Affiliate network pros and cons

The Pros

You own the content, that you can do what you want with: Affiliate network ads, you can get a text link which you can implement directly into an article you write. With some quick HTML code the text link can be an affiliate link you control. Or, you can have an area of your site for certain products. And you can link to whichever affiliate you'd like, where ever you'd like on your page.

It can help with SEO as all of the text is on your site: When you control the page, and the look and feel of how you display your text links, you can better work on SEO as compared to many content targeting options which make you display the ads via javascript in a designated area of your webpage.

You can choose whatever types of ads you want to target: The great control you have allows you to target your audience to a particluar sector or advertiser that you think will perform well. When you sign up with an affiliate network, you have the control to pick and target any message or product which you think will be relevant to the actual webpage you are promoting it on.

The Cons

Affilaite marketing has grown, the advertisers are now scattered across many different networks: Say you are starting a directory site, and you want to sign up with an affiliate program to list all of the advertisers for music. The problem is that the five biggest advertisers may be scattered across different affiliate networks. And, if you sign up with a bunch of affiliate networks, you will then have a lot to manage and a lot of smaller checks to cash as opposed to one big check. Making life even more complicated is the fact that large companies, such as Amazon.com, have thier own affiliate programs that you have to sign up for directly on the companies website. (Amazon.com's affiliate program)

Pay per action: With content targeting, you get paid per click. With just about all of affilaite marketing, you get paid per action. Meaning, you are only paid if someone purchases a product, signs up for a newsletter, or takes some action on the advertisers site. And, while this can be helpful if a lot of your users convert for the advertisers offer, most publishers would prefer to get paid on the click and not have to worry about what the user does once they get to the advertisers site.

Two the top affiliate networks include Commission Junction & Linkshare. There are, however, hundreds of others from which you can choose from.