Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Publishers

Updated on: by Miranda Grimm

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make a full-time income online!

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Being an affiliate marketer means you join up with a company to help promote and sell their services or products. In exchange for your promotion, you earn either a flat rate or a percentage of sales made from users referred by you. Affiliate marketing is very simple. But, making a full-time income from it is much more involved.

The key to affiliate marketing is finding either a company you are already a fan of or by identifying a topic, or niche, you have interest in.

For example, I am a huge fan of my hosting company, HostGator. It is the company I have chosen to host this website, they store all the files I need to make this and all of my blogs/sites (all 5 of them!) actually work! I am a huge fan because I love the price and the support is AWESOME! If someone asked me how to get started blogging, I would suggest they use HostGator and WordPress.
Lucky for me, HostGator offers an affiliate program where I can earn as much as $100 a referral!!!!!

Because it is a company I use and I have trust in, I am more than willing to suggest their services. The $100 pay is a huge bonus and incentive! In fact, I often tell my friends I will split the referral money with them- making an easy profit for me and a great day for them!

 

Although Hostgator’s pay is fantastic for referring someone to a program they will probably only pay $10 a month for is fantastic, you will likely have to market more than one company in order to make a full-time income. In this example, if I chose to pursue affiliate marketing with Hostgator, I could also join up with companies like GoDaddy where I can earn money for each person I refer to buy a domain name for their blog or website. Then, I could join up with some design theme companies to refer their WordPress themes and earn money for every theme sold through my referral links. The limit to how much you could make is limitless!

Once you have found a subject that interests you, such as the blogging example used above, you will next need to put your marketing skills to work.

Affiliate marketing takes a lot of learned skills! From marketing tactics, social networking, blogging, SEO (search engine optimization), researching skills and a knack for writing- there is a lot to affiliate marketing.

Thankfully all of it can be learned by using resources online and being patient with yourself as you grow into it. Hard work and dedication ultimately pays off.

Knowing your resources is essential. Sites like The Keyword Academy will walk anyone through the basic steps of getting started. The goal with the program is to earn $1000 a month. Many people, after a lot of experience and learned knowledge make well over $1000 a month.

Like most bloggers, I signed up for The Keyword Academy and learned a lot with the free 30 days they offer. I canceled at the end of my thirty days because affiliate marketing was not my choice of ways to make money. I did however, learn a lot about how to help my blog reach a larger audience!

 

Wondering how you can find out about companies that offer affiliate pay?

Many companies do not actively advertise they have affiliate programs.

In fact, some of them offer a higher rate if you go through a third party company.

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Hostgator, like I told you, pays $100 a referral- that is if you sign up to be an affiliate through a site called Commission Junction, rather than going directly through Hostgator’s site! Going through Hostgator.com will cut your pay in half! Going directly through the company only gives you $50 a referral!!
Swagbucks has their general referral pay of matching your referral’s “bucks” earned for searching (up to 1000 “bucks”), but if you sign up through one of the third party companies, you can earn up to $3 in REAL MONEY for each referral!

If affiliate marketing is interesting to you, then check out the top 5 affiliate marketing programs where you can get started.

Here is my suggested top 5!
Commission Junction-
Search through hundreds of affiliate programs by subject or company name!

VigLink-
Set and forget this one. If you ever link to a product or site but did not think to find out if you could earn a referral or affiliate pay, VigLink will likely have you covered!

LinkShare
Dig through a large selection of affiliate programs with top brand names, like Barnes and Nobel or Buy.com!

Clickbank-
Another affiliate program that lists hundreds of companies!

Amazon-
Link to products your love and earn a percentage of any sales made through your links!

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Anna

November 28, 2011 at 9:43 am

Great info! I am just now starting to get the hang of this affiliate marketing stuff! It can be tricky. I have learned that you stand the best chance of profiting if you have a genuine respect for the company/opportunity you choose to promote. This authenticity will show through in your writing when you make a post about them and others will sense it.

It’s very tempting to just go through and promote all kinds of things because of how much stuff pays, but in spite of that I agree it is still better just to stick with things you’re knowledgeable about and feel you can genuinely recommend.

Miranda Grimm

November 28, 2011 at 10:17 am

I agree, if you can stand behind what you are promoting, then it makes it much easier!!

It seems majority of companies offer affiliate programs too. So, it is easy to find things you already use and love!

Leisa Good

November 28, 2011 at 10:26 am

Great info, Miranda. Aweber also has a good affiliate program. I’ve probably made more money from that one than the others. I do need to further monetize my one blog with others.

Miranda Grimm

November 28, 2011 at 12:16 pm

Thanks Leisa! I know of aweber, but have not checked it out entirely. Will be sure to do so!

Angie

November 28, 2011 at 2:52 pm

Commission Junction has always been my favorite, though I use many networks. And, like you mention, sometimes you can do some digging and come up with an even better deal.

Lisa Mills

November 28, 2011 at 8:19 pm

Love Commission Junction. I used to be an Amazon.com affiliate. But since I’m in North Carolina, and the N.C. General Assembly got involved and enacted a new tax law, Amazon cancelled all its affiliates in NC. Hoping that changes one day. But until then, I’ll have to check out the other sites you’ve mentioned here.