Impact.com has a number of divisions or product offerings. These include:
Radius — A network of affiliates/publishers and product brands
Mediarails — Digital Marketing Partnerships SaaS product
Altitude — Advertising analytics product
Forensiq — Advertising fraud detection products
Impact Radius is the offering of interest to affiliate marketers looking to find brands to represent.
Impact Radius Affiliate Network
Types of products: Large National Brands
Where to join: Impact Radius Registration
Commission structure: Merchant Specific
Cookie length: Merchant Specific generally 30 days
Payment Methods: Wire Transfer, Direct deposit, Check
Payment Terms: Net 30 1st &15th of each month
About Impact Radius
Impact Radius was founded in 2008. Interestingly it was founded by some of the same industry pros that founded Commission Junction (CJ). They are more of a cloud platform than a traditional affiliate network like ShareASale or CJ. But for affiliates the benefits are the same. A place where brands and publishers like affiliate marketers can come together. Affiliates represent brands to their audience and are paid a commission when a referred customer purchases via the affiliate’s link.
Joining Impact Radius
With affiliate networks there are three types of application methods. Some like ClickBank, once you are accepted into the network you have access to all of the brands that are part of the affiliate network. Others have an application process to pre-qualify affiliates and have a mixture of open brands where all accepted affiliates can represent them and those that require the brand to approve. ShareASale is an example of this. Finally with some networks you must be approved by each brand even though you are a part of the affiliate network. This is the Impact radius model. It can be a bit frustrating for newer affiliates as many of the brands only want very high traffic volume affiliates or they don’t want email marketers etc.
To sign-up just head over to the registration page. Then search for brands to represent and apply for each of them individually. The approval process unusually is 2-3 days.
What Brands are at Impact Radius
Impact Radius tends to have large national brands. These are household names like:
- Adidas
- Uber
- Ticketmaster
- Airbnb
- Revoult
- Walmart
- Cabelas
- Banana Republic
So it is great that you can represent brands that have strong authority and trust with consumers. Many brands use Impact as their outsourced affiliate marketing platform. This will certainly help with conversions. On the other hand this brand trust is jealously protected by the brands and many are not going to approve a small affiliate who they see as potentially tarnishing their image.
Go to our affiliate programs page for more program reviews.
Tips to Getting Accepted by Brands
As discussed, brands are very protective of their image. Some are also just generally more inclusive like Walmart or 99Designs. Some tips to getting accepted include:
- Apply to programs that you already have appropriate content for.
- Find programs that are squarely in the sweet spot of your niche.
- Be thorough and complete in the application.
- Be sure to have affiliate disclosures and GDPR cookie permissions.
- Keep your marketplace listing up to date.
- Have a professional looking site. No flashing text etc.
- Be prepared to ask for a re-review and sell them on your audience.
Getting Paid and Cookie Policies
The cookie duration, or amount of time you have between your visitor arriving to the brand offer and purchasing, is set by each individual brand. Most are not super-short 24-hour cookies like Amazon. Few have cookie durations longer than 30-days.
Impact Radius allows you to set your own payment thresholds. They must be between $25 and $5,000. The threshold soes also depend on the payment methods. Impact Radius has a number of payment options including:
- Bank ACH — this is no charge to the affiliate and has a $25 minimum threshold.
- Physical check — $5 fee to the affiliate with a $50 minimum.
- International Bank Wire — Charges vary based on location and banking system (Swift etc.) with a $100 minimum
There is no PayPal option. Payments are on the 1st of the month but 30 days after the credited transaction. So if your visitor purchases on 15 May you can expect payment on 1 July. This allows for returns etc.
Impact Radius Tools for Affiliates
Like all affiliate networks you will have a personal dashboard. This will show you the standard items that you would expect. Including:
- My Brands — Your brands that you are approved for
- Snapshot View — A customizable quick view of your tools
- Clicks, Actions, Conversion Rates, EPC — All traffic to Impact radius and the number of conversions along with earnings per click.
- Create Links — Where you can get your custom links for approved brands
Deep Linking
Impact supports deep linking for most brands. Deep linking is the ability to create a link to a specific page on the brands site. This is almost always a better option than just sending your visitor to a product home page for instance. If you are writing an article about how to assemble a complex product, find the installation instructions at the brands website and link to that.
Working with Impact Radius Brands
There are certainly brands at Impact Radius that are appropriate for most niches. It is best though to work with a small number of brands that are perfectly aligned with your audience and content. A sharp-shooter approach almost always works better than a scattershot one unless you have a very high traffic site with a general audience. Even then you should expect a low conversion rate,
New brands come online often with Impact Radius so keep an eye out for these and get on board before all your competition does.
Impact radius is a great platform with a strong network of brands and solid tools for affiliates. Just be sure that you are using your resources wisely and find brands that your visitors will be super-interested in.
