Avangate Review: The Ideal Affiliate Network for Selling Software, SaaS and Digital Goods
Customization is all the rage these days.
Just imagine that you’re about to go on a much-anticipated vacation, but every choice has already been made for you.
Your destination, where you’ll stay, what you’ll see there and the schedule for every day is already set and can’t be changed.
Whether it’s the ability to choose the color of your phone or the option to customize a vacation to your own liking, being given a choice is always preferable to having everything decided for you.
Personally, I would hate the kind of prepackaged vacation described above, and I totally understand why the major trend in online business these days is to make everything more customizable.
When it comes to your affiliate website, I’m sure you also like to have options. Customization is important for your business. You’re constantly checking the ROI of each change that you make, testing what works best with your audience.
The ability to customize not only what you present to your readership but also how you present it is essential in the success of your affiliate marketing strategy. By changing and adjusting according to the likes and dislikes of your audience, you can appeal more to your readers and earn bigger payouts.
Thus, finding an affiliate network that gives you options will ultimately help you earn more with less work.
Today, we’re going to discuss just such an affiliate network: Avangate.
In this Avangate review, we’ll see where this company came from and how it offers intuitive customization for affiliates. We’ll also discuss the pros and cons of this network, as well as who especially should be interested in joining as an affiliate.
Who Is Behind Avangate?
This digital commerce company was founded in 2006, based on an ideal of excellence that has empowered the company to accomplish great things. They’re constantly working to improve the lives of affiliates and merchants alike with innovative technology.
Avangate views the happiness of the customer as a measure of their success. For this reason, it gives high priority to good communication with merchants and affiliates. The company has an international presence, with headquarters in the United States as well as different countries across Western and Eastern Europe.
Avangate caters almost entirely to the software and online services market, meaning that affiliates who promote software will be right at home here.
Avangate Review: The Ideal Affiliate Network for Selling Software, SaaS and Digital Goods
Who Can Really Benefit from Joining the Avangate Affiliate Network?
This may seem somewhat obvious, but only affiliates whose audience is interested in software are able to make full use of the Avangate network.
And, of course, if you happen to be an affiliate in the software sphere who loves customization, you’ve just found a match made in heaven!
With different categories of software, Avangate is a perfect match for affiliates who work within the industries of:
- B2B
- Gaming software
- Finance
- Educational software
- Audio/video and multimedia design software
In the Avangate network, you’ll find a good number of different companies within this sphere and plenty of relevant affiliate products to promote.
What Makes Avangate Unique?
Affiliates Can Create Their Own Coupons
Have you ever struggled to obtain coupons from a merchant for your readers? While coupons are a great way to attract readership and boost your referred sales, many merchants are hesitant to give out exclusive coupon codes to affiliates.
However, within the Avangate network, affiliates have the option to create their own coupons.
These coupons are exclusive to you as an affiliate, and are actually discounted from your affiliate commission. So you can choose exactly how much of a discount your readers can get.
For example, let’s say that you’re currently earning a 50% commission on sales from a certain merchant. You could generate a 10% discount coupon for your readers, thus boosting sales and loyalty among your audience. Your commission for sales made with that coupon would be 40% but you’ll likely make up for the lower commission in the number of sales!
Within programs that offer this feature, affiliates can create and customize these coupons to their heart’s desire.
Deep Linking That Gets Customers Directly to the Final Steps of Purchase
Avangate takes deep linking one step further, allowing affiliates to customize exactly where and how their readers land when clicking on affiliate links.
There are several options for customization:
- Download trial links: Using this feature, affiliates can create a direct link to the software file download, skipping the need for extra clicks for the reader.
- Shopping cart links: This is probably the most interesting feature that Avangate offers. With specific shopping cart links, affiliates allow readers to add items to their shopping cart with just one click. Or, if you prefer, your readers can go directly to the checkout page from a link from your website! This is great for conversion, and will help you boost sale referrals. When linking to a shopping cart, affiliates can even customize the process of the purchase so that it matches with the design of their own website!
- Landing page links: Affiliates can select either the merchant’s webpage or any specific landing page made available, and create a deep link to take readers there directly.
Over 4,000 Merchants, with Big Names in Software
This makes Avangate one of the biggest software affiliate networks currently running. It features a huge number of software merchants in many different categories, including audio/video, games, business and finance, design, internet and more.
Among the merchants that work with Avangate are household names that your readership is surely familiar with. You’ll find companies such as Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Hide My Ass VPN Service, HP Software and many more!
In Summary: Our Compliments and Complaints for the Avangate Affiliate Network
Pros
- Rated #4 in mThink’s list of top affiliate networks for 2017. Having been beat out only by some of the biggest names in affiliate marketing, Avangate surpassed other affiliate networks such as CJ Affiliate, ClickBank and FlexOffers.
- Multiple payouts available, including PayPal. Another example of the customization available with Avangate, affiliates can choose between wire transfer, check or PayPal payouts. Affiliates can also get an Avangate Prepaid MasterCard through Payoneer.
- Reliable monthly payments. Affiliates are paid 20 days from the end of the month when they receive commissions, without fail.
- Create your own coupons. To boost your following and the loyalty of your readers, create customized coupons whenever you feel like it.
- Customized deep links. This gives you the ability to bring readers directly to the checkout!
- Advanced, customized reports. Affiliates can see a monthly report, a report divided by product, a report by sales source and a cookie report. Beyond that, the affiliation report includes an incredible amount of metrics including conversion rate, refunds, cost per click, EPC and more.
Cons
- Minimum payout threshold is $100. This is somewhat high compared to other networks.
- Payouts only available in USD or EUR. While these two currencies are probably the most common, it’s still limited. That being said, the Avangate Prepaid MasterCard can be used to take out money from an ATM in almost any currency.
- Maximum cookie length is 180 days. While this isn’t a bad cookie life, there are other networks that allow longer cookie life.
Just like customizing your own vacation, being able to make choices for your affiliate marketing business allows you to open your horizons to new opportunities.
But beyond that, the customization made available through Avangate gives you the ability to grow your revenue and build your business. It helps you to customize your marketing strategies in order to appeal more to your audience and win a greater number of sales.
For software affiliates who are ready to customize, Avangate will allow you to make those affiliate paychecks even fatter!
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