13 Best Affiliate Programs For Beginners in 2024

As an affiliate marketer starting out, I remember how overwhelming it was trying to identify the best affiliate programs to join as a total beginner. With so many options, networks, and vendors touting big commissions, how can you determine which programs will actually convert and pay reliably?

Drawing from my own experience transitioning from affiliate novice to pro, I’ve discovered affiliate programs for newcomers in their first 6-12 months that are beginner-friendly. After evaluating numerous programs across criteria like approval difficulty, promotional options, reporting, payouts, and support, I’m ready to recommend the top beginner-friendly options.

In this guide, I’ll share the ideal affiliate programs for those just getting started based on my own journey to establish an income stream quickly. Whether you have a small audience or are just setting up your first website, these recommendations make it possible to start seeing earnings faster.

Interesting Read: Do you know the market value of affiliate marketing has reached $17 billion as of 2023, and it will be worth $27 billion by 2027. If you want to know more interesting facts & trends related to the affiliate marketing industry, then take a look at our affiliate marketing statistics post.

Let’s jump into exploring great entry programs for affiliate marketing rookies!

Top 13 Best Affiliate Programs For Beginners

Here is a detailed best affiliates programs for beginners guide.

#1. Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is the oldest affiliate marketing program that has been in business for more than 20 years. Despite that, it remains one of the most popular and most successful affiliate programs to this day, with hundreds of thousands of active members worldwide. Amazon maintains its policy of robust support for affiliate marketers too, so if something goes wrong, you’ll always have assistance on hand.

Amazon has also invested heavily in designing its affiliate tools. Its tools can give you all the information and data that you need to run your affiliate business effectively. Plus, signup is much easier — you can get started by logging into your Amazon account. These things make it the affiliate program of choice for the majority of beginner affiliate marketers.

But there are a few drawbacks too. Amazon Associates is a country-specific program, which means that your affiliate links need to fall in line with where your traffic is coming from. You can’t include links from Amazon UK on your website if the majority of your traffic is from the US, and so on.

The second drawback is that Amazon Associates pays out your commissions on a Net-60 basis, so you get paid after 60 days of a sale. Yeah, it hurts, but Amazon is Amazon — so we’ve got to make peace with it!

#2. CJ Affiliate By Conversant (Formerly Commission Junction)

CJ is the second oldest affiliate network after Amazon, and that’s still thriving. It has a huge network with more than 500,000 advertisers and affiliates. It’s also extremely easy to use, thanks to its professionally designed and over-improved affiliate tools.

CJ’s differentiation from Amazon is that it sells both products and services not only from less-known brands but also from the likes of Samsung, Staples, Verizon, and Zappos. It has more than 2,500 affiliate programs under its belt, which is what contributes to its massive growth.

The only drawback is that CJ Affiliate has a little bit of a learning curve. Since its affiliate tools offer a robust set of features to help you manage almost every aspect of your relationship with CJ, it may take some time before you master it. But once you become familiar, everything works like a breeze!

#3. Rakuten Advertising

Rakuten Advertising is an affiliate network that connects merchants and affiliates. It’s one of the largest affiliate programs in the world, with over 500,000 merchants and more than 14 million active users. This community is what makes it a great place to start if you’re new to affiliate marketing but don’t want to spend too much time learning how to do it well.

The program has a large number of products available for sale through its network partners (i.e., those who advertise their products on Linkshare), so there are plenty of opportunities for monetizing your website traffic. Plus, it’s free to join and has a low payment threshold.

#4. Flexoffers

FlexOffers is a highly reputable affiliate network that has been around since 2000. They’ve grown to over 100,000 merchants, including big names like Amazon and eBay. The FlexOffers team is made up of experts in the industry who work hard to provide you with the best service possible.

FlexOffers has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), so you can rest assured that there won’t be any hidden fees or complicated contracts when signing up for their service. With such a great reputation behind them, I’m sure this program will continue growing well into the future!

#5. eBay Partners Network

You may not have heard of eBay’s affiliate program, but it’s one of the great starting points for beginner affiliate marketers. With over 100 million active users and more than 2 million new products added every day, there are plenty of opportunities to find unique products that can be sold on eBay.

The best thing about this program? It has a commission structure that’s easy to understand. The average commission rate at EPN is $2 per sale made through your link (or up to 20%). This means if you sell an item worth $100, you’ll receive 20% ($20) in commission from each transaction. But keep in mind that this is the average commission rate — not the maximum. You can earn up to 70% commission per sale when working with EPN and some high-volume affiliates actually get that much)!

Tip: If you are searching for affiliate programs that are going to pay the most, then take a look at our list of the highest paying affiliate programs and start applying for them.

#6. Fiverr Affiliate Program

Fiverr is one of the most popular platforms for finding freelance services. This means if someone needs something done, they can post their task on Fiverr and get it done by people who have the relevant skills to do it. When you join their affiliate program, you have to sell their offering to clients — get anything done for $5.

There are many benefits to being an affiliate of Fiverr. First of all, you can earn up to $150 per referral depending on the service provider whose services you’re promoting. That makes it one of the highest-paying affiliate programs.

#7. Awin

Awin is an affiliate network with a wide range of offers from over 3,000 brands. Although it’s relatively young in the industry, it has managed to build a network of more than 21,000 advertisers and 240,000 publishers.

The conversion rate for Awin’s campaigns is extremely high—in fact, it’s higher than most other networks on the market. This means that if you’re able to get your site or blog linked with an offer from Awin, there’s a good chance that your visitors will convert (i.e., buy something).

#8. ShareASale

ShareASale is an affiliate network owned by Awin, so you’re in safe company. It’s a great affiliate program for beginners because of its ease of use. You can sign up and get started with your affiliate marketing campaign in just a few minutes, saving you time from long application procedures.

It offers a wide variety of different products and services from 1,000 merchants who sell both physical products as well as services. With all these options available it won’t be hard to find something that is relevant to your audience.

ShareASale also gives you insights into how effective are the merchants whose products you’re selling through its PowerRank metric that ranks top-performing merchants. And did I tell you that some of its merchants pay up to $350 per sale?

#9. MaxBounty Affiliate Program

MaxBounty is a CPA network that focuses on performance marketing. In case you don’t know, CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It’s different from the Cost Per Sale (CPS) affiliate programs we listed till now because you get paid when your visitors perform an action (i.e. installing software, filling out a form, participating in a survey, etc.) instead of when they buy a product.

Now, if this sounds like a huge task, instead of selling a product, it’s worth noting that CPA programs are much more lucrative than CPS programs. Maxbounty makes it even more lucrative — if you earn $1,000 in your first 90 days, they’ll give you another $1,000 as a bonus.

#10. Impact

Impact is a global affiliate network with more than 1,000 merchants, including B&H Photo and Amazon. The company was started by people who worked at Commission Junction, so the people behind it clearly know what they are doing.

Impact offers high commissions and great support. It has a good reputation in the industry because it has been around since 2008. Its reporting tools are much more polished than the tools of many other programs listed on this page, and its support is also quite responsive and helpful. That’s what makes it successful and a good affiliate program for beginners.

#11. Refersion Marketplace

Another great affiliate program for beginners is Refersion Marketplace, where you can create relationships with World’s fastest-growing brands. Many people haven’t even heard about this marketplace because it was launched in 2015. Now they have more than 17,000 advertisers for you to tie up with. You can apply to promote their products and earn a commission when there is a sale.

There is no limit to how many advertisers’ affiliate programs you can apply to. It also partners with big names like BigCommerce, Shopify, and Amazon. The dashboard of Refersion is straightforward, and you can easily access any feature you want. You can also filter out different brands to find the best products to promote.

#12. Avangate Network

Avangate Affiliate Network was launched back in 2006, and just like Clickbank, you can only promote digital products through this affiliate network. The products they promote are usually digital courses and software. You can earn upto 75% commission on top affiliate products. 

The available product categories are audio & video, internet, home & education, mobile apps, utilities, business & finance, multimedia & design, security, web authoring, and software training. They also offer a lot of benefits to publishers and advertisers. You can promote your digital product on their platform and increase your sales exponentially.

#13. Pepperjam

Pepperjam is a leading affiliate network that connects publishers and influencers with some of the biggest brands and merchants seeking affiliate partners. It aims to help affiliates maximize their earning potential through varied monetization options.

Pepperjam offers multiple promotion types, from traditional pay-per-action to recurring revenue share models, incentivizing sign-ups, and lead generation rewards. This variety widens options for monetization. The network also provides expertise and insights to boost program performance.

With some of the largest affiliate programs represented and opportunities for hybrid monetization approaches, Pepperjam aims to help publishers and content creators realize greater value from their audiences across diverse online assets and channels.

What To Look For In An Affiliate Program For Beginners?

There are many things you should look for in an affiliate program before deciding to sign up with it. Here are 3 of them that you should keep in mind:

• Range of products: Look for a program that has a good range of products. Because if there isn’t enough variety, it will be difficult to build your business around any one product and earn money from it. You’ll also want to make sure that the products are relevant to your audience; otherwise, they will not buy them and all your hard work will go to waste.
• Quality of Affiliate Tools: Look for a program that provides professional-quality affiliate tools for managing your affiliate business. Having these tools will let you track sales and conversions much more easily than poorly designed, substandard tracking and report generation tools that take time to load and provide half-baked information.
• Commission and payment terms: The program you choose should also have a reasonable commission rate and favorable payment terms. You can’t make much money if the affiliate program only pays a small percentage of sales, or if it takes months before you get paid. Look for an affiliate program that offers at least a 10 percent commission and pays within 30 days.
• Support team or a point of contact: Several things may go wrong when working with affiliate links. The product(s) may become unavailable, thus giving you broken affiliate links, a sale that went through you may go untracked, or a sales report may be off the mark. In all those situations, it helps if someone at the other end is willing to listen. If the affiliate program doesn’t have a support team or point of contact, it can be hard to get any help in such circumstances. A good affiliate program should provide a dedicated email address and phone number for questions about your account, sales reports, commissions, and payments.

Related Read:

• Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It?

Conclusion: Which is your favorite Affiliate Program?

I hope this article has given you a good idea of what to look for in an affiliate program and the best programs for you. Plenty of great options are on our list, and now you can easily find one that helps you kickstart your affiliate income.

If you still have questions or want to share your feedback about any of these programs on our list, share it in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Also, please share this list so others can kickstart their affiliate business.