An affiliate network is a meeting ground for advertisers and affiliates to “meet”. There are possibly 100’s of good reasons why both advertisers and affiliates can benefit from signing up to a network, but in this article we will focus solely on the 5 top reasons why affiliates benefit from being part of an affiliate network. 1. Campaign Selection: An affiliate network gives affiliates access to 100’s of niche merchant’s products and services. The network uses it’s time and resources to find the clever publishers who have figured out new ways to drive converting traffic. It also provides a greater variety of top performing, reputable campaigns. In this way, affiliates will easily get exposed to upmarket products such as banner rotations. With a single affiliate network, affiliates can easily work with multiple advertisers, multiple offers and multiple payment style options such as pay per click, pay per lead, pay per impression, etc. all under one umbrella, the affiliate network. 2. One Single Relationship: The relationship between the advertiser and the affiliate is of utmost importance. These relationships are necessary for structuring increased commissions (if the affiliates volume increases), in advertisers delivering affiliate-specific content, and in the advertiser and affiliate working together to assist the affiliate in maximizing the traffic to his site. The affiliate only deals with one advertiser, namely the affiliate network, rather than each of the merchants individually. This frees up a lot of space on the affiliates calendar since the affiliate does not have to use any time building relationships with anyone except their affiliate network manager. Affiliate marketing is about relationships, and that is then all taken care of by the affiliate network. The affiliate network will provide top quality support and a great training area for the affiliate to build up their skills, learn and grow. 3. Real Time Tracking: Testing and comparing each and every change and idea is fundamental for taking an affiliate’s business from strength to strength. The most important tool for testing is real time tracking. This allows the affiliate to know immediately how their new idea is translating and helps to guide the affiliate as to whether it is an idea worth pursuing. The software to track impressions, clicks, leads and sales for each campaign can be both pricey and require a lot of upkeep. The network will provide this service for free to their affiliates. The network will also provide affiliate with advanced reporting tools for checking their stats, graphs for analyzing trends, and even cookie testing capabilities for monitoring fraud. 4. Risk of Payment: Every advertiser has an element of risk as to whether you will actually receive the payments from them. As many companies can be virtual or on the opposite side of the world from where the affiliate is based, it is often very difficult to avoid doing business with dishonest advertisers. This means that no matter how much revenue the affiliate generates, some advertisers will never pay the affiliates. Joining an affiliate network gives the affiliate much stronger protection. The network will have built strong relationships with a number of the advertisers it works with and thus there is minimal chance the affiliate will not get paid. 5. Monthly, Correct Payments: Affiliate networks ensure all payments are checked and paid monthly (or as alternatively agreed). This means that the affiliate does not have to waste valuable time checking and reconciling the advertisers’ figures. The role of an affiliate is to maximize the traffic to their site and provide rich and useful content to their site. This keeps an ever growing visitor base arriving at their site, and ensures the visitors look around the site before exiting the site. An affiliate network encourages the affiliates to concentrate on these vital functions by assisting the affiliate in maximizing the spend of each visitor the affiliate attracts. Word count: 634