If you’re looking to promote a specific merchant, you need to know which affiliate network to join. There are a number of techniques to find out which affiliate network to join. Not all merchants are actually in an affiliate network, so I cover that too.
In the first instance, head over to the Datafeedr site – they recently built a great little search tool. Just type in the name of the merchant and they present you with the list of affiliate networks that cover that merchant for each country.
http://www.datafeedr.com/networks/
e.g. if you’re searching for ‘Farfetch’:
Hover over the icon on that page and you’ll see the name of the network. In this case – Linkshare for UK, Zanox for Brazil and Germany.
What if Datafeedr doesn’t return anything?
If Datafeedr don’t cover the affiliate network then the above technique won’t help you find the merchant – they cover all the big ones but there are thousands of smaller/niche affiliate networks too.
In that case, just use Google and add the keyword ‘affiliate program’.
e.g. If you’re looking for the John Lewis affiliate program, search for ‘john lewis affiliate program’.
Normally this’ll return the affiliate program as the top result.
Google didn’t show me the affiliate program for the merchant I’m looking for
All is not lost. The next method to find the affiliate network is to visit the merchants website. Hit CTRL+F on your keyboard and type in ‘affiliate’. It should jump down to the footer where most merchants keep their links to their affiliate programs. For example, on the Datafeedr website, or the WooCommerce website they both run their own affiliate programs (they don’t use a network) and have links in their footer.
If this fails, you can always email the merchant and ask them directly about their affiliate program.
What if there is no affiliate program for the merchant?
There is still a chance you can earn money by promoting this merchant. For example, Parrot Drones don’t seem to have an affiliate program. However, I know that Amazon, eBay and a large number of other department stores sell Parrot Drones so if the merchant doesn’t have an affiliate program directly, you can still earn money by going through an affiliate that sells their products. In this case I’d probably choose Amazon thanks to their insanely high conversion rate although you might choose another for a higher commission rate and longer cookie duration.
Founder at Affiliate Web Designers
Dave has been programming since 6 years old and has been developing WordPress plugins, themes and websites since 2010. In the past he built the browse view technology for Skyscanner and now he helps clients with interesting website challenges.
He is always on at least one of his computers when he's awake, so get in touch and he'll get right back to you.
He is always on at least one of his computers when he's awake, so get in touch and he'll get right back to you.
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