In my AWIN review today, I’m going to share my own personal experience with this affiliate network.
AWIN (previously known as Affiliate Window) was one of the very first affiliate networks that I ever joined.
Primarily, this was because I had a niche website I was building, within the home decor space and there are plenty of affiliate programs connected to AWIN that were relevant to me.
One of the main affiliate programs I wanted to join initially was ETSY and this can make a complementary affiliate program to sign up to alongside Amazon.
That is because ETSY tends to have a large number of unique items; things that you wouldn’t be able to find on Amazon.
Etsy also has the big advantage of having 30 day cookie, (in comparison to Amazons short 24 hour one!).
That means, affiliates have a full 30 days to make a sale, after potential customers click through their affiliate link.
But what about AWIN itself as an affiliate network?
Is it worth signing up with them and how reliable are they?
I have been an affiliate on this platform since it was affiliate window, for several years now.
So, let’s get started with this review & let me know in the comments if you have any experience that you would like to share!
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So, What Is AWIN Anyway?
AWIN is a global affiliate network, that’s most well known in the UK and Europe – although it is a global network and growing.
They were previously known as “Affiliate Window,” but then connected with another affiliate network called “Zanox,” and AWIN was born.
You can see a short video explaining how AWIN came about below:
Since the transition, AWIN is steadily growing and believed to now be gaining good popularity in the United States.
As far as Europe, the UK and North Africa goes however, they are already one of the leading and most well-known affiliate networks.
They’re known as one that caters for big brand names, as well as smaller advertisers.
What is also quite interesting about AWIN, is that they have many companies offering CPA commissions.
CPA stands for cost-per-action and means that, affiliates can often earn in a variety of different ways, depending on what actions are taken.
For example; you may earn a commission for a direct sign up, clicking on a link, or filling out a form.
It will vary depending on the affiliate programs T&C’s, (always check through these prior to registering) but this can offer more variety to affiliates than simply being paid a set fee when a purchase is made.
If You’re interested in CPA programs, you may also be interested in the Panthera Network.
Who Should Join AWIN?
The people who should join AWIN, is really anyone who is interested in Affiliate marketing.
AWIN has over 6,000 advertisers, so you can be sure to find an affiliate program within your niche.
It’s a good one for bloggers, as it houses many big brand names in a wide variety of niches.
Related post: the best affiliate programs for beginners*
Registering with AWIN is simple and quick to do.
Once you’ve signed up as a publisher, you can spend some time browsing through the affiliate programs available.
When you do apply to become an affiliate, just make sure that your website compliments the products you’re looking to promote. Otherwise you’re likely to be turned down.
For example; if your website is about baking and you apply to a company that sells TV’s and electronics – they may feel that your website doesn’t compliment their brand.
So, keep it relevant.
That being said, you will occasionally get companies inviting you on to their affiliate programs that have zero to do with your niche whatsoever…
Some advertisers will really take any opportunity they can for the exposure and potential sale; others are far more selective.
Related Post: How to make your first affiliate sale*
AWIN Tools:
Awin has a decent selection of tools that makes promoting products easy.
I personally find direct links convert far better than banners or widgets and AWIN makes creating links easy – either by their link-building tool, or their convert-a-link option, (which I explain further below!).
You can find a list of the tools available in the image below.
An AWIN Plugin Makes It Easy!
One feature that I love about AWIN and I highly recommend you take advantage of, is something called convert-a-link.
You can easily take advantage of this by downloading their free plugin.
Once the plugin is installed, you no longer have to worry about adding affiliate links manually to your website.
Every time you link to a regular link to a product on your website, the convert-a-link plugin will automatically convert regular links into your affiliate tracking links.
Better still, If you link out to a product of a company that you’re not an affiliate for but COULD be via AWIN, they automatically sign you up.
If you’re then approved, you’ll automatically earn money from them too.
This is such a useful tool, because AWIN is partnered with thousands of advertisers and this is only going to grow.
If you’re in a niche that can be supported by this network and the plugin, it will make creating your content so much simpler.
How Much Does AWIN cost?
AWIN is completely free.
However, when you initially sign up, you will need to make a deposit of $5.
This is merely a safety payment while the process your application.
As soon as your application is approved, your $5 is refunded into your account.
Although, annoyingly, you won’t be able to withdraw until your first payment.
So, if you’re not confident of making affiliate sales soon, it may be worth waiting a while.
Personally, I made my first sales within a few months and I wasn’t in any hurry to get back $5!
I signed up with AWIN right at the start, when my website was practically brand new.
If you wait until you’re generating some traffic, the wait will be less for you.
I guess it depends how important $5 is to you… for me, it was more important to get signed up and get started and it didn’t bother me.
PROS VS CONS OF AWIN
PROS
- In comparison to other affiliate networks, AWIN is simple to understand and use.
- Applying to affiliate programs is easy and quick.
- Various tools and widgets available, that are simple to use but still high quality.
- Their convert-a-link plugin means you don’t even need to convert your links anymore manually!
- All of your affiliate stats are clear to see and understand in your dashboard area.
- Extensive range of merchants to choose from.
CONS
- Sometimes your payments can be pending for a long time, prior to them being approved.
- Some complaints surround staff not having an experienced enough knowledge of the affiliate marketing industry.
- Some people have complained about their customer service – I cannot speak from experience here, because I’ve literally never had a single problem to contact them about. Everything has ran smoothly and payments have been prompt.
AWIN Review Conclusion: Is It Worth Your Time?
AWIN is a well established affiliate network, with thousands of affiliate programs to choose from – they continue to grow year on year.
If you’re interested in affiliate marketing, they’re definitely one that you should check out.
With extensive tools and so many niches to look into, you’ll be spoilt for choice.
If you’re already an affiliate on other platforms, (such as Amazon, or Clickbank) then AWIN can offer you something different.
Check out AWIN here and let me know in the comments what you think.
If you’re looking to learn more about affiliate marketing, this training helped me.
All the best,
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Hi Nat!
Awin sounds like a really interesting network. Can you tell me if they accept quite young websites as well? I want to get rid of amazon but the problem is I don´t really have any traffic yet?
I also don´t want to miss out any sales, so is there a threshhold after I hopefully will get accepted by AWIN?
Thanks for your help, I appreciate it!
Have a good one.
Hi there, well it will really depend on the affiliate program! I was accepted by Etsy very early. I think I probably had a handful of posts… it’s quite a while back now, so it’s difficult to remember! The thing is, there is really no harm at all in applying. If you’re rejected, you can always reapply at a later date. As far as actually signing up to AWIN itself, you can do that early on. I believe my site was only a few months old when I applied to AWIN and was accepted right away. 🙂
That being said, there is really no rush to apply to affiliate programs – it’s a good idea to build out your website and have a bit of traffic first.
Does anyone know if this website is good for getting free merchandise in exchange for advertising products on instagram??
Awin is an affiliate network – so, you’d need to be going individual companies in order to get freebies for advertising on instagram. You could join affiliate programs and promote those products, but that’s a bit different.
Don’t respond to emails. Staff are dominated by graduates from some of the weakest courses at the lowest ranking universities in the UK. These 21 and 22 year olds have little idea what they are doing. They seldom get back to you and have no ability to resolve anything themselves.
Hi – thanks for taking the time to comment. I have no customer service issues – but, like I said, I’ve had no reason to contact them. I’ve heard this complaint from others though – thanks for stopping by!
The general play with emails is either not to reply, to reply in a really patronising manner or (most typically) outright lying. So sad with people so young.
Conversely, they bombard you with emails asking for more coverage because you are a highly valued affiliate, etc?
I have seen people having some negative customer service related experience with AWIN. I haven’t experienced this myself, but hope they manage to improve that aspect. I haven’t noticed that many emails either, I take them as just general and mainly ignore ha! :/
I’m impressed by how many choices AWIN offers you as an affiliate marketer. Huge variety of networks to join there is something for everybody. I’ m really glad I found your post about AWIN. I will send them my application right away. I didn’t know they are so popular especially in Europe. I had recently heard a little about them and wanted to find out some more before I signed up!
Hey – yes there are thousands of options, so it’s a good network to get started with. 🙂 Let me know how you get on and thanks for taking the time to comment!
Thanks for the info. A lot of great information here and I always enjoy reading up on the history of things to see where we have come from. I am fairly new to this all so it may take me a bit to figure out how to set this up. I will be looking into this other potential program!
Hey thanks for stopping by. AWIN is a good one if you’re new – it’s all pretty straight forward and pretty simple, in comparison to many affiliate networks. 🙂
Hi, I’m happy I found this post. I tried joining AWIN a few months ago but I was turned off because of the $5 deposit requirement. My basic understanding is that one should never have to pay for an affiliate program, and if they ask you for money, run for the hills! … which is exactly what I did.
However, way too often I’ve heard of AWIN and its good reviews, so it seemed legit to me, but it was just confusing.
Reading this review really helped make me feel more comfortable about joining AWIN and giving them a deposit (yes, even though it was just $5)
Since you mentioned it, I feel more trustful and I’ll join. I just wish that AWIN would find another way to verify accounts because it does turn people away. And they seem to have a very good reputation otherwise.
Cheers
Ade that deposit is purely that… a deposit!! I know I was not 100% when I saw it, but they’re doing it to protect their advertisers and check you out first. Once you’re approved, they pay you back immediately!! 🙂
It is a slight annoying thing, but its all totally above board an legit. They’re home to some of the biggest brand affiliate programs on the web today!
Good luck signing up 🙂
I was just filling out the application for AWIN and reading the terms, and it seems they actually don’t refund the $5 deposit once you are approved. They only refund “upon first payment of any commission.” So if you don’t start making commissions right away, you may not see your $5 returned to you for a while. It’s not that $5 is a big deal amount-wise, but on principle it is a big turn-off.
Hey Katie… yes, this is true! I will add to my post that you probably should not apply to AWIN if you haven’t already got some traffic coming in. Personally, I did get sales via ETSY with very limited traffic. But, it really depends what your niche is too! Thanks for stopping by Katie.
As a budding affiliate marketer I’m always on the look out for great affiliate networks to join and Awin sound great.
While you accurately pointed out that its not all a bed of roses, some people have had bad experiences its enough for me that you haven’t. I mean if you have been in business for a while you are bound to have a few disgruntled customers even if you are doing a great job.
Will be checking it out via your link, thanks NEH!
Hi SJ. Yes that’s right – bound to be some people that have issues. Personally, I haven’t in a couple of years. It’s definitely worth joining, they have so many big companies partnered with them.
Let me know how it goes and good luck!
Nat
If you are joining Awin to become an affiliate of a travel company, Awin is as unintuitive as it gets.
More importantly; asking money upfront is unnecessary and not in the spirit of an affiliate programme. Tradedoubler doesn’t ask money upfront and their customers don’t suffer from it, so i call BS on that.
And if a company doesn’t accept you, your money is gone.
If people accept this kind of behavior, then it becomes a gliding scale. Don’t fall for it. It is ridiculous that i should have to pay money to advertise for a company.
We, as a company, wanted to become an affiliate of Stena Line, but i was put off by the policy of Awin and instead became an affiliate of DFDS via Tradedoubler. Luckily we have a free market.
Hi, yes I agree it is unnecessary to ask for money to sign up – as there are clearly many affiliate networks you could choose from that do not do this. That being said, there are a huge number of advertisers to choose from on AWIN and from my experience, an advertiser will have a good reason to not accept you, (for example; that your site just doesn’t fit with their brand). If one doesn’t accept though, your money isn’t lost because there will be other companies you can apply to, or you can ask what criteria you need to be accepted on to their program and apply again. I’ve never used AWIN for companies in the travel niche – so, I can’t comment there as far as that goes. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Hi I am paying from Nigeria and my payment is not going through, so how can I get an invitation code
Hi there, you’ll want to contact the AWIN support team directly if you’re having any issues.
Awin service in the USA works very poorly
1- Support not responding Day 2.
2- Chat also doesn’t work.
3- Commissions and transactions disappear.
4- Payments delayed.
Over 5 years of working with different services – I have never met worse service than AWIN.
Hey Mike – thanks for your feedback! I’ve personally never had delayed payment, or issues with commissions – so, I’m surprised to hear that. I have heard a fair amount of negative feedback about their support however. Thanks for stopping by!
The worst B2B service I’ve ever received.
More focused on telling you what they will charge to do something than ever doing that thing – it can take weeks just to have something updated.
Most of them don’t really know what’s going on it seems they must be either overworked or don’t care, or both.
The support documentation while extensive-looking, is illogical, incredibly hard to navigate, and still doesn’t have explanations of the errors it gives you.
We’ve had to email 5 different email addresses and phone head office just to get something actioned, leaving us with no affiliate program running for a large collection launch. Often having to resort to emails saying ‘I dont know what more to say, please can you reply/update us’ <- if you have to write that email ever, you know its not someone you want to do business with.
if 205 reviews on trustpilot out of 730 are one star, you cant really say its good can you?
Hey there – thanks for your feedback. I’ve been an affiliate with them for years and honestly, I’ve never had any issues. But then, I’ve rarely had to contact anyone. Payment has aways been on time. This was written quite sometime ago – probably worth an update including some of these negative factors I think!