Are you looking for an alternative to Clickbank affiliate network? While Clickbank is one of the most popular affiliate ntworks for beginners, there are certainly some good alternatives to consider if you want to to expand your options or if you are looking for a better fit for your audience.
From similar offers to physical products and CPA networks, in this guide, you will find some of the best Clickbank alternatives and how they compare. You’ll also learn about their pros and cons and some important factors like their commissions, payment terms, and approval process.
In the end, you’ll have. a clear idea on what Clickbank alternatives is best for you!
Best Affiliate Networks for Clickbank Alternatives
1. Udemy
With over 100,000 courses in more than 100 different categories, Udemy is the world’s largest online learning platform that allows creators to sell make money by selling their courses on their platform.
Udemy Vs. Clickbank
- Reputation: While each one of Clickbank’s offers is hosted on the merchants’ domain and have their own sales pages and funnels, all of Udemy’s courses are hosted inside their own platform.
Since Udemy is widely popular, landing on their platform helps to create trust and increase conversion rates. In comparison, most of Clickbank’s offers are unknown to the general audience including those familiarized with the niche so conversions tend to be lower.
- Commissions: Clickbank merchants have complete control over their prices and affiliates’ commissions so it is common to find rates of 50%+ of products priced $100-$1000.
On the other side, Udemy offers a commission of 15%, and the vast majority of the courses available are priced low. So, even with a 15% commission rate, you can end up earning just 1-2 dollars per generated purchase.
The cookie duration is also just 7 days which is less than Clickbank’s and other similar alternatives.
Signup URL: Udemy affiliate page
Commission rate: 15%
Commission type: Single, non-recurring
Cookie duration: 7 days
Product types: Online-only courses
Payment terms: Net 60
Payment Options: Paypal
Payout Threshold: $50
2. JVZoo
JV-Zoo is a popular network for affiliate marketers that has been around since 2011. They now have 18 million products, over 800,000 active affiliates, and have even been featured on the Inc 5000 list.
Like Clickbank, they offer mostly digital products but they are specifically focused on the niches of digital marketing and making money online including products like software, plugins, themes, training, and membership programs.
JVZoo Vs. Clickbank
- Narrower product focus: While both affiliate networks offer mostly digital products, Clickbank covers a broader diversity of niches while JVZoo sells almost exclusively computer software aimed at the digital marketing niche.
If you are just getting started with affiliate marketing and haven’t yet decided on your niche, Clickbank would be a better choice for you. On the other hand, if you have decided to focus on digital marketing offers, you will find lots of alternatives to promote inside JVZoo for that particular niche.
- Quality: Besides the diversity of offers and niches, there’s also the quality factor. Neither Clickbank nor JVZoo are super picky with their merchants so you’ll need to do some research to weed out the good offers from the sketchy ones on both platforms. The only difference is that since JVZ simply more offers, it also has more questionable ones.
- Payouts: While all affiliate networks are known for being late on their payouts, some are better than others. In this sense, ClickBank is exceptional and will often make payouts on time. On the other hand, the payouts on JVZoo depend on the vendors, so while some of them pay their members instantly others, delay payments for months on end.
Signup URL: JVZoo affiliate page
Commission rate: Varies
Commission type: Single, non-recurring
Cookie duration: Lifetime
Product types: Digital Marketing Software
Payment terms: Net 60
Payment Options: Paypal
Payout Threshold: $50
3. Rakute Marketing
Rakuten Marketing is a global affiliate network that used to be called Linkshare until, 2005 when it was acquired by a huge Japanese e-commerce company called Rakuten
Unlike Clickbank, Rakuten Marketing is focused on physical product offers, including high fashion, jewelry, and accessories with more than 1,000 merchants and a a wide variety of products and niches.
While they’re based in Tokyo, they have 10 global offices and functions in over 200 countries. This is specially useful if you live outside the US since and affiliates who live in any of those countries can receive payments easily, in one of 25 different currencies.
Rakuten Marketing vs Clickbank
There are a wide variety of brands that you can promote, and some of them are huge, such as Macy’s, NordVPN, Lyft, Microsoft, Lego, Monster, NVIDIA, and more. To date, there are more than one thousand you can pick from.
These are brands that people trust, as you can tell, so you don’t have to go out of your way to promote services or products that are virtually unknown
• Physical products: One of the main differences between Rakuten Marketing and Clickbank is that Rakuten focuses only on physical goods while Clickbank is known for its digital products,
• Selective application process: Compared to Clickbank, Rakuten has a more selective sign up process and you’ll need a website with traffic to be approved, while on Clickbank you can join without one.
Registration can take more than 24 hours to find out if you are approved for the affiliate program or not. Additionally, if you manage to join successfully join, you will still have to apply separately for each offer you want to promote.
• Reputable brands: While the majority of Clickbank’s products are not known outside of the affiliate marketing sphere, Rakuten has some really popular brands such as the American Heart Association, Papa Johns, Ray-Ban, and Vans. Promoting brands with a good reputation can definitely increase your conversion rate and sales.
Signup URL: Rakuten Marketing Affiliate Page
Commission rate: Varies
Commission type: Per sale, and paid ad placement offers.
Cookie duration: Varies per each vednor
Product types: Physical Products
Payment terms: Net 60
Payment Options: Paypal, Cheque, Transfer
Payout Threshold: $50
4. Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning platform with more than 30,000 online courses. The topics cover everything from design and entrepreneurship to photography and writing.
A unique feature of this affiliate program is that they offer customers a free trial and affiliates can earn $7 in commission for each new customer that signs up so people don’t need to get a pid memebership for you to make a commission.
While the commission might seem low, it is easier to convert free trials than paid memberships so you will get more of them so it might be worth comparing how much you make with these commissions vs. other programs that pay based on sales.
Skillshare vs Clickbank
Commission Structure: While Skillshare affiliate program works on a CPA (Cost per Action) system, most of Clickbank offers have a Cost Per Sale (CPS) or Revenue share model which means that they only pay you if a customer makes a purchase so, naturally the conversion rate is lower.
Clickbank offers tend to pay between $40 to $500 so even if you don’t make a lot of sales, you can make a significant income with the right high ticket offers so I’d be worth tetsing.
- Refunds: No company or affiliate program is exempt from refunds but since Skillshare pays you for every free trial, you can be sure that every commission you get will stay on your account.
- Great offer: Skillshare does not only offer a free trial but it also has a $16 monthly fee that gives customers access to all their courses, unlike Clickbank where users need to pay separately for each product.
While this doesn’t translate to more commissions for you, it is still a great company to promote and you’ll feel confident knowing that you are sharing great products with your audience.
- Commissions: Skillshare works with more than one network so you can get different commission rates. If you sign up directly through their site you get a $7 commission rate but if you do it through the FlexOffers affiliate network, you actually get $12 per referral.
So if you have no plans for being a student or a teacher on the platform, I’d suggest signing up via FlexOffers.
Signup URL: Skillshare Affiliate Page
Commission rate: $7-$12
Commission type: Single payment – CPA
Cookie duration: 30 days
Product types: Digital Membership
Payment terms: Net 60
Payment Options: Paypal and Bank Account
Payout Threshold: $10
5. M4trix
M4trix is a private affiliate network that unlike most of the other networks in this list, offers only physical products ranging from health and beauty to E-commerce.
They don’t accept other advertisers on their network so you can rest assurend that all the offers available are 100% owned and managed by them from supply to local delivery and customer support.
This allows them to offer better payouts since there is no intermediary and you also get access to all the offers automatically when you join the affiliate network.
M4trix vs Clickbank
- Type of products: The main difference between Clickbank and M4trix is the type of offers you can promote. While Clickbank has mostly digital products, M4trix whitehat e-commerce offers.
If you are a new affiliate and haven’t yet chosen what niche and method you want to focus on, you can consider promoting M4trix products since they have great payouts and work well for a variety of audiences.
- Promotional Materials: While Clickbank offers provide one landing page and some banners, M4trix has a variety of landing pages and checkout pages you can use and split-test for each offer. They also provide you with creatives (images and videos) you can use to promote the product.
Since most of the offers are available in a variety of GEOs, the language and currency on the checkout pages change automatically so you don’t need to worry about adapting them yourself.
- Data: M4trix has an impressive Dashboard where you can access relevant information that makes your job easier including the top 3 offers per selected date and country and the top 10 countries per selected date and offer.
You can also learn about hot opportunities which showcase the top opportunities based on the past few days and the last 3 offers added to the M4TRIX network. Since e-commerce offers are all about novelty, they are constantly adding new products to their portfolio. This is a great advantage that will help you succeed as an affiliate.
Signup URL: M4trix Affiliate Page
Commission rate: Varies ($50+)
Commission type: Single payment – Cost per Sale
Cookie duration: 30 days
Product types: Digital Membership
Payment terms: Weekly
Payment Options: Paypal and Bank Account
Payout Threshold: $1000
6. DigiStore 24
DigiStore24 is a German Based company and the largest affiliate network in Europe with over 8,000 products in a wide variety of categories.
DigiStore24, also known as D24 the one affiliate network most similar to Clickbank out of all the alternatives on this list. They also focus mostly on digital products and some of their most sold offers are ebooks, online memberships, software and seminars related to the online business industry
Unlike ClickBank, D24 is a worldwide company, and approval is inmediate no matter where you are located whcih is a great advantage for those affiliates who live in a country that is restricted by Clickbank.
DigiStore 24 vs Clickbank
- Type of products: DigiStore is very similar to Clickbank when it comes to the type of products they offer since both are focus on digital products that allow them to give affiliates high commission rates.
They also have in common that they both have a handful of physical products like health supplements that you can promote.
- Vendors and offers: Both affiliate networks welcome all types of vendors and products which means that you’ll find both great and questionable offers so you’ll need to take your time to research and find those worth promoting.
Although, you’ll only find 168 digital/physical items listed on the D24 marketplace versus 4000 on Clickbank so you can find more of both the good and bad ones on the latter.
- Competition: While both affiliate networks have similar strengths and drawbacks, D24 is less known so you will encounter less competition when trying to promote their offers, at least at the time of writing this article.
They both are reliable and have a good reputation so when it comes to choosing one of them, it comes down to the offers and which one you’d think would work best for your audience and would get you better results.
Signup URL: Digistore 24 Affiliate Page
Commission rate: Varies (15%-90%)
Commission type: Single payment – Cost per Sale
Cookie duration: 180 days
Product types: Digital Membership
Payment terms: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly
Payment Options: Paypal and Bank Account
Payout Threshold: $50
7. MaxBounty
MaxBounty is one of the leading CPA networks in the online marketing space. It has more than 2000 active campaigns and has been around since 2004 so you can trust it won’t disappear overnight as it has happened with other CPA Networks.
As mentioned, the network specializes in CPA or Cost Per Action offers which means that they pay you for actions like email submits and app downloads. They also have some physical products that pay on a CPS (Cost Per Sale) model but those are a smaller percentage of their portfolio.
They are also adding new campaigns constantly so it is unlikely that you run out of things to promote.
MaxBounty vs Clickbank
- Type of offers: As mentioned MaxBounty is mostly a CPA affiliate network with offers in a wide variety of categories that go from automotive and dating to Gaming and Travel. On the other hand, all of Clickbank offers work on a CPS or revenue share model.
But having most CPA offers doesn’t mean you’ll get stuck with just life insurance and teeth whitening services only. MaxBounty has within their vendors so pretty popular and reputable brands lie American Express, Shutterstock, and Goddady which will make your job as an affiliate, easier.
They also have lots of lesser-known brands but that doesn’t mean you can make a profitable campaign out of them, it all comes down to knowing how to pick the right offers and promotional methods.
- Getting approved: Scammers and lazy affiliates tend to gravitate towards CPA offers so MaxBounty has a stricter approval process compared to Clickbank. You need to get on a call with them and they will ask about the promotional methods you want to use as well as verifying your website.
Additionally, once you get approved for the network, you don’t get access to all offers automatically. Actually, need to successfully promote at least one of their CPS (Cost per sale) products before being able to promote CPA offers.
They will also shut down your account if that you are sending questionable traffic so keep things legitimate, as you always should.
- Commissions: Since most of the offers pay your per lead, sign up, or download, it is to be expected that commissions are lower, like in any CPA program, but naturally, it is also easier to get an email that to get a sale so your conversions for actions will be higher.
The commission rates vary a lot from vendor to vendor and you can find offers that pay anything from $0.20 cents to $8 per email.
If you are a new affiliate or are looking for some offers to add to your portfolio, you can find some interesting options on MaxBounty but if you are trying to use paid traffic I’d advise you to stay away from it since it’ll be hard to make a profit.
Signup URL: MaxBounty Affiliate Page
Commission rate: Varies (15%-30%)
Commission type: CPA, Pay per Lead, Action, Download
Cookie duration: 90 days
Product types: Services, Apps, Sweepstakes
Payment terms: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly
Payment Options: Cheque, eCheque, Paypal and Bank Account
Payout Threshold: $100
8. ShareASale
ShareASale is one of the most popular affiliate networks and has been around for over 20 years. It is one of the affiliate networks with the most time and experience in the industry and a great reputation online and offline for both both merchants and affiliates.
One of the worries of affiliates when working with a new network is that they will not recognize their commissions or they will cancel their accounts without reason but with a reputable network like Shareasale, you can be sure it won’t go anywhere (along with your commissions)
ShareAsale has more than 4,800 merchants in 40 different categories inclduing tech, weddings, apparel, fitness, automotive, gifts, productivity and practically anything else so no matter what your niche is, you can probably find some offers that appeal to your audience.
ShareASale vs Clickbank
- Offers: When it comes to the number of offers they both have a similar amount but the quality is where they differ. While Clickbank’s offers go from good to questionable, ShareAsale quality is much more homogeneous and reliable.
Many of ShareASale’s merchants are well-known in their respective fields, including Viator, WP Engine, Mod Cloth, Jillian Michaels, the NBA Store, and more. They also have a variety of affiliate offers including CPA (Cost Per Action), Digital and Physical products.
On the other hand, ClickBank focuses mostly on digital offers and their merchants rely solely on affiliate sales. This can give them a bad reputation since not all affiliates know how to properly promote them and can use spammy or sketchy methods.
- Interface: While a lot of affiliates complain of ShareASale’s interface looking outdated, it actually has some pretty awesome features that you won’t find anywhere else. One of my favorite ones is their search feature where you are able to filter offers based on certain keywords, category merchant EPC, sale commission, merchant status, or even how long they’ve been a part of ShareASale.
On top of that, they have a feature that helps filter based on Autoapproval, the EPC or commission rate being greater than, two-tier programs and top 100 offers. This way you can find programs that will automatically approve your application have a commission amount that wants, and EPC that proves you’ll be profitable long-term.
You can also see if the merchant currently has funds in their account that would allow for automatic payments or if they are low in funds and how low they have been on that status.
- Approval: While approval is not automatic like on Clickbank, it is easier than for other affiliate networks as long as you have a live website.
Once you are accepted to join ShareAsale, you’d need to apply for each product that you want to promote but since they work with a majority of Small & Medium Enterprises, they tend to be less strict than big brands and are happy to accept small site owners willing to work hard to promote their products/services.
Signup URL: ShareAsale Affiliate Page
Commission rate: Varies
Commission type: CPA, CPS, Pay-per-call, Two-tier programs
Cookie duration: 90 days
Product types: Digital and Physical Products
Payment terms: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly
Payment Options: Payoneer and Bank Account
Payout Threshold: $100
9. CJ Affiliate (Commission Junction)
CJ Affiliate was founded in 1998 as Commission Junction and at some point was considered one of the best affiliate netwroks worlwide. In 2003, it was acquired by ValueClick in 2003 and later in 2014, it was then rebranded to “CJ Affiliate by Conversant”
Nowadays, it is still one of the biggest affiliate networks with global reach, tons of offers, and many are widely recognized brands for retail, software, and a broad variety of products.
While it might not have as many offers as Clickbank, CJ Affiliate is one of the most reputable networks in the industry and has some popular brands among their vendors such as Priceline, GoPro, Barnes & Noble, Lowes, IHG, Office Depot, and J. Crew.
CJ Affiliate vs Clickbank
- Offers: What varies most between these two networks is the type of vendors and brands you will get access to. While CJ Affiliate is what all of the well-know brands use for their affiliate programs. On the other hand, Clickbank has smaller products and brands. otherwise unknown outside the affiliate industry.
Additionally, while Clickbank focuses mostly on digital products like courses and memberships, on Commission Junction, you will find variety of affiliate programs for digital and physical products and services.
- Approval: While on Clickbank you can get approved automatically, CJ Affiliate is stricter when it comes to their application process. They will review each application manually and only accept affiliates with a live website that are able to prove in their application that they have experience in the industry.
Moreover, if you are approved to join their network, you need to apply individually for each offer you want to promote and vendors are even more picky with who they accept. They will check the amount of monthly you have on your site and only take affiliates from a few countries.
- Commissions: Big brands are known for having small affiliate commission but that is not the case with CJ vendors. You can have popular brands that pay up to 65% commission rate. They also have a cookie-less, cross-device tracking, which ensures you’ll get credit for your referrals much more often.
On a final note, keep in mind that they will suspend your account if you haven’t referred any sales within 180 days so make sure to tune your promotional methods before applying.
Signup URL: CJ Affiliate Page
Commission rate: Varies
Commission type: CPA, CPS, Pay-per-call, Two-tier programs
Cookie duration: Cookie-less, cross-device tracking
Product types: Online Retail, Digital Products, Software
Payment terms: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly
Payment Options: Check, Direct Deposit
Payout Threshold: $50
10. Market Health
Market Health is an affiliate network focused on the health and beauty niches. It was established in 1998 and to date, has about 190+ offers that pay some of the highest commission in the industry.
They have a wide variety of offers in these niches including supplements and products for General Health, Men’s Health, Pet Health, Sexual Health, Weight Loss Products and Women’s Health and Beauty, among others.
These are just of the categories they cover but if you have an audience in any niche related to health and beauty, you can definitely find an offer in this affiliate network.
Market Health vs Clickbank
- Offers: While Clickbank focuses mostly on digital products like e-courses and memberships, the majority of market Health’s offers are physical goods like supplements and skincare products.
However, if you are a new affiliate looking for the best offers in the health and beauty niches, this is a good alternative to test or to add to your portfolio.
- Applying: If Clickbank and Market Health have something in common, is that they both have a pretty easy approval process. Marketh Health gives you immediate access and they only require your contact details as well as an SSN/Tax ID.
Market Health doesn’t have external vendors so all the offers you find on their site are their own and you can promote all of them automatically once you join.
- Commissions: Market health offers a 50% commission on all affiliate offers which is similar to the range you will find on Clickbank but additionally, they also have a CPA option that pays between $30 and $70 per action.
This means that you earn a commission for an action that a visitor performs such as signing up with their email, completing a form, etc. which gives you more opportunities to earn money. Some affiliates prefer CPA offers because you don’t get refunds on those and the conversions are higher but it all depends on your promotional methods.
- Refunds: WIth Market Health, you also get a 50% commission on recurring orders which seems great. Except that their FAQ page states that auto-recurring customers have a high number of chargebacks and returns.
That’d make me concerned that many of the offers automatically subscribe customers to a recurring monthly payment plan without their knowledge. This is not something I’d be comfortable promoting since you want to build trust with your audience and this can ruin your reputation.
Clickbank also has some programs with recurring commissions but they do mention it on the sales page so it doesn’t come as a surprise when buyers see the charge the next month. In any case, I’d just make sure recurring charges are mentioned on the checkout page so you know you are not setting up your audience for a bad experience,
Signup URL: Market Health Affiliate Page
Commission rate: Varies
Commission type: CPA, CPS, Recurring Commissions
Cookie duration: 30 days
Product types: Physical Products, Health & Beauty Niches
Payment terms: Twice a month
Payment Options: Check by Mail, Bank Wire, Skrill, Prepaid Debit Cards
Payout Threshold: $20
What is the best Clickbank Alternative?
With all these availabe affiliate networks, you are now faced with the question of which one to choose.
While these are all good Clickbank alternatives, each one has their own strenghts and weaknesses and the best one for you will depend on your expertise, audience and the promotional methods that you plant to use.
If you are simply looking for more offers similar to the ones on Clickbank, JV Zoo is a good alternative to consider. You will find the same kind of products with a better platform and you can get paid commissions instantly when buyers use Paypal at checkout.
If you’d rather promote physical products instead, you also have some great options with lucrative commission on the affiliate networks Rakuten, Market Health and M4trix
Or if you want a different type of offers and more commission styles, choose an affiliate program from ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, or Max Bounty. They offer a wide variety of products and commission styles that you can make money with.
Next Steps
As you can see, there are some great Clickbank alternatives to choose from depending on what you are looking for and your personal experience.
Having access to the right affiliate network and offers is an important factor to your success as an affiliate. But even more important is that you have the right skills and methods to promote them and make money with them.
If you’re looking to take your affiliate skills to the next level or don’t know where to start, this 15-day challenge will give you the blueprint you need to succeed in your journey as an affiliate marketer.
