Previously known as Affiliate Window, Awin is another network that offers reputable brands for bloggers to work with. If you’ve just started a niche site, this platform is worth checking out. In today’s tutorial guide, I’ll be walking you through the signup process, how to use Awin as a new publisher and some extra tips about growing your affiliate business online. Let’s roll, shall we.
Awin At A Glance
Awin has been around for a while and there are some awesome facts worth mentioning.
- The global company is one of the top 5 click-per-sale (CPS) network in the US with over 100,000 active publishers.
- Works with 6,000 advertisers and generates about $6.4billion in revenue.
- The majority of advertisers are from the European region, but those from North America (Canada, Mexico and the US) are also growing in popularity.
- Acquired the ShareASale affiliate network in 2017 to bring in new management solutions.
- Suitable for marketers that promote physical products and CPA offers in a wide variety of niche.
The Sign Up Process
There are basically four simple steps in setting up a publisher account with Awin in which a website information is required. If you haven’t already got one, I would recommend creating a self-hosted WordPress blog because it will give you a good foundation for building long term traffic online.
What you’ll need is to buy a custom domain that’s suitable for your niche and then subscribe to a hosting plan that can support WordPress publishing. Alternatively, you can also create a free blog using the plugin below and upgrade when you are ready.
Upon verification (the last step), you’ll need to provide some contact information and pay $5 for registration fee. This sum will be credited to your publisher account and paid back as part of your first commission payment. You may also request for the fee to be refunded if the application is declined or if you change your mind before receiving the first commission payment.
It takes about 2 days for them to review the application and confirmation is sent via email where you’ll be guided to complete some payment details in order to receive commissions. Once that’s done, you are pretty much good to go.
How to Select An Advertiser
The first rule of thumb is that you should choose an affiliate program that is suitable for your niche. A brand has to be relevant to the content that you wish to deliver and most importantly, useful for your audience. Otherwise, whatever that’s being promoted will not convert. For example, if you are writing a travel blog, it makes sense to talk about travel gears instead of diet products.
The other factor to consider is your targeted location, whether you are focusing on a particular country or a group of countries. As a beginner, you may want to start with your own locality first since there is more familiarity in terms of products and shoppers behaviors.
When there’s more data regarding your traffic sources, you can then choose a specific brand to partner with. For example, if most of your visitors are from the US, it makes more sense to promote a brand that provides service for this region instead.
Every affiliate network has a way of rating the program performance of their advertisers for publishers to compare and Awin presents this through a scoring system called the Awin Index. It is a score out of 100 based on 3 months of consecutive performance and is calculated using the following (CAVE) key metrics;
- Conversion Rate – The percentage of users who take a desired action, usually related to buying something on the site. The better a website converts traffic into actual transactions, the higher the conversion rate.
- Approval Rate – The number of pending sales that are confirmed as valid sales by an advertiser.
- Validation Period – The amount of time taken for a pending sale to be validated. A short validation period is a sign of a strong advertisers programme.
- Earnings Per Click (EPC) – Earnings derived from dividing the total publisher commission within a certain timeframe by the number of clicks that were generated.
Higher index is generally more attractive and this can be found on the advertiser’s information page, under the ‘Performance’ tab. It also comes with some graphical statistics, but for me, the number of the score is more than sufficient for publishers to compare and identify the best programs on the network.
Below are two examples, just to show you the difference between an impressive index and a poor one.
Important Tools for Publisher
Affiliate links are like your bread and butter, hence the more optimized they are, the better your blog will convert into sales. Awin advertisers know this and that’s why they provide a variety of creative links such as banners, text, search widgets, email templates as well as forms that can be used immediately.
However, with blogs that promote several products, you’ll need more contextual links to engage with the online audience and Awin has come up with a few ways to implement this.
1 – Create-A-Feed
In case you don’t know, a data feed is like a spreadsheet pertaining to all products information offered by the advertisers. It allows publishers to quickly compare prices, find and display links without having to create deep links manually each time.
The create-a-feed feature lets you filter product choices and download updated list each time so it’s something handy especially when you are affiliated with several brands.
2 – Link Builder
Some advertisers allow publishers to promote them even when they are not part of the program. So if you find yourself in this situation, you may use the Link Builder to create advertiser deep links to specific product or category pages. When a transaction occurs, Awin will send an application to the advertiser and you will be automatically joined to the program to earn your share of commission.
3 – Convert-A-Link
Another method to earn money from brands that you are not yet affiliated with is to use this feature to convert normal retailer links into tracking links. When a javascript is integrated within your blog, Awin will sign you up automatically for that particular affiliate program when someone clicks on it, thus giving you more earning opportunities.
4 – MyAwin
For more efficiency in creating deep linking, the network has designed a Chrome extension called MyAwin which makes it possible for publishers to quickly join programs, create or share links as they browse through the advertiser’s sites without having to log into their Awin account. It also displays all the latest offers, exclusive vouchers and discount codes that can help publishers to attract more customers.
5 – Affiliate Support
As a new affiliate, there are plenty of things that you would want to know about a particular program and Awin makes this easy by providing contacts where you can reach for support via email as well as telephone.
Most of the time, they come with 2 or more contacts so it’s quite convenient. Live chat for the network is also available, but it is only for people in the UK. Hopefully, they can expand the feature globally in the near future.
6 – AWIN Affiliate Program
When you register for a new publisher account, you are automatically signed in for the Awin affiliate program as well. It lets you refer other new publishers to the network and when they receive their first commission payment from any advertisers, you’ll earn an impressive $30 in commission. That’s another opportunity to monetize your site.
Business Innovation Moving Forward
Overall, Awin is a great network choice for new affiliates. They have some of the most reputable advertisers you can find in popular niches and their data is easy to interpret. Their tools are innovative which allows you to initiate marketing from different angles and improve sales conversion on your site.
After reading this, I hope you not only learned how to use Awin, but also pick up a few tips about niche and program selection. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to build a successful online business and if you want to be in the know about the industry, you’ll surely benefit from joining my recommended entrepreneurship platform. Be sure to check it out and if you have any thoughts or questions about this article, feel free to leave some comments below.
I look forward to your online success.
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Tips for Becoming a Successful Amazon Affiliate
Thanks for the insights on Awin, Cathy. It’s very resourceful especially for beginners who are looking to start an affiliate program. May I know if there is a time frame to convert sales before being approved? Amazon affiliate program gives 6 months trial period to convert sales. If there is no sales after 6 months, the account will be terminated.
What’s the situation like for this network?
Hi, Awin and other similar affiliate networks wouldn’t suspend your account for inactivity. You are free to explore all program opportunities even if you haven’t make any sales. That’s one advantage over being an Amazon associate.
I am currently looking for good affiliate programs to find for my home gym equipment website. One thing I learned from this article is to identify a good affiliate program and looking at criteria such as conversion rates to see if it fits my income goal. That’s something I’ll look into further as I explore my niche.
Thanks for sharing this.
Hi, it is interesting to learn about new networks where I can find more affiliate programs.
I understand that Awin is a CPA program something like Google Ads, is that right? Is there a minimum of traffic necessary to be accepted?
I think I’ll have to wait a bit more and evaluate which affiliate program I should promote through Awin and which country my traffic is mainly from.
Yes Stefan, it is a CPA program and you don’t need to have a minimum traffic to be part of the network. However, certain advertisers may include that as part of their affiliate requirement so do read through the overview first.
Thanks Cathy. You’ve answered some of the questions that I always wondered about AWIN.
I like the create-a-feed option – this would make it VERY easy to promote products. The chrome extension also sounds like a nice feature. I would prefer Awin’s affiliate program paid me a percentage of the profits for life, but I guess the $30 is still okay.
Actually, one of my niches is about website creating. Do you think this network will have some good affiliate programs for that? Thank you.
Hi David. There’s one company called 1&1 IONOS. It’s a web hosting company and their commissions range between $5 to $120 dollars per subscription. You can find out more details on their official page here. Hope this helps.
Hi Cathy! Good article again. I heard about Awin before but never gave it a try. Thanks for showing us how the platform works. It seems like a good one so I will give it a try. I’m currently in the process of searching for new affiliate programs and reviews to do on my website so your article is just what I needed.
I’ll sign up with Awin website and see what they have to offer, especially in the guitar niche.
Glad to come across this article. Awin is new to me, but it sounds like a great company to join as a publisher. I will have to check and see if there are any suitable advertisers for my niche. I find that manual linking to an affiliate site to be very time consuming so the convert-a-link feature looks cool. This will save a lot of my time and allow me to focus more on content creation. Thanks for sharing.
You are most welcome, Hong 🙂
Thank you for the overview on how to use Awin. Never heard of it before, but I am familiar with ShareASale though. It’s nice that publisher can earn a $30 commission from referring other marketers to the platform. Just wondering if it is difficult for you to find the EXACT products to match both your niche and your target audience?
The $5 fully refundable fee at the enrollment application stage seems really strange to me. I have not heard of any other major network doing this, have you?
However, I like that they have an approval index score. Clickbank really need something like that to help affiliate marketers learn which companies to focus their time and attention on.
Hi Glenys, most of Awin’s advertisers are based in the UK, but they are expanding globally. I would suggest to search using the locality feature if you have a certain specific region in mind. As for finding the right product, there’s never a magic answer to that. You will have to try the brand yourself and see if it works.
I think the fee is just to verify users for legitimacy reasons. While other networks might not do that, they will most probably call you for verification purposes.
How do you find that a network like Awin compares to a behemoth like Amazon? Amazon, I would assume tends to have lower payouts because of its overall reputation and brand name recognition, but what about product depth?
Is Awin worth the switch given its vast network of advertisers? Or is it perhaps worth pursuing side by side with Amazon depending on the product being promoted?
It’s not easy to compare both side by side. Amazon is a marketplace for sellers while Awin is a network of advertisers that may have their own respective marketplaces. If your targeted audience is located within US, UK or Canada, I would start with Amazon first. If you don’t see favorable conversion from there, then moving onto network based affiliate programs would be the next best choice. Just make sure you know where these brands cover in terms of delivery and shipping.