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What are affiliate networks?

If you are new to affiliate marketing you may not have heard of affiliate networks. So just to clarify:  affiliate networks are companies that offer merchants a turnkey solution for recruitment, selection and payment of affiliates. In exchange for a set up fee, the merchants can start recruiting affiliates among the publishers that have joined a network. So basically an affiliate network is intended to be used by merchants but also by affiliates

Benefits of affiliate networks

It's clear that affiliate networks offer several advantages to merchants as well as to affiliates. As this introductory article has been written for affiliates and not for merchants, I will not very much expand on the merchant's point of view. Nevertheless a short list of what makes networks so attractive: A major plus with affiliate networks is that the network company takes care of all the handling and more technical issues such as providing the affiliate software that generates unique affiliate links or payment of affiliates.

As a matter of fact, this is also, at least in my opinion, the biggest advantages for affiliates: as a third party is taking care of the payment, you do not need to worry a lot about not getting paid. As several affiliate networks publish reversal rates of transactions you can see before you join, you are able to assess whether or not the particular merchant seems to be honest or not.

Next to that, the single most important reason for small websites to be using affiliate networks is the fact that commissions of the different merchants in the network are put together in one pay check. Suppose you have earned 10$ with merchant A and 20$ with merchant B. Normally you'd be getting 2 pay checks, one of 20$ & one of 10$.

Right?