When it comes to earning money from your blog, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to turn traffic into cash.

Affiliate marketing is a viable strategy when you find a quality product that interests your visitors and that you can proudly recommend. When you start your blog, the goal is to make money across the board.

For advertisers, the affiliate network offers and benefits include payment processing, ad tracking technology, advertising campaign reporting tools and access to a vast database of publishers.

Whether you want to promote physical products, digital products, big brands or small brands, on this list you will find an affiliate platform that connects you with something that fits.

Since the late 1990s, affiliate marketing has become a major industry, with US retailers spending $4.7 billion on affiliate marketing in 2016.

The industry is estimated to grow to $68 billion by 2021. And not only that, given the size of the industry, there are a lot of different affiliate marketing companies in different market segments.

To help you, we’ve put together some of the best affiliate platforms and networks. They’ll gives you access to tens of thousands of retailers and millions of products.

1. Amazon Associates

The Amazon Affiliate Program (Amazon Associates) is an affiliate marketing program. It is free for website owners and bloggers to become Amazon Associates.

Amazon Associates is a good option if you want to promote physical products on your website. As an Amazon affiliate, you earn a commission on much of what is sold.

What makes Amazon Associates valuable is that you earn commissions on everything new you source and buy, even if it’s not the product you link to. For example, if you link a $5 toothbrush and the person ends up buying a $500 television, you still get a commission, but it’s only a cookie for the duration of the course. The product is not in your shopping cart.

You can advertise products and create links on your website. When customers click on a link and buy a product, they earn a referral fee.

Through the Affiliate Program, associates earn a commission for creating unique product links and promoting links on their site to boost referral traffic.

Once the application is approved, employees can start creating affiliate links on their Amazon portal. Amazon gives the website owner a unique employee ID. The website owner creates an Amazon affiliate account on Amazon.com.

Publishers advertise Amazon’s vast catalog of physical and digital products.

With assets over $ 1 trillion and more than 90 million Prime subscriber paying subscribers in the United States, its massive e-commerce offering is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Rating

The Better Business Bureau gives the company a B + rating. Their trust in Amazon is the reason why their products feature prominently in Google search results.

At the beginning of your Amazon Associate journey, these numbers can be skewed on the low side, so make sure you are not only Amazon Associate, but also receive some form of income.

2. CJ Affiliate

CJ (also known as Commission Junction) is an affiliate network that brings together thousands of merchants under one roof – this is similar to ShareAsale.

Unlike ShareAsales, CJ is one of the largest affiliate networks, meaning you can connect to thousands of merchants large and small. You will also find many smaller dealers.

I think the CJs Affiliate Dashboard has a slightly higher learning curve than ShareAsale. The dashboard can be a bit complicated at first glance, but once you start, I like the dashboard you will see.

CJ Affiliate gives you access to more than 3,000 merchants. It combines all your affiliate commissions into one monthly payment.

Rating

It has an A + rating from the Better Business Bureau.

CJ Affiliate offers many possibilities, such as real-time reporting. This means that you can monitor activity on your affiliate dashboard as it happens.

CJ Affiliate is considered the largest affiliate platform out there, and if you’ve been in affiliate marketing for some time, you’ve probably stumbled across it.

If you have an audience of modest size and commitment, you will appreciate what CJ Affiliate has to offer. Established target groups who want a feature-rich affiliate network will enjoy this platform a lot.

Their merchants have a reputation for being picky about how they accept affiliates and publishers, so it’s good for those who receive steady traffic to their websites.

There is a wide range of advertisers on the CJ affiliate platform, and they make it easy to compare and segment different deals. CJ Affiliates Commission Junction has over three thousand advertising partners, many of whom have many creative personalities and various affiliate link options.

Most retailers have multiple ad sizes for affiliates, giving you greater control over what offers you can show on your blog. All major retailers have their affiliate programs on the platform, making them a one-stop-shop when you’re in the affiliate marketing business.

Finding an affiliate tracking code to put on your blog is easy, and once you approve and promote an offer, you can run in a few hours a lot of different listings on your site.

The CJ Affiliate reporting suite is impressive and a great advantage for marketers who plan to spend their time optimizing their sales performance. The reporting possibilities are great, but difficult for beginners.

You will need to spend some time in the dashboard before you can comfortably navigate the suite to take full advantage of the tools.

Due to the large number of affiliate dealers, it is understandable that customer support is limited. Contact forms as the main way to contact the support department can be restrictive.

3. ShareASale

While Amazon Associates focuses on its products, ShareASale is an in-house affiliate program with over 4,500 retailers large and small.

Overall, this is a great option for both digital and physical products. Shareasale is one of the most popular affiliate networks ever.

On the digital side, for example, you will find many WordPress themes, plugins, and hosting providers. No matter what niche your website or blog is in, you will find offers that are worth promoting.

On the physical side, you will also find many large and small traders. For example, Warby Parker sunglasses, Sun Basket, Wayfair, Reebok, NFL Shop, and thousands of other small and big businesses.

The average commission rate depends on the retailer you sign up for.  The duration of cookies also depends on the merchants with whom you are logged in.

The dashboard design was a bit clunky at first, but it’s slowly getting a lot better now.

On the 20th of each month, when you reach the payment threshold of $50, ShareAsale will send you money.

Rating

There are zero customer complaints, and the Better Business Bureau gives it an A + rating.

If you want to offer a service to your target audience, be it a physical product, a SaaS software service or a digital download, this network has you covered.

Whether you just want to advertise products or something else, you can do so using these affiliate links.

4. ClickBank

ClickBank has been an OG affiliate marketing program since the early days of the Internet.

If you want to promote digital products and do so without a million options, many of which have high commissions, ClickBank is a good bet.

After suffering from inferior quality products and bordering on spam, ClickBank revised its review process in 2012 and created a better dashboard.

For niche products, ClickBank tends toward digital products, but you can also find physical products, and they make it easy to filter between the two.

The disadvantage is that some of ClickBank’s products are not the highest quality products available. They have their vetting process to filter out bad trades. So you should be careful about the traders you want to promote.

The average commission rate can be quite high, depending on the retailer you sign up with. You can find a percentage or flat-rate commission here. The cookie duration depends on the retailer and can be up to 60 days.

ClickBank offers more than 6 million unique affiliate products.

Rating

With zero unresolved complaints at the time of this letter, ClickBank has an A + rating from the Better Business Bureau. With ClickBank you can choose what you want to pay for.

While Clickbank itself has a solid reputation for a successful affiliate program. The products offered by Clickbank affiliates and merchants on the website are questionable.

If you do that, you will do well. If you don’t, you may end up promoting below-average products that your audience won’t be happy with. So, better do your homework and do your best.

The verification process is much more professional Nowadays. ClickBank focuses on selling digital products and making money with courses and the like.

Clickbank is a strong competitor, but they tend to focus on digital products of questionable quality. Nevertheless, the high-quality products offered by a few affiliate programs are large enough that ClickBank can also sell digital books.

ClickBank tends to focus on more niche products such as e-books, online courses and e-courses.

ClickBank offers a wealth of information, including FAQs, feeds and videos, and the barrier to entry is very low.

Cookies have a duration depending on the product, but none is unlimited for a lifetime.

ClickBank is best positioned for publishers and bloggers working in small niches.