This “Sites List” is all about Affiliate Agencies - the companies who link paying advertisers with publishers - normally website publishers - for the benefit of both.  It’s not yet complete, but will be added to over the coming months, your suggestions and recommendations are most welcome - please send me a personal message via our forums.

Our forums have a special section dedicated to the who, what, where, and how, regarding Affiliate Agencies, and an area for discussing who’s good and who’s not, what works and what doesn’t.  Why not pop across and join in today?

Affiliate Announcement offers a comprehensive range of services for both new and established affiliate programs.  This is an unusual program in that you promote it like any other advertiser’s product, but you also become an affiliate for the service in addition to the agency which promoted it to you as part of your portfolio of advertisers.

Services include:
• Press Release services
• Affiliate Directory Submissions (to one of the largest range of directories available)
• Exclusive entry to their own affiliate directories
• Affiliate Advertising and program announcements
• Exclusive rates to AffiliateFuture.us (for qualifying sites)

Affiliate Future operates from 3 sites geo-focused on North America, Europe, and the UK.  They have a clean easy to navigate site, and a one page registration process without all the nausea of non-US residents having to complete US tax forms online before being accepted as a publisher - for me, that’s a major plus-point in their favour.  They also don’t faff about with email address verification and other delays to being able to dive straight in and get your linking codes and banners.  Unfortunately, splitting their coverage between three offices means that each one has a smaller selection of advertisers than if they were combined under one roof.

Affiliate Future pays out on the 15th of each month, by wire transfer, for the previous month’s earnings.  So it’s only a 2 week turnaround.  Affiliates must have a minimum of $40 in their account in order to be paid.  Any commissions not paid out, will be carried over to the next month.

Affiliate Window is not one of my favourite Affiliate Agencies - The application process also requires you to verify your name and address details by making a GBP £5.00 payment to Affiliate Window by Credit or Debit card.  This payment is credited directly into your new affiliate account the moment your account is activated and will be paid back as part of your first affiliate payment.  This smacks too much of the eBay accounting philosophy to me, and I’ve been burned by too many of these “lend us your money” registration fees in the past.  As a result, I don’t use them, and cannot advise about them further than saying that their public list of clients reads like the “Who’s Who” of UK High Street retailing.

Update - I forgot I had a dormant account under an old email address, and have reactivated that.  The account was earning commissions within weeks of reactivating - jolly good, that’s what I hope for from an affiliate agency.

Clickbank is a US based agency dealing solely with digitally downloadable and internet-accessed products. Founded in 1998, ClickBank is the online retail outlet for over 10,000 digital product publishers and their 100,000 active affiliates. Their registration system is fairly straightforward though they do use sightly different terminology to other agencies - normally each side of the affiliateship are designated as merchant and publisher, the publisher being the website owner hosting the adverts for public view.  On ClickBank, the publisher is the digital product provider and the website owner is an affiliate - watch for this as it can confuse when registering.

Their website home page states they now pay commissions weekly, and their charges to their “publishers” are stated as $1.00 + $7.5% per sale.  There is also a $49.95 one-off registration cost to be a publisher and access their affiliate list.  ClickBank claims to make a sale somewhere in the world every three seconds, and serve over 200 countries.

ClixGalore is an agency that I do like.  For a start, they’re a no fuss agency that leaves you alone to generate as much or as little traffic as you want, or can manage, to do, and they don’t recapture your earnings for “admin fees” just because you’re having a quiet traffic patch.   Most importantly, they have a huge client list covering the globe, and are particularly strong in Australia - where most agencies are traditionally weak.  clixGalore Affiliate Marketing is a large affiliate network with over 7,500 merchants, and many ten of thousands of affiliates across their five main networks in the USA, UK, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

clixGalore Affiliate Marketing has a monthly payment schedule, and will pay you when your commission reaches US $50.00, or AUD $100.00, or GBP £35.00, or EU € 60.00 Payment details are maintained within your account.  Payments are made using Paypal or with a bank check. Note that bank checks are only issued to US companies or US residents.  If your commission earnings are over US$1000 or equalivent, you can have the funds electronically transferred to your bank account.

Additionally, clixGalore offers an “Instant Website Builder” solution that allows affiliates to really drive income from clicks and user actions after clicks.  Using the “Instant Website Builder” tool, located in your clixGalore Member Home area, you can easily and instantly generate promotional web pages containing their Merchant’s products.  You then use these professional styled pages to promote the Merchants’ products and earn commission for the sales generated.  I haven’t played with it yet, but I will be doing so sometime this year, and will blog about it once I’ve done so.

Update - clixGalore have now started charging a dollar a month as “registration” - this sucks, big time.  If your links go through a quiet spell, or your main earning adverts suddenly stop working (as per eBid’s) then your earning account drains.

Commission Junction are one of the larger and slicker marketing machines in the world of affiliate marketing, yet strangely do not have a referrals program for affiliates to earn from referring new affiliates to them.  They are also quite slow to issue payments (roughly 30 days after the end of the qualifying period) but do have some of the lowest minimum payments in the industry, and they do have Cost per Click (CPC) programs similar to Google Adsense - ideal for ensuring trickle-through income on top of the larger Cost per Action (CPA) payments.

Payment Method - Checks are processed beginning on the 20th of every month for the previous month’s balance.  This means that after a withdrawal is made to process a check, the money which has been earned during the current month will remain in the account.
In other words, if you earn no less than your minimum payment amount (as listed below) in November, you will be paid that amount at the end of December.  After the payment for November is withdrawn you will still see money in your account, (i.e., whatever money you earned during the month of December).

Minimum Payment Amounts by Currency

• USD: $25.00
• CAD: $35.00
• EUR: €25.00
• GBP: £16.00
• SEK: 185.00

Commission Rates - Advertisers can choose to pay their publishers per-sale or per-lead, or a combination of these.

• Sale: A purchase made on an advertiser’s site.
• Lead: A registration or a sign-up (usually giving an email address or some sort of contact information). Look at an advertiser’s detail page to see what constitutes a lead.
• Click: (click-throughs) The action a consumer takes when they are referred from one Web site through a link or advertisement and are taken to another Web site.

Google Adsense may be one of the best known and most flexible affiliate agencies on the Internet, but it’s very size and range of options makes it a confusing service for the beginner.  However, they do have excellent help and tutorial resources, but have extremely strict user policies full of Catch-22’s, Gotcha’s, and Don’t-even-think-about-it’s, which has led to a plethora of complaints and slammings in web forums and blogs.

Becoming involved with Google as an affiliate agency is not for the faint hearted, but can be extremely lucrative, not least due to their primarily CPC philosophy now backed with some quality CPA programs under their Referrals scheme.

… more to follow.

.

.

Affiliate Marketing Books & Guides

Building Your Own Adsense Empire $9.99 in BuildaSkill’s book & software shop

Many website owners have built a fortune at breakneck speed using this plan, and now this book is going to show you exactly how you can do it, too - even if you have no experience with e-commerce or online advertising.
113 page eBook in Adobe PDF and MS Word DOC formats.
Total Download Size = 8,259 KB (8.2 MB) Language = US English

Adsense; The Dollar Producing Factory $9.99 in BuildaSkill’s book & software shop

What is AdSense?  How to get registered with AdSense Programs?  What are the different types of AdSense programs?  What are the tips and tricks for earning more through AdSense?  How do I stop the Ads of competitors from appearing on my website? How do I get paid?  Do I get reports for analyzing the performance of my website?  All these are genuine questions that would come to the mind of anyone who was interested in learning more about AdSense, how it works and how they can make the best of this Huge Earning Opportunity.
50 page eBook in Adobe PDF format with supplements.  Language = US English

Secrets of the Top Affiliate Marketers $9.99 in BuildaSkill’s book & software shop

Discover how you can generate a large profit with affiliate programs without only making the affiliate manager rich.   For example: Say you use the affiliate manager’s way of promoting their affiliate program. Then you use your money to advertise their products. You may make a profit, you may not. But, guess who always makes a profit? That’s right, the affiliate manager. (Discover the amazing marketing strategies so you too will always make a profit)
File Download Size = 348 KB.  56 page Adobe pdf eBook, plus supporting & free bonus materials

“A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” was written to be an indispensable handbook for all affiliate managers and merchants, alike. In addition to providing concrete, practical answers to common (as well as not-so-common) questions, the book gives usable ideas on promoting your affiliate program, along with ways to keep your affiliates motivated. This one-of-a-kind guide presents the author’s information in a logical, convenient format. It is one that you definitely need if you are serious about your affiliate program - be it new or already established.