Find the Best Affiliate Network for your website

Step 1 - Where are your customers / visitors

Affiliate programs and merchants are usually tied to one region of the world. It's no good having a website in the UK targetting UK visitors and putting ads on your site which belong to shops in the US. If you are really targetting global visitors consider building a website for which visitors choose their geography and then you can target them specifically with versions of your pages and advertising just for them.

Step 2 - Sign up for the Affiliate Networks

Global Affiliate networks

Clixgalore are one of the largest affiliate networks (Over 3000 merchants) and cover all the world for one signup. There are other networks which cover various parts of the world but you have to sign up separately for each region. Good for US, UK, Australia and New Zealand specific programs.
See the Clixgalore top merchants.

Commission Junction are another large affiliate network (Over 2000 merchants) and cover all the world for one signup. There are other networks which cover various parts of the world but you have to sign up separately for each region. They are the affiliate network for Ebay.

PrimeQ are a medium sized network, covering the US, UK,Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, France and Spain. Click to see their current merchant list.

US affiliate networks

Linkshare - Predominantly US based with a few UK and Canada merchants. Free to join. Click here to see the Linkshare Premium merchants.

Shareasale (US) - Over 2000 merchant programs. Accepts international membership.

Affiliate Future (US) - Smaller network. Free signup.

Clickbank - Affiliate scheme for digitally delivered products - ebooks, software etc.

UK Affiliate networks

Affiliate Window (UK) - Biggest UK network with some of the biggest online and household names. See the Affiliate Window merchant list.

Affiliate Future (UK) - UK Affiliate Future is a lot bigger than it's US counterpart. It is one of the best for TRAVEL links (over 100 travel related merchants).
It has some great tools for Shopping search, Carhire search, Holiday search and Travel search. Easy to build into your website and you earn commission on any referrals without having to sign up to each individual program.
Sign up to Affiliate Future today!

Tradedoubler (UK) - A large UK affiliate network with some well known brands and names. See the Tradedoubler merchant list.

Buy.at (UK) - A smaller UK network. See the buy.at merchant list.

Step 3 - Add your links

All the affiliate networks supply links either to the merchant or directly to the merchants products. Just select the most appropriate links for your website, paste in the code that you are given and that's it. Sit back and wait for your visitors to click on the links, order products and earn you some cash.

Try not to make your website overloaded with affiliate links. Choose ones that are meaningful, use text links in your pages, and add some banners / graphical links in a header or side-bar.