As an affiliate it’s likely that you’re accustomed to writing product comparisons to enrich your website. If only it were that easy to compare the two largest and most popular affiliate networks. Both have an array of high quality merchant partners that affiliates can sign on with to forward buyers and receive commissions. There’s no reason why an affiliate wouldn’t want to deal with both networks. The terms and conditions for participation vary somewhat, but both have in place mechanisms to connect reputable merchants with the need for an additional sales channel with affiliates, or advertisers who are willing and able to direct qualified customers to them.

The networks streamline the process for both the merchant and affiliate, doing the record keeping and administration, so the merchant can concentrate on sales and the affiliate can focus upon his site development and profitability.

Some of the things both do:

For advertisers: Offer programs with merchants, provide merchant links with associated commissions to the advertiser, monitor the sales attributable to the advertiser, accumulate commissions and pay at a specified interval, provide the advertiser the ability to generate reports for the purpose of planning and management of their affiliate business. The networks also have in place mechanisms to screen merchants to weed out those who cannot and will not pay agreed-upon commissions.

For Merchants: Provide a marketplace where affiliates can apply for the merchants’ programs. Provide merchant links of the appropriate commission level to the affiliates, provide management reports for merchant evaluation of program metrics and ROI.

Karen Kari's articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:
http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com