The Core

Anybody active with them here?  How's CJ doing these days?  Is there another network that's been on the rise?

Impact is definitely the best of the bunch right now. They are consistently adding good functionality and features. They are still a bit lacking on the publisher side of things but from the merchant side they are far above everyone else. Of course it all depends on what you need. We run all our affiliate programs through Impact and have for about 4 years now.

I haven't cared for CJ for many years. Rakuten might bit a bit worse than them. For most small to medium size merchants I would still suggest Shareasale and maybe Avantlink depending on the niche.

Are you looking from the publisher side or merchant side?

 >>99% are Amz aff links

Yeah, I see that too. Generally speaking Amazon pays lower commissions than most other merchants but I haven't really seen any good data if the difference is made up in conversion rate, people ordering other random Amazon crap, etc. Or is it just much easier throwing everything at Amazon than trying to manage multiple different merchant relationships. From the affiliate side whenever I have a choice I like working directly with the merchants rather than going through Amazon.

I have some old, broken Amazon affiliate links to products that don't exist anymore on a defunct site that barely functions and hardly gets any traffic at all (less than 1000 uniques per month). In theory, that site should earn $0. In practice, it's close to that, but nevertheless, I still hit my $20 payout every couple of months.

This used to surprise me, but when I look, it's because people go to buy a book that's no longer in print and then they buy some other book or, occasionally, spend $1000 on a camera and a couple lenses.

Humankind has never invented a system that makes it as easy as Amazon does to move money from my pocket to someone else's pocket.

In 2021, Amazon accounted for 56.7% of all online retail transactions.
https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2022/amazons-share-of-us-ecommerce-sales-hits-all-time-high-of-56-7-in-2021/

Most other merchants feel like swimming upstream with a few exceptions (REI used to always convert well for outdoor gear, for example, and in general people don't like to buy outdoor gear from Amazon).

Have you looked into things like Viglink/Sourn? Assuming it hasn't changed, they skim your commission on every fifth link or something. But you're effectively enrolled with thousands of merchants and they have tools like (I think) price comparison tools and things like that.

I've never used it, but it seems like a quick way to get up and testing who converts and who doesn't.

>>maybe Avantlink

>>REI used to always convert well for outdoor gear, for example, and in general people don't like to buy outdoor gear from Amazon

I went to the Avantlink site for the first time in a long time and saw that when they list their advertisers ("Our list of Advertisers is deep, recognizable, and productive") the first two are REI and Patagonia.

They might just have excellent targeting and tracking since I'm on a browser now without tracking blockers, but still it makes me think that there are certain kinds of goods that people do not like to buy from Amazon and outdoor gear is one of those.

I'm curious, but for those of you who do not philosophically avoid Amazon, what are the goods you people typically do not buy from Amazon or at least look elsewhere first?

For me it is
 - outdoor gear (REI, Bentgate, Oliunid, Amazon far far behind)
 - tools and such (Lowes, HD, Amazon close behind)
 - computers (Costco for the return policy, then tie with Best Buy, Amazon, etc)