant account is as low as $ 0, the project will be suspended and will not be active again until recharge

Pros:

1. The platform is powerful, especially the commission setting level, which supports commissions in various ways such as new and old customers, first order incentives, gradient incentives, exclusive incentives, etc.

2. The merchant has strong self-operability and can disprove invalid orders by himself, and modify the order amount without customer service intervention

Cons:

1. Global companies, the interface lacks personalized settings;

2. There is no one on one customer service, and any question and queries need to submit tickets.

contact email: shareasale@shareasale.com

3. Prepayment required

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

RaKuten Marketing

Established time：Founded In 1996, formerly known as LinkShare, founded by Americans, it was acquired by Rakuten in 2005 for $ 425 million and was renamed Rakuten Affiliate Network in 2014 headquarter: New York，and 16 offices worldwide（Chicago, New York, Salt Lake City, San

Mateo, Seattle, Aix-en-Provence, Brighton, London, Germany, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore,

Sydney, Melbourne and Japan）

member status：150,000 publishers 1000+advertisers

Affiliate type：Content Coupons/Voucher DNS/Web-Extensions Deals/CSE Financial Loyalty/Rewards Mobile Other

Search Service Provider Shopping Social Networking Sub-Network Employee Discount

Main Areas：USA, UK, France, Canada

Monthly Visit:196K

charging model：3% of sales as platform fee per month, minimum spend of $ 500

Payment：Postpaid，Bills are divided into platform bills and channel bills paid once a month.

Pros：

1. Powerful tracking, including S2S push order technology facing ITP, rarely missed orders

2. Have global high-quality traffic channels, and many high-quality content-based resources

3. Platform operation is easy to learn and various batch functions

Cons：

1. There is a minimum consumption requirement, which is not friendly to small advertisers

2. The order cannot set the commission ratio separately according to whether custom is new or return customers. Also, the commission ratio needs to be agreed on by the channel.

Rating:★ ★ ★ ★ 

CJ

Established time：Established in 1998,  formerly known as Value-Click

headquarter: USA

member status：70,000 publishers 4,000 elite global brands

Affiliate type：Coupons/Voucher,content blog,shopping

search

Main Areas：US, UK, France, Canada (mainly English-speaking countries)

Monthly Visit: 1.3M

charging model：The commission is 3% of the order amount. A single commission of less than $ 0.3 is charged at $ 0.3, and minimum monthly consumption of $ 500 is charged.

Payment：Prepaid

Pros：

1. Established alliance with a long history and comprehensive system

2. Powerful tracking, support cross-screen, and cross-device tracking

3. Rich resource types, more content-based media resources

Cons：

1. The platform has the lowest consumption, which is not suitable for small and medium advertisers

2. Precharge, need to add some funds

3. No dedicated account manager

4. The contract requires a fixed fee of $ 500 per year

5. Platform operation is a bit slow and stuck

Rating:★ ★ ★ ★ 

Admitad

Established time：2009年10月1日

headquarter：Headquarters in Germany, with branches in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Germany, India, China

Member status： 614200 publishers，1600 advertisers

Affiliate type：Voucher (26%)  Cashback (40%) Content (5%) Influencer (9%) Paid Social (1%) Paid Search (1%)

Comparison (1%) Facebook (1%) Lead Generation (1%) Other (15%)

Main Areas：Russian market (Russia, Eastern Europe)

Monthly Visit：10M

charging model：No set-up fee, monthly platform fee is 20% ~ 30% of affiliate commission, there is no minimum consumption

Payment：Pay monthly, 60 days billing period

Pros：

1. The platform tracking function is relatively complete, and various reports are comprehensive.

2. Rich resources, based on localized resources of the Russian market and global traffic resources

3. A dedicated account manager, convenient and timely communication

Cons:

1. Channel contact information is not visible

2. More garbage traffic

3. The platform is biased towards affiliates, and advertisers’ interests are affected

4. Commissions are troublesome to set up and need to be handled by your account manager

5. Marketing Materials cannot be batch uploaded

Rating：★ ★ ★