A Less-Known Way to Create Your Own Affiliate Network Using Resale Offers Without Programming Knowledge

Who in the world of affiliate marketing hasn't thought about creating their own affiliate network? As an owner of an affiliate network, you won't have to fight the moderators on Facebook, TikTok, Google, or other advertising networks; you won't need to spend thousands of dollars on ad accounts (which will be banned in a few days); you wont need to go through the stresses or running ad campaigns that are generating a negative ROI, plus so much more. In an actual sense, you won’t need a lot of things to get started.

But what does an affiliate network need to have before it can start receiving commissions and earning big money without generating traffic on its own?

Today, we will guide you through all the possible ways of starting your own affiliate network. We’ll cover all the strategies you can use to build your network, compare them, and suggest the ideal option.

The 3 Pillars of an Affiliate Network, And How to Achieve Them​

An affiliate network is like a business that stands on a tripod. It's built on 3 core pillars;

1. The traffic that affiliates attract
2. Access to offers from direct advertisers on favorable terms
3. Technical implementation of the network’s engine

At the very start, every affiliate network faces some kind of vicious cycle: to have offers, you need traffic; to have traffic, you need offers. However, the most important asset of the affiliate network is traffic, which, of course, has to be generated by affiliates. So, how do you find this traffic at the start? We’ll tell you in the next section.

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How to Find Traffic For Your Affiliate Network At The Very Beginning Of Your Journey​

Having your own ways of getting traffic, or a number of affiliates ready to drive traffic early on, is very important. This capacity will play a big role when it comes to securing the best offer conditions in various verticals. Here are several strategies to achieve this:

• Set up your own media buying team: In order to get traffic in the early days, you can set up your own media buying team. Having a small media buying team helps you not only to test the offers, but also have the ability to send the advertisers traffic immediately after they agree to work with you. This capability will always give you a stronger position in negotiation terms. With this, you can even attract top affiliates to your network, as you will have the statistics on how each offer performs.
• Pump up media coverage: If you focus on building media presence a month or two before launching, you can attract a number of affiliates who will be ready to test offers from your affiliate network. They can sign up for a waitlist, and when you get some offers in, you can then inform them via email and ask them to start sending traffic.

These are the basic strategies you can use to get traffic at the start. If you can’t secure affiliates to drive traffic before connecting offers, or you can’t afford to set up a media buying team, it’s not always a dealbreaker. There are other ways to go about it, and we will cover this below.

Getting Offers: Life Hacks for Finding Direct Advertisers​

As we have seen, getting offers, especially as a new affiliate network owner with few industry connections, can be a challenge. However, in one way or another, it can be simplified. This will all depend on the vertical in which your affiliate network operates. For example, in gambling, casino websites indicate how to become a partner. The same situation is with dating.

In terms of getting offers, these are the simplest verticals for creating an affiliate network. Most of the direct advertisers in these verticals will not ask you for proof of having initial traffic. You can be transparent and promise them that you are working on getting traffic — and they will give you the deal.



However, the situation is more complicated with nutra and e-commerce verticals. Firstly, it is difficult to find direct advertisers. Secondly, direct advertisers want to see traffic right away.

There are a couple of life hacks on how to find direct advertisers, though. These hacks work for both affiliate networks and affiliate teams. Here are some of them;

• Register as an affiliate in the affiliate program that has the offer you need: Send a lead with your phone number. Get a call center employee to talk to someone from the affiliate department.
• Resell offers from other affiliate networks: Many affiliate networks can give you the option to resell offers. You can submit these offers as your own in your network, and your affiliates will start promoting them.

Ideally, in order to convince the affiliates to run these offers, you will have to give them the same payment rates as other networks do. However, you can squeeze in your profits through 2 approaches;

• Shaving: A common (though not endorsed) practice to skim commissions.
• Invest at a loss initially: Operate at break-even or at a small loss to build volume, then negotiate higher rates with the donor affiliate network. This works well for advertisers requiring initial traffic.

• Forums, conferences, friends, acquaintances: Personal relationships are the best way to get an offer in any industry, be it in politics or affiliate marketing. We strongly recommend building up social capital.

So these are some ideal ways to get offers when beginning. However, if you noticed, one of the verticals we haven't spoken about is crypto. Here, the situation is a bit complicated. Almost all advertisers need to see that you can send them initial traffic; otherwise, there will be no deal for you. Or you might end up getting a deal that doesn’t favour you. In addition, it is extremely difficult to reach direct advertisers in this niche due to the grayhat format of the industry.

How to Find a Direct Advertiser in the Crypto Vertical: Nobody Knows​

It’s a massive challenge to find direct advertisers in the cryptocurrency vertical. Unlike gambling or dating, where partnership details are often listed on websites, many crypto direct advertisers operate as “ghosts”. They are never easy to find, but you hear about them everywhere.

You can try the approach of calling the phone numbers on their websites, but these always lead to call centers — not to the affiliate managers. A more realistic approach can be to network in industry chat groups, forums, conferences, or finding personal connections in real life. But again, this is promising, requires a lot of time, and it's not easy to find connections to newer brands that have hot offers.

A clever method to bypass these hurdles is to track the auto-redirect links to identify direct advertisers. In the crypto vertical, auto-redirect links direct users to specific landing pages or platforms, often revealing the advertiser’s domain. If you analyze these links properly, you can find the contacts of direct advertisers and potentially secure better rates or exclusive offers.

To use this approach, you’ll need to apply some technical knowledge so that you don’t violate the terms. We will provide a step-by-step guide on this technique in our upcoming posts, so give our page a follow. This approach of auto-redirect links is primarily used in crypto; in other verticals, you can search for advertisers in simpler ways, which we wrote about above.

How to Avoid Up to 90% of Expenses when Opening a Software Company​

The technical side of setting up the affiliate network (particularly the tracking and management tools) is usually the biggest expense when starting. Getting this up from scratch is usually difficult and expensive, and worst of all, time-consuming. In figures, it might cost anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 and 3–6 months.

This is provided that you managed to find skilled programmers who remain committed to your project. A more affordable and faster solution is to use a platform that can enable you to launch a fully functional affiliate network in one day at a low cost. Just like the way you’d use Shopify for launching an e-commerce website rather than coding one yourself. The key here is to avoid all the hurdles and go straight to business. Find a good CPA network platform provider and work with them. This will help you to minimize large initial investments and avoid delays in this high-risk project.

Conclusion​

We hope that this piece has been able to convey “in general terms” the steps that can help you build your own affiliate network, as well as the challenges. All in all, using a platform that offers a turnkey solution can help you build your affiliate network without headaches. You’ll just focus on the business instead of wasting time and money on development and technical tasks. If you are interested in learning more about how to create an affiliate network and not go broke at the same time, you can keep following our page here on BHW. Soon, there will be a lot of information that no one has ever put out to the public.