I am sitting here in my bed, reading another marketing book, and thinking about what would be the best affiliate marketing sites for 2020, other than Amazon and Clickbank…
Contents
The 9 Best Clickbank alternatives 2020:
- Share a sale
- JVZoo
- Rakuten (Linkshare)
- Peerfly
- Walmart
- Warrior Plus
- Commission Junction
- eBay
- Target
But why you may need these alternatives to Clickbank since you can have Clickbank or even Amazon?
Let me explain.
Everything started on the 26th of April 2020. Amazon Associates which is Amazon’s Affiliate Program declined its commission rates dramatically. The best Amazon commission rate right now is 3% and this is only for a few products. Most products have 0,5%-2% commission rates which are very low.
This had a domino effect in the marketing world. Most people deleted their Amazon affiliate links and stopped promoting it because they think(which is totally true) that Amazon’s decision to slice its affiliate commissions especially during a Pandemic Crisis was unacceptable.
Clickbank is famous for having good products with high commission rates. However, Clickbank does not have many products. I mean Clickbank has a lot of products but not nearly as many as Amazon.
Everyone started promoting Clickbank’s products both with organic ways and even with paid advertising. Now, Clickbank is red hot. Everyone is promoting the same products and it has become extremely competitive to make money if everyone promotes the same product.
That’s why I wrote this article to help you find the best platform to find affiliate products for your business.
There is no right and wrong with the companies on the list. Some platforms have better commission rates but fewer conversion rates and vice versa so we will discuss all the details and you will decide which one suits you the most.
ShareASale
ShareASale is a network of shops and websites and it has hundreds of products for you to promote. They don’t have a certain commission rate. Every store or website has its own commission rate.
For example, Reebok which is a very famous company has a 7% commission rate which is actually really good. Other clothing companies have commission rated from 5% to 20%.
ShareASale is a huge platform to find products. You will obviously make your inquiry in the products and stores but here there is a lot of money to be made.
Before placing your affiliate links, you can also check the commissions that a company gives directly from their affiliate system to see if they are the same. If they have better commissions and you trust the company you can become an affiliate directly for them and bypass Share A sale.
But, generally, ShareASale gives you endless products with really good commissions. ShareASale also has more digital products than Clickbank that mainly has physical products.
JVZoo
JVZoo is a similar platform as Clickbank but it focuses more on digital products.
It is simple and easy to navigate and has a marketplace in which you can search for products just like in Clickbank.
Now, I want your attention. JVZoo as any other affiliate platform but particularly here has some low quality or outdated products. I want you to make a good keyword and product research before starting promoting them so that you don’t hurt your website.
What I like about JVZoo is that they have a top-selling product list every day that shows which products are selling the most.
What I do is, I take the list every day for at least 15 days. Then I see if there are products that are selling well for multiple days and then I start researching about them.
All in all, go for the top products and don’t mess with the others because some of them may not be very high quality.
Rakuten (Linkshare)
Rakuten is partnered with a very large number of the biggest brands out there. They pay you via check or via Paypal.
Rakuten is a very serious company so you have to apply for their affiliate system and become accepted. Not everyone is accepted by Rakuten. This can be good or bad.
This can be bad because some of you may not be accepted but this also protects the serious affiliate marketers and the company from spammers that grab the links and just paste them everywhere.
But, the biggest problem of Rakuten is that they pay you unpredictably because they need to get paid first by the companies you promote and only then they pay you. This is not a big deal but it is something, I want my readers to know when they are choosing the platform they prefer.
The commission rates vary very much because of the different brands that have partnered with Rakuten. You can take anything from 1% to 30% depending on what you want to promote.
Rakuten, in my opinion, worths your time at least to apply and see what it has. If you are accepted and you find the commissions you want, you can go on, otherwise, you just don’t promote them.
You can also test the waters. You can promote 5-10 products of different companies and see what converts better. Then, you can check their own affiliate program to see if they offer a better commission rate if you bring people to them directly.
Peerfly
Peerfly is all about CPA marketing. CPA is the cost per acquisition(action)
They will pay you a set amount of money for every customer you bring to them. They have good commissions, to be honest, and you can find good products here but they don’t have a great number of products.
However, they have very good quality products.
The problem is that it is a little bit difficult to be accepted as an affiliate. You have to apply for it and be accepted but it’s not extremely hard.
Peerfly has a lot fewer products than Clickbank but it has a great reputation, it is user friendly and it has good commission rates.
It is a good choice depending on the product you want to promote. They also have good payment options like a check, Paypal, and more and then can even pay weekly and accept affiliates from all over the world.
I tell you this because some affiliate platforms do not accept affiliate marketers from certain countries.
Walmart
Walmart is a very well-known company. It wants to be Amazon’s and Ebay’s competitor but it is not close yet.
However, Walmart is a really large company and people can recognize it and trust it. The bad thing is that, in my opinion, they do not have very good commission rates.
Mostly, their commissions are 1% and 4% but they do have some products with 10% and 18%.
These commission rates are slightly better than Amazon’s but Amazon converts much better than any other company in the world at the moment. They have a great recommendation system and a ”Buy with 1 Click” option and email marketing, etc.
So, I would promote Walmart only if it had way better commissions than Amazon.
Makes sense, right? If you find a 4% product while on Amazon it is on 1% percent it may worth your time but I honestly believe that whatever product you promote, there are better options than Walmart.
I forgot to mention that if you want to promote something really specific you can always contact the company directly without using these platforms. However, this is very time consuming and generally, people trust these networks better than individual unknown companies.
All in all, Walmart can work for you only because it is really well known. Their commissions are better than Amazon’s. But conversion rates are seriously lower.
So, if I were you I would only focus on commission rates between 8-20% or more because 4% on Walmart might be translated in 1% on Amazon as far as commissions collected are concerned.
I hope it makes sense.
Warrior Plus
Warrior Plus is a website like Clickbank and JVZoo. People upload their products to sell them and they use Warrior Plus as a checkout platform.
So, as an affiliate again, you sign up in the Warrior Plus Affiliate Program and you will be able to promote all these products that people wanna sell there.
Warrior Plus has a lot of low-ticket products that have upsells so you can make quite a lot of money with it. However, as always, you should make good research to see the product’s sales funnel and also if they follow people up with email marketing and so on.
You can make good commissions especially when people do launches with their products. Finally, they have a best-seller page that shows you which products sell the most making it easier for you to choose.
Be careful here. Some products may not be very high-quality. Always make a good research and particularly in Warrior plus products.
Commission Junction
Commission Junction, once again, is a network that has many websites that you can promote.
To become an affiliate here, you have to sign up both with Commission Junction but also with the specific company that offers the products that you wanna promote.
This shows that this is a serious company that respects its customers. You can find big brands to promote here and they also give you a pixel so that you can track real-time transactions.
You can also understand and analyze customer’s behavior and this can really help you improve your sales process significantly.
Finally, Commission Junction will give you an account manager in order to help you leverage your business. I think that this company is unique, very reliable and it is one level higher than the rest in terms of professionalism.
eBay
Here we are. eBay is the second most recognizable eCommerce store after Amazon. They have a lot of fans worldwide and the vast majority of people know about eBay.
This makes affiliate marketer’s work less demanding because people already trust and know eBay. Everyone knows that buying from eBay is risk-free because they don’t release your money if you don’t take the product you ordered.
eBay has also a huge catalog of products you can buy or promote. As far as I know, they have over 1,2 billion listings and this number is growing day by day. Of course, every product on eBay is not amazing and this is ok.
I have told you this many times but I want to make you understand it. You should always make good research before promoting anything because if you don’t, this can harm your brand.
eBay will pay you only when you reach the 10$ mark which is not a big deal in my opinion.
So, what’s the problem with eBay? Once again. The commission rates!
It has similar commission rates with Amazon. However, they are slightly better, and especially in some categories, they give 4-5% commission rates which can be ok if we take into consideration that eBay has good conversion rates.
This is probably a good option for you if you find products with 4-5% commission rates. Do not go with 1-2%. It is not worth it.
Also, I want to make this clear, when you promote something with a low commission rate like an eBay product, you should 100% avoid paid advertising. You will never break even or profitable with low commissions.
Target
The Final Clickbank alternative is Target. Target is another platform that affiliates use to find products to promote.
It does not have endless products but it has a good number. Their main categories are Apparel and Accessories, Home and Outdoor Living, Baby Gear and Furniture and Health and Beauty.
Their commission rates are 5% for all categories except Health and Beauty which are only 1%.
In this platform, the more you sell the better their commission rates are. They can scale up to 8% if you are making lots of sales.
You can also check this platform if your niche is around those categories. They are not too bad at all.
Physical products, in general, don’t have very good commission rates. So your target probably should be 6-15% commission rates for physical products and around 30%+ for digital products.
Final Words
These are the best Clickbank affiliate and of course Amazon alternatives because I regard Amazon associates as dead for most entrepreneurs. Their decline in affiliate commissions up to 65% destroyed many affiliate marketers and that’s why i am writing this helpful article.
Everyone is leaving Amazon and going to Clickbank so if you want to be different and to make able to stand out, you should explore the different options that I showed you.
Affiliate marketing is not about a specific platform or product. Open your mind and you will see that there are a lot of opportunities. Until now, it was very straight forward. You were going to Amazon or Clickbank and you were good to go. But now things are much different.
Take your time and explore the different options I have given you. Every niche is different. There will be opportunities on every platform.
For example, if you focus on health products a good solution is MarketHealth.com but I didn’t include this in my list because it was way too specific.
I hope you find this article helpful. I tried my best to show you the best possible solutions. I understand not being able to use Amazon Associates and probably Clickbank is tough but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
