Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, and as such there is a ton of information online aimed at helping you succeed. There’s also a lot of older, outdated information and misinformation. Affiliate marketers can often be very jealous of their success, and it’s the rare marketer that is secure enough to share their secrets without repercussion.

My goal with this post is to create something like a table of contents for the web. I want to accumulate links to some of the best and most useful resources, guides, posts, and experiences I can find. I’m not here to teach you how to do affiliate marketing, I’m here to show you where to go to learn.

Affiliate-Friendly Web Hosts

These are web hosts that are known to be good, cheap, and high quality. You don’t want to try to host your moneymaking sites on a spammy free host or a host that is known for poor support. Affiliates already have a bit of a bad name just from the varied history of the system. There’s no reason to stack the deck against yourself. As an added bonus, many of these hosts offer affiliate programs of their own, so you can recommend the one you use to your users as well.

1. Dreamhost
2. HostGator
3. BlueHost
4. Inmotion Hosting
5. Siteground
6. Arvixe
7. Green Geeks – Note: specifically designed to be environmentally friendly.
8. WP Engine – Note: specifically designed to be used with WordPress.org.
9. A2 Hosting
10. iPage

Useful Guides

These are informational guides that help you learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing. Some of them will be redundant if you’re already aware of standard marketing techniques, while others will be unique information specific to affiliate marketing. I highly recommend you browse your way through these guides before you dive headfirst into marketing yourself.

1. Affilorama’s How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? – If you’re new to the business and aren’t quite sure what affiliate marketing is, this post is for you.
2. Graywolf SEO’s 10 Commandments of Affiliate Web Design – A guest post from Gab Goldenberg, analyzing what a website needs to do to succeed with affiliate marketing, and creating commandments from there.
3. Skip McGrath’s Ten Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing – A set of basic, general tips that you can easily use as a reference or checklist to ground yourself and make sure you haven’t gone too far off track.
4. Bryan Haines’ Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing – This detailed guide will give you a lot of beginner information to get you on the right track for successful affiliate setup and sales.
5. Smart Insights’ Choosing an Affiliate Network – This guide is specifically engineered to help you identify what you need in an affiliate network, and how to pick a network that suits those needs. Warning: it’s a little dry.
6. Missy Ward’s Choosing an Affiliate Program – A similar post to the above, but more geared towards looking at the benefits and supplemental assistance a network provides.
7. Smart Passive Income’s Where to Put Affiliate Links – A detailed guide on affiliate link positioning, for maximum exposure and click rates.
8. Smart Passive Income’s 8 Principles for Effective Affiliate Marketing on a Blog – This post is five years old, but the principles Pat lays out hold true today. A very time-honored resource.
9. Carrie Dils’ How to Run a Successful Affiliate Campaign Without Being a Douche – I’ve mentioned that affiliate marketing has a bad rap; Carrie gives you tips to help you avoid being one of the people that gives it a bad name.
10. Charles NGO’s Secret Tools to Make Killer Landing Pages – This is a nitty gritty post about how to design a landing page from the ground up.
11. Zac Johnson’s Best Landing Page Builders for Affiliate Marketers – This is a list of tools you can use to make landing pages, with basic reviews and price information.
12. MonetizePros’ 5 Proven Affiliate Marketing Strategies – A detailed look at five different successful strategies people have used to make significant money online. Pick a business model and work from there.
13. Clickbank’s Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Split-Testing Guide – Split testing is the only route to success in marketing. Clickbank, one of the largest affiliate networks, gives you advice they’ve seen used to great effect.
14. Quicksprout’s A/B Testing for Beginners – The title makes this post sound basic, but it’s a list of 70+ resources, much like the post you’re reading now. Every one of them is geared towards split testing.
15. Hubspot’s How to A/B Test Landing Pages – This is the basic set of guidelines you absolutely need to know to test effectively.
16. AffiliMarketer’s List of Niche Ideas – Picking a niche is the first step to affiliate success. This post is a huge list of possible niche ideas, though it makes no promises about their viability.
17. Digital Wells’ Guide to Choosing a Profitable Niche – Just what it sounds like; tips and methods for determining whether a niche is viable for your marketing.
18. Backlinko’s Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide – Niches and keywords go hand in hand; this guide tells you how to do keyword research in great detail. Seriously one of the best guides online.
19. Moz’s Beginners Guide to SEO – This article might as well be required reading for anyone who even thinks they want to start making money online, affiliate marketing or no.
20. WordStream’s 25 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website – You need traffic to refer users to make money, so learn from the best how to boost that traffic.

Specific Affiliate Networks

Picking an affiliate network is one of the major decisions you’ll have to make for your career as an affiliate marketer. There are hundreds of networks out there, some better than others. There’s nothing stopping you from signing up for more than one, but you should always keep in mind the benefits you get from one network over another. Also, always read reviews of a network before you join; you don’t want to end up working with a network that skims views or doesn’t pay out.

1. CJ Affiliate by Conversant – Formerly Commission Junction, one of the largest and oldest affiliate networks around.
2. ShareASale – In business since 2000, this network is highly rated for its accuracy in reporting, which is prized among affiliate marketers.
3. Amazon Associates – One of the best product-focused affiliate networks around, specifically because it’s Amazon. Who doesn’t like Amazon? They may not pay top-tier rates, but you get commissions on anything a referral buys, regardless of whether or not you linked to the product in question.
4. PeerFly – Rated the #1 affiliate network according to mThink in 2015, this network has over 2,000 offers to pick through. They promote a lot of popular brands, including Target, Best Buy, Dell, and Netflix.
5. MaxBounty – Billed as the #1 CPA network by mThink – distinct from affiliate networks, here – this network prominently features mobile affiliates.
6. Clickbank – One of the largest, oldest affiliate networks around, this one focuses heavily on courses and subscription-based offers, so you can earn residual payments.
7. Global Wide Media – Formerly Neverblue, this network has a lot of up to date technological features to help you make the most out of your offers.
8. LinkShare – The affiliate arm of Rakuten, the owners of the former Buy.com, this is possibly the oldest affiliate network still alive today. It is, however, one of the smaller networks these days.
9. ClickBooth – Nothing really noteworthy about this network other than its age. Check it out, but don’t sweat it if it doesn’t work out for you.
10. MundoMedia – A unique affiliate network in that it is based in Canada, rather than the United States.
11. AdWorkMedia – A global affiliate network with special tools including content, link, product, and offer lockers that require some action to activate for users.
12. AdScend Media – The pioneers of content locking technology, this affiliate network has recently launched video lockers and incentivized videos as new tools.
13. Above All Offers – One of the fastest growing new affiliate networks out there today, it’s based in Oregon of all places.
14. Matomy – A media group more than an affiliate network, this is your one-stop gateway to a bunch of different networks they have acquired over the years.
15. A4D – A small but viciously loyal affiliate network that has a surprising amount of direct support and assistance, along with a keen interest in helping you succeed.
16. CPAWay – One of the most respected CPA networks, run by one man who has a lot to say to help you get where you want to be.
17. ClickDealer – One of the fanciest global affiliate networks available, ranged #14 in a 2015 survey. They have worldwide offices and 24-hour support and assistance.
18. Diablo Media – This affiliate network has been in the Inc top 5000 companies for four years running.
19. Adperio – A 20-year-old ad network, they focus primarily on transparency and visibility with their ad spending, so you know you’re not being taken for a ride.
20. YeahMobi – A global ad network with a mobile focus, this new network is poised to be one of the biggest names in the business in years to come.

Additionally, you can find top lists of affiliate networks and browse through them. I’ve only listed 20 above; there are literally hundreds more where they came from. Don’t rely on my top 20 and assume they’re the best you can get.

1. mThink’s Top 20 Networks, the Blue Book Reviews – This is a constantly-updated list of the top 20 affiliate networks in both CPS and CPC, informed by a huge industry-wide survey and updated every year.
2. AffiliateSeeking – This is a massive list of over 160 affiliate networks of all sizes, with all different kinds of marketing style and niche focuses.
3. BeatThe9to5’s Huge List of Affiliate Marketing Programs – they claim this is a comprehensive list, and they will add a network if that network asks, but it’s far from complete.
4. MobyAffiliates – A huge list of affiliate networks that work for mobile marketing. This is a hugely growing niche and many of the oldest affiliate marketers haven’t moved to expand into it yet, so it’s a prime opportunity for many.
5. About.com’s A-Z List of Affiliate Networks – Some general ad networks are mixed into this resource, and it’s not the most up to date, but it has a lot of networks that aren’t listed elsewhere.
6. AssociatePrograms – A large directory of affiliate programs with over 10,000 entries to dig through.
7. AffiliatesDirectory – A database of over 7,000 affiliate programs, complete with categorization to tell you what kinds of payments you can earn.
8. TwoTier – A smaller list specifically pointing out affiliate networks with two-tier systems.
9. Best Affiliates Network List – A goofy and basic list hosted on blogspot that, nevertheless, does happen to list a large number of networks.
10. HighStreet.io – This specific post is a list of affiliate networks that work in Europe, either specifically or in addition to other areas.

Assorted Affiliate and Marketing Tools

These are tools that you can use as a marketer in general, or as an affiliate marketer. Most of them are relatively generic, some of them you probably already have or are common sense. Others are more niche tools you might not have heard of before. Check them out, and let me know if you have any you’d like to add to the list.

1. WordPress – There’s basically no reason to make an affiliate blog using anything other than the self-hosted WordPress.org installation.
2. SiteRubix – Your one exception to the above entry; a site builder with an actually robust design engine. The only downside is the siterubix URL.
3. Jaaxy – One of the more robust keyword research tools on the market, it takes a lot of the manual labor out of the process. Use the free trial before you decide to buy.
4. Canva – An amazing web-based image editor that comes with a huge stock of resources and stock photos. Make an image and pay a minor fee for the resources you used to do it.
5. Upwork – A hub for freelancers of all sorts. Hire people to do web development, graphic design, copywriting, editing, marketing, app development and a lot more.
6. Raven Tools – One of the coolest analytics suites out there, as a supplement and competitor to Google Analytics.
7. SpyFu – An affiliate marketing focused competitor research tool and niche explorer.
8. KnowEm – A bulk account creator that registers your brand name on dozens of social networks, so it’s reserved if you want to use the account later, and you don’t have to worry about competitors.
9. Fruition’s Google Penalty Checker – A tool that checks to see if your site has been penalized by Google. Useful if you have an older site or if you’re considering buying a site.
10. Buffer – An excellent tool for managing and automatic your social media posts around the web.

Affiliate Marketing Blogs

This section of the list includes some of the best marketing and affiliate-centric blogs on the web. Several of them will show up higher in this list with specific posts, and with good reason. These bloggers are authorities and have been working at legitimate affiliate marketing for years, even decades. Some of them have made literal millions of dollars doing it. Trust me; their advice is worth taking.

1. Affiliate Tip – The affiliate marketing blog written by Shawn Collins, a marketer in business since 1997.
2. Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog Podcast Archives – Fraser took down his blog, so if you wanted to see any posts you would have to use the Internet Archive. The podcast is still alive, though.
3. Malan Darras – the Art of Self Destruction – A unique perspective for a marketing blog created by a guy with a very interesting outlook on life.
4. Uber Affiliate – Unrelated to the freelance taxi company, this blog hasn’t posted since 2013 but has a lot of useful data hidden away.
5. Zac Johnson’s blog – An affiliate marketing blog that has branched out to other forms of business and marketing in recent years.
6. AMNavigator – The blog by Geno Prussakov, a Cambridge graduate and prominent affiliate speaker at the affiliate summit conference.
7. Charles NGO – A blog from one of the top-tier marketers in the world.
8. Eric Nagel – A blog by a prominent entrepreneur and speaker in the industry.
9. High Paying Affiliate Programs – an older blog with an exact match domain, it nevertheless remains prominent and useful.
10. John Chow – A large blog with numerous authors, including others from this list.
11. Luke PeerFly – Luke Kling’s blog with a lot of very useful social affiliate information.
12. ShareASale’s Blog – Posted by one of the networks themselves, this blog is geared primarily towards newbies.
13. Affiliate Summit – The blog of the Affiliate Summit, a prominent affiliate marketing conference hosted annually.
14. Hubspot – One of the most prominent names in marketing, they actually have several blogs running concurrently.
15. Matthew Woodward.co.uk – Woodward’s blog about business and internet marketing.
16. Missy Ward – Missy is one of the best female affiliate marketers out there and talks about her unique experiences.
17. Rat Race Grad – A blog about an entrepreneur who made it out of the rat race. Defunct, but still useful.
18. Shoe Money – A very casual blog with a mixture of business advice and casual life posts.
19. Sugar Rae – A blog and community dedicated to all things web entrepreneurship.

Our Past Posts

To round out this list, I’ve included links to many of the other posts on affiliate marketing we’ve written on this blog. Some of them will cover sections of this list in more detail, while others are more full of tips. Let me know which ones are your favorite!

1. Why You Aren’t Making Any Money with Affiliate Marketing
2. 10 Reasons You’re Not Earning with Affiliate Marketing
3. 10 Affiliate Programs with the Highest Conversion Rates
4. 10 Alternatives to the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program
5. 11 of the Highest Paying Affiliate Programs
6. 60+ Ways to Share and Distribute your Affiliate Links
7. 15 Ways to Promote your Clickbank Affiliate Link
8. Why are Most Affiliate Links Bad for SEO?
9. A Beginner’s Guide to Earning on CJ Affiliate
10. Our Huge List of Affiliate Sites with Recurring Commissions

Possibly Dead Sites

These are great resources that are not loading properly anymore. They are worth mentioning, incase their hosting comes back up:

1. AffPosts.com – An affiliate marketing news aggregator that follows many of the above bloggers individually.

Join the Discussion

1. 

   carrie dils

   says:

   October 18, 2015 at 5:35 am

   Hey James, Some great resources you’ve listed! Cheers, Carrie

   Reply
2. Luke says:

   October 19, 2015 at 7:29 am

   Great post! I appreciate the mention of PeerFly and LukePeerFly.com as well 🙂

   Reply
3. missyward says:

   October 21, 2015 at 2:07 pm

   Thanks for including me, James.

   Reply
4. 

   Julian Sakanee

   says:

   November 20, 2015 at 6:38 pm

   Hey James. Great list of resources. And thanks for including me. Cheers!

   Reply

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