AFFKO is the world’s largest directory of affiliate programs. And we are growing every day. Each day, our reviewers are reviewing affiliate programs offered by the world’s top brands. All of these programs are legit, come with attractive commission schemes, and are MOSTLY free to join. Here, you will find a bit more about how these affiliate programs work. Let’s get down to the basics.

What Is An Affiliate Program?

An affiliate marketing program is an electronic program that is based on a revenue-sharing agreement between an advertiser or merchant and webmasters affiliated to the merchant/advertiser or affiliate marketers. Signing up for an affiliate program essentially means agreeing to a revenue-sharing arrangement that makes you eligible for a commission for every new lead or customer you bring to the merchant.

Typically, as a webmaster or affiliate marketer, you need to complete a few formalities (e.g. filling out a form, agreeing to merchant terms and conditions, furnishing your tax information) to apply to an affiliate program. Once the merchant approves you as one of its affiliate marketing partners or affiliated marketers, you can start placing the company’s advertisements on your blog(s) or website(s) and through your social media channels.

The advertisements you would place on your website and across your social media accounts would contain a link, which is called the Affiliate Link. This affiliate tracking link is used by a merchant or an affiliate tracking system to record the referral traffic sent to a merchant’s website from an affiliate website.

Read more about Affiliate Links Here.

99.99% of the affiliate programs listed by us and on this page are free to join, which means you don’t have to pay a single cent to apply to these programs.

Here’s the fun part of joining an affiliate program.

Although merchants would almost never ask you to pay a fee to become a part of their team of affiliates, they would pay you a fixed amount of money or a percentage of the sales referred by you as a commission.

In some revenue-sharing arrangements, merchants also offer commissions for generating leads (e.g. a visitor to your website clicks on any of those affiliate links and ends up filling out an email capture form on the merchant website) and even for a certain number of impressions/views (e.g. an advertisement is displayed on your site a certain number of times).

Isn’t it interesting? Let’s now delve into how affiliate commissions work.

Affiliate Commission Models – How Will You Get Paid As An Affiliate Marketer?

While scrolling down, you might have noticed the word – ‘Models’, next to each affiliate program listed on this page, right?

What are these commission models? Commission models determine how much you will possibly get paid for generating a sale or a lead. A commissionable action might be an interest shown by the prospective buyer, a lead, or a completed purchase.

Here, we will briefly cover how different commission models work to help you get started, but before that, let’s understand why the commission model holds so much importance in an affiliate partnership agreement.

While the merchant or the advertiser needs to calculate the exact cost for sale to make sure they are spending within their advertising/promotion budget, you, as an affiliate marketer, need to ensure that you are making the most of your marketing efforts and the traffic you drive to a merchant website. A harmonious commission model strikes a balance between the objectives of the merchant and the affiliate marketer – YOU.

There are five major commission models that define how affiliates signed up to different programs get paid. These are Revenue Share, CPA, CPL, CPC, and CPM.

Revenue Share, also dubbed as ‘Revshare’, is a payout model followed by some affiliate programs whereby the affiliate gets a percentage of the total sales of a qualified referral, usually for a lifetime. Revenue Share is a great payout model for affiliates who are looking to build symbiotic and long-term business relationships with the retailers whose products or services they promote.

CPA affiliate marketing or Cost-Per-Action affiliate marketing is a type of affiliate marketing in which merchants use a performance-based commission model to reward their affiliate partners. The “Action” usually refers to a “First time Sale” or “New Depositor”, meaning that for the first sale made by a user referred by a certain affiliate, the affiliate will receive a fixed amount of money as a one-time commission.

Cost Per Lead, often abbreviated as CPL, is an affiliate marketing payout model whereby the advertiser or retailer pays when a verified referral signs up for a product or service. Considered to be safe and scalable, CPL is one of the oldest payout models to exist. If a retailer or advertiser is following the CPL model, it implies that they accept a lead or a certain action of a potential buyer that can be used for their marketing activities.

CPC or ‘Cost Per Click’ is a commission model in which an affiliate marketer gets paid only when a visitor to a website or online store clicks on a link placed by an advertiser. ‘CPC’, also referred to as ‘PPC’ or ‘Pay Per Click’, is a highly scalable commission model used in performance marketing.

CPM or Cost Per Mile is a commission model used by merchants who pay a fixed rate for a certain number of impressions/views. Merchants who follow this affiliate payment model release payment after an advertisement is shown for a certain number of times (usually, a thousand times). If you are choosing an affiliate program that follows this model, you can rest assured that you will be paid whether or not the user clicks on an ad.

A single affiliate program can come with one or more commission models.

Now that you know what commission models or revenue sharing arrangements are available, let’s now focus on another essential affiliate marketing term which you might have noticed on this page – VERTICAL.

What Is An Affiliate Marketing Vertical?

Verticals in the affiliate marketing world are narrow market segments encompassing a group of businesses and their target customers who are all interrelated around a very specific niche. Businesses in a specific vertical market are usually in tune with the specialized needs of the target demographics and do not cater to the broader market, although there are businesses that fall under two or more verticals (as you can see in the above screenshot).

Read more about Affiliate Marketing Verticals here.

Depending on what your passion or hobby is, and what you are knowledgeable about, you should choose your affiliate marketing vertical to pick a direction.

For example, if you have a dating blog and you perfectly know how to attract men over 50 residing in a specific geographic area to your blog, you should narrow your choices down accordingly. If you are looking for affiliate programs in the ‘insurance’ vertical just because you think the rewards are sweeter, you are probably moving in the wrong direction.

Choosing the right vertical is important for affiliate marketing success. However, you can always diversify your efforts across multiple affiliate marketing verticals.

Let’s now focus on the third and most important aspect of an affiliate program – THE PAYOUT.

Affiliate Program Payouts – How Much You Can Earn?

Affiliate program payout has a lot to do with the commission model.

Why? This is because the commission model defines and determines the commission amount. If the commission model forms the core of a revenue-sharing arrangement, the payout amount or percentage clearly defines how much you can earn by joining a certain affiliate program.

For example, as you can see in the screenshot above (you have probably come across these programs while browsing through this page), Air France pays out €1 – €8 per confirmed booking in a CPA arrangement.

Pluralsight affiliate program follows two different models, revenue share and CPL. As a Pluralsight affiliate, you can potentially earn $5 per free trial sign-up, 10% – 50% per subscription.

LastPass, on the other hand, follows a RevShare model, and you will get paid 25% per sale if you join the program.

Lastly, how do we review and rate the programs? Let’s find out.

AFFKO Affiliate Program Reviews – How Do We Review Programs?

We take a lot of factors into consideration while reviewing affiliate programs. Some of the factors we take into consideration are:

• Brand reputation
• Commission model
• Payout
• Minimum payment threshold (Learn more about Payment Thresholds here)
• Payment methods
• Ease of joining
• Affiliate support

…plus a lot more

However, we don’t rate the affiliate programs. It’s our lovely and awesome users, affiliate marketers like you, and people who generally take interest in affiliate marketing, who rate these programs. The rating reflects how popular a program is among affiliate marketers.

If a program doesn’t have any rating, it simply means nobody stumbled upon it just as yet. In case you have already been a part of the program, we encourage you to go ahead and rate it, review it. Your review will help us improve our site and help our users know more about the affiliate programs listed on AFFKO.

We don’t rate the programs as we believe each program is EQUALLY AWESOME, AND each of the programs comes with its own set of benefits for affiliate marketers like you.

So, just start exploring and applying to programs that best fit your interest, your business type, and your niche.