When you apply to an affiliate program, you're usually not applying to the brand at all. You're applying to a network the brand pays to handle tracking, reporting and payouts.
Understanding that distinction saves you a lot of wasted effort — because it means you don't sign up 200 times. You sign up four or five times, and apply to brands from inside those dashboards.
What a network actually does
An affiliate network sits between you and the brand and handles four things:
- Tracking — issuing your unique links and recording clicks and conversions
- Attribution — deciding whether a sale belongs to you, based on the cookie window
- Reporting — showing you clicks, conversions and earnings
- Payment — consolidating commissions from many brands into one payout
That last point is the practical reason networks exist. Without them you'd be chasing thirty separate companies for thirty separate payments, each with its own minimum threshold.
The major networks
Impact The largest of the modern networks and the default choice for SaaS and consumer subscription brands. The interface is the most polished of the bunch, and its "marketplace" makes finding new programs genuinely easy. If you only join one network, this is usually the one carrying the most programs you'd want.
ShareASale Now owned by Awin, ShareASale has been around since 2000 and carries a long tail of smaller merchants — particularly ecommerce, home goods and niche retail. The interface shows its age, but the merchant catalogue includes brands you won't find elsewhere.
CJ Affiliate Formerly Commission Junction, and the network most favoured by large enterprise brands. Approval standards tend to be stricter, and some advertisers set traffic requirements before they'll accept you. Worth joining once you have a track record.
Awin Strong in Europe and the UK in particular, with good coverage of retail and travel. Awin charges a small refundable deposit when you sign up, which filters out casual applicants.
Rakuten Advertising and Partnerize round out the list — smaller catalogues, but occasionally the exclusive home of a brand you want.
Direct programs
Some brands skip networks entirely and run their own affiliate software — usually PartnerStack, FirstPromoter, Tapfiliate, or a homegrown system.
Direct programs often pay better, because the brand isn't paying network fees. The tradeoff is administrative: separate logins, separate payout thresholds, separate tax paperwork, and no consolidated reporting. A portfolio of twenty direct programs is a genuine bookkeeping burden.
Browse our directory by category and you'll see the network listed on each program — it's worth knowing before you apply.
How approval actually works
There are two gates, and people routinely confuse them.
Gate one: the network account. Usually straightforward. You provide your site, your traffic sources, and your tax details. Most applicants are accepted.
Gate two: each individual advertiser. This is the real filter. Inside the network you apply to each brand separately, and each reviews your site against its own criteria — traffic volume, content quality, geography, and whether your audience plausibly matches their customer.
This is where new sites get rejected. A brand-new site with no traffic and no published content will be declined by most advertisers, and some won't let you reapply for months.
The practical sequence
- Publish content first. Ten to twenty genuinely useful articles, before you apply anywhere.
- Get some traffic. Even a few hundred monthly visitors changes the conversation. Have analytics installed so you can prove it.
- Join two networks covering most of your target programs — usually Impact plus one other.
- Apply selectively. Ten well-matched advertisers beat a hundred scattershot applications, and you preserve the ability to reapply.
- Add direct programs later, once the admin overhead is justified by the earnings.
The instinct to sign up for everything on day one is understandable and almost always counterproductive. Approvals are not a lottery where more tickets help — a rejection is a closed door, sometimes for a long time.
What to check before joining any network
- Payment threshold — typically $25–$100. Below it, you're not getting paid.
- Payment schedule — net 30 and net 60 are both common; some hold for a returns window.
- Payment methods — direct deposit, PayPal, wire, and whether your country is supported.
- Tax paperwork — US networks need a W-9, or a W-8BEN if you're outside the US.
- Cookie duration defaults — set per advertiser, but the network's norms tell you a lot.
None of this is exciting, and all of it determines whether the money actually arrives.