Linkshare.com is one of the biggest affiliate services provider for e-commerce and online businesses all around the world. They are currently known as Rakuten Affiliate Network and they have been voted as the best affiliate network for 3 consecutive years. The Rakuten Linkshare Corporation was first launched in 1996 by Stephen Messer and Heidi Messer and their Headquarters is located in New York City. Some of the most popular brands in the world are also their clients which including Walmart, Viator, Macy’s and Sportscraft. Linkshare provides opportunities for both Advertisers and Publishers to grow their online businesses and generate profits by becoming their member.
HOW DOES IT WORK
You can either join Linkshare as an Advertiser or a Publisher depending on how you want to grow your business. Advertiser account requires you to create your own affiliate program if you want to market your products over the internet. Publisher account is for those who do not want to invest and are looking to generate income by marketing products offered by clients on the Linkshare network. For each sale delivered through your website, you will get commission and the amount varies from company to company.
Before signing up for a publisher account you need to understand some basic concepts about how publishers work and become successful on Linkshare. In order to become a publisher, you should own a website that generates regular traffic and people visit it regularly. If your website or blog gets daily traffic then you can turn it into a revenue generating website by joining Linkshare as a Publisher and apply for different affiliate programs listed on the Linkshare network. You should only apply for those programs that can engage your website visitors and are somehow related to the content of your website in order to generate maximum sales from your ads. If you don’t know what this whole thing means then you should try to learn a few basic things about affiliate marketing. All you have to do is to join the most suitable affiliate programs available and display their ads on your website. Now when a visitor clicks your banner ads and buy something on the client’s website, you will get commission on each sale produced by your ad. And all the banners are provided by the client themselves. Sounds great? Now if you’re wondering what the Publishing portal looks like then take a look at the image below:
Now you must be wondering what do all of those terms impressions, clicks, EPC, Sales and commissions really mean. Impressions are the number of times a webpage has been viewed that has a particular ad on it. Clicks mean the number of clicks on a particular ad. EPC stands for Earnings per clicks and in our context it means Earnings per hundred clicks. For example a merchant ABC has a 7-day EPC of $20. This means for every 100 clicks sent to the customer in a 7 day period, $20 have been made in commissions. This figure can help you in choosing an Affiliate program. Commissions are the actual amount of profit that you have generated with the ads on your website and that amount will be paid to you after a certain period. Now you must be wondering how the affiliate programs are listed on the portal and how you can apply for them, well here’s a view of the affiliate programs page which should give you just an idea about how it would work.
So this page shows different Premium Linkshare advertisers affiliate programs that are offering their ads to you to put them on your website and get commissions as specified on the right hand side of the page. The commission return period is also specified. So based on the general statistics and the popularity of the affiliate programs, you can decide to apply for some of them so that their ads can become available to you and you become eligible to earn commissions from them. For example, if your website is a blog which publishes articles about Travel and Eating then you should try to find some good affiliate programs related to travel and eating to engage your visitors and earn commissions. This is the simplest explanation that we could come up with to have your concepts cleared about how Rakuten Linkshare affiliate marketing works.
Now in order to sign up and become a member of the Linkshare affiliate portal click HERE.
HOW DOES LINKSHARE PAY
Linkshare pays through Check or Direct Deposit which should come off as a great news to the publishers all around the world because this means you can be paid wherever you are. You just need to have an International bank account or a Foreign currency account which is not really hard to get hold of in any country. So those people who always felt isolated because their countries do not support some specific payment gateways can now rejoice because they can now earn big time with Linkshare, provided of course that they have a website or a blog that gets regular visitors. You will be paid whenever you reach a certain payment threshold which you can specify yourself when applying for a publisher account. However, you will have to wait for the commission returning period which can vary from 30 to 60 days. Bit it does not matter as long as you are getting paid on time.
FINAL WORD
If you have a website or even a blog that you update regularly and you are getting a good amount of visitors then you should definitely consider to become an affiliate at Rakuten linkshare network. It will not only help you boost your online business and website’s profits but will provide you a permanent source of income that you can always rely on. You could take advantage of being affiliated with the most popular brands in the world and put their ads on your website to grab the attention of your visitors and earn good commissions on every sale that occurs from those banners. Do apply for it and share this opportunity with your fellow webmasters and bloggers.
Hi,
I just applied for rakuten linkshare and got many big companies links on my site. Got couple questions.
Do they report sales realtime or how long it takes to show up?
And when I use deeplink should I use the signature box?
Do they pay if you post link to laptop but visitor I sent buys phone for example?
Thank You
Hi. The sales take some time to reflect on your account. It may take anywhere between a few hours to 48 hours. It entirely depends on the Brand whose affiliate program you have joined. To get an accurate answer you can contact the company itself through their Contact or Support page.
As for the Deep link, this link may help you: https://rakutenlinkshare.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200838199-Deep-Links-FAQs
And yes you will be getting commission for any product that the user buys through your link. It’s because the affiliate links contains a tracking cookie. You will be getting commissions for any products that the customer buys from that website till the tracking cookie is present in the User’s system. Usually the tracking cookies remain for 60 days.
Can you tell us more about this? I’d want to find out more details.
What exactly do you want to know? All the details are given in this guide.
i just signed up.
questions.
1, I went to sign with another store and you form came up. so you just connect to many stores?
2, what is banner?
3, i can only get paid when people buy from the that website?
4, how does the company find out the traffic on my blogg?
For that my dear you need to go through this article: http://www.livecity.com/site/live/articles/what-is-google-adsense-and-how-does-it-work.html
You should also search for more guides about how does Adsense actually works. Do pay attention and it will be easy for you to understand.
hi i want to join linkshare please send me benefit of link share
Please read the article thoroughly. All benefits and advantages are mentioned in it.
Hi,
Where can i find the EPC offers for each advertiser? I can only see commission rates.
Thanks
Actually you can’t view the EPC. That’s how it is.
Only one question. I have a Rakuten linkshare account,and I have a affiliate which I have applied to and was approved. Question is after I copy a link and put it within my site how does it get tracked by Rakuten if we did not have to link verify. How we as website owners know they show this?
The tracking code in the link tracks all the sales that take place through your link. Foe example in the link: http://gan.doubleclick.net/gan_click?lid=123456&pubid=777444
The number 123456 is the destination page on a vendors website. The number 777444 is your network affiliate ID. This affiliate ID keeps track of all the transactions.
Hi
Does Linkshare have affiliate programs for info products ?? Or is it only for physical products ?
Most pf the vendors are the ones that sell physical. I myself have not seen one that offers digital products but there might be some.
Hi
Can I use linkshare to promote an Amazon nithes site
Actually Amazon has it’s own affiliate program that you can join. Here’s the link: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
Wow, that was really informative – a merchant ABC has a 7-day EPC of $20. 🙂
So, that means more traffic i can direct to the merchant’s website, more money i will make …
It sounds simple, yet very difficult. Definitely it is not going to happen overnight. I understand that it requires a lot of hard work, consistent action (writing and promoting on a regular basis), and willing to learn and grow.
Of course, I agree, WITHOUT a website of your own, you cannot have a full control of what you want to promote … Having a personal website, with a “.com” domain name, is very essential.
Thanks for sharing all these great tips about Linkshare …
And, please visit my website to learn how to make money blogging too …
Thanks mate.
Hey thanks for the article,
My question is are you able to display these product images in an E-Commerce setup? I use Woo commerce and simply want to add the images/link into my website.
Thanks!
You can absolutely do that.
hi . i have a blogspot blog can i use the blog to promote my Rakuten Linkshare link? hope it will not affect my adsence account
It shouldn’t affect your adsense account as long as you are complying with their policies. You can use ads from other platforms too but if you spam them on your website that might cause trouble.