JVZoo Review
We are continuing our series of reviews of some of the most popular affiliate networks out there. Today, we’re looking at JVZoo and answering all of the questions you might have about the company — from whether the JVZoo affiliate program is indeed legit to what payment methods are available.
JVZoo Review
There are two ways in which you can use this platform, and we’d like to note that right from the beginning.
While on other large networks it’s very difficult to get in and sell your products (such as ShareASale, for example), and it also makes sense because they have to work with well-known brands that manufacture physical products, it’s not as difficult in JVZoo.
And the main reason for that is that the JVZoo marketplace is heavily focused on digital products. In other words, if you build any kind of software, you can sell it here, whether that’s a plugin, a theme, or anything else.
What is interesting about their business model is that JVZoo doesn’t charge a monthly subscription, for example. It merely takes a share of the value of any product sold by a vendor, which usually comes down to about 5%.
We are not going to go into a lot of detail in terms of how you can become a publisher on JVZoo, though, because we know that they have a team that handles customer service in an expert manner, so you can ask them all the questions you might have directly.
Becoming a JVZoo affiliate
You aren’t going to experience a lot of hassle when signing up to become a JVZoo affiliate. The process is quite straightforward and does not take a long time, and you’ll get a reply in a timely fashion.
The downside is that you do have to have a minimum amount of traffic or make a number of sales so as to become a premium affiliate.
The information that the platform asks for is something that’s to be expected when joining any other affiliate network, such as your name and personal info, your email address, and a variety of such details.
You also have to pick a payment method (we will describe all of the options you have available in this sense in a section below) and the preferred one seems to be PayPal. You can also pick Payoneer although we do have to note that the payment itself is not going to be instantaneous if you choose this method.
There’s a pretty straightforward YouTube video that shows you all of the steps you need to go through in order to become a JVZoo affiliate.
JVZoo top sellers
You’ll find that there is no shortage of brands that you can promote through the JVZoo marketplace, but they are mostly in the digital space. In fact, they have quite a few categories of products or services that you can recommend to your blog readers, and some of the most popular ones are listed below:
- Finance
- Self-improvement
- Health and fitness
- Business
- eCommerce
- Software
To give you some examples of what products you can promote, we’ll note that there are tutorials, games, as well as webinars and online courses available here. The commissions and cookie lengths vary a lot from one program to the next, so you’ll have to do a bit of research on each one.
Read more: Refersion Affiliate Marketplace Review
Once you’re done checking out some of the products and brands that can be found here, you might want to know how exactly you can start making money.
Well, from what we have noticed, there are two marketing models currently being used by the JVZoo network. The first is cost per sale (also known as CPS) and the second is cost per subscription — since this platform has mostly digital products, after all.
How much money can you make as a JVZoo affiliate? As we mentioned, it varies depending on what you decide to promote, but to give you some broad limits, the commissions can range from 30% to 70%.
Therefore, this is slightly lower than ClickBank (another network that specializes in digital products) since that network can sometimes pay up to 90% of the value of every product. Even so, it is one of the highest rates you can expect from all affiliate networks we’ve come across.
The more expensive a product that you find on JVZoo is, the higher its commission.
You might also like: Best coffee affiliate programs
JVZoo interface
Once you have signed up, you can access the platform and look for sellers whose services or products you might be interested in recommending to your website audience.
From what we’ve noticed, the interface is very easy to use. You can categorize your search results based on the type of product, its category and subcategory, and whether or not that seller needs to manually approve you or there’s an auto-approval process in place.
Other factors that you can use to filter out the vendors that might not be up your alley are launch date, the number of items sold, conversion percentage, EPC, product price, and percentage of people that have returned the products.
Once you find the right offer, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to create your affiliate links and get to work right away.
As previously mentioned, you might have to join several different affiliate programs first and then wait for a bit so that someone approves you.
Read more: ShareASale vs. ClickBank
JVZoo payment methods
Everyone wants to know how and when they are going to be paid, and let’s face it — it’s likely to be one of the most important factors when deciding between various affiliate platforms.
From what we have found, JVZoo can pay you through the following methods:
- PayPal
- Payoneer
- Cheque
- Direct deposit
All of these methods charge different fees, but you can consult them on the official website of PayPal or your bank, for example.
Something that seems to be a concern of various affiliates is that you can’t know for sure when you are going to get your money. This makes JVZoo completely different compared to other platforms.
Even those that have NET60 in place (meaning that they pay their affiliates 2 months after the commission was registered) are very clear when it comes to the frequency of payments.
JVZoo is not. The payment schedule largely depends on each affiliate program you join and they have all the power when it comes to the moment they pay you or not.
Needless to say, this is not a detail that a lot of people appreciate. There have been cases reported where the seller kept the commissions for over 90 days, which is very hard to take.
Another aspect that we have to add here is the fact that you need to reach a threshold of at least $50 to be able to withdraw your money from the platform.
Pros and cons to joining the JVZoo affiliate program
In terms of advantages, we’d argue that what makes JVZoo stand out from the crowd is the very easy signup process.
It doesn’t take a lot of time for vendors to approve you so that you can promote their products, either.
But once these two benefits are out of the way, the rest is… not so good.
In fact, we couldn’t see this much hate with regards to another affiliate network before and we have written about many of them.
For one, there are many affiliates who complain about the quality of the products and the fact that no one seems to have heard about them before, which makes the task of them writing articles on their blogs pointless.
Another con would be the fact that even though JVZoo pride themselves with the fact that they offer excellent customer service, that does not seem to be the reality of things. Lots of affiliates try to get in touch with a representative for days on end and don’t manage to do so.
On top of everything, a complaint that we have come across is the fact that the interface itself could do with several more details added to it. This means that affiliates are feeling disappointed that they can’t filter out the search results even in more detail, so that they can easily tell which products are worth promoting and which ones they should skip.
So, does it make sense for you to become a JVZoo affiliate or should you wait a bit more time to see if things get better? Well, we’d say that it is worth considering, but you will have to make sure that you do not put all your eggs in one basket and use other platforms, too.
It’s hard for us to assume this, but we might even go as far as to say that JVZoo might be worse than ClickBank, and we’re not crazy about that platform, either.
JVZoo compared to other affiliate platforms
JVZoo vs ClickBank
As we previously mentioned, this is perhaps one of the few cases where we’ll say that ClickBank might actually be better than JVZoo. ClickBank has a lot of negative reviews from affiliates, too, but they are mostly the result of the fact that there are a lot of spammy products on the platform.
But the rest of the details regarding ClickBank actually make it more trustworthy on the whole. The platform is also very clear in terms of its payment methods and frequency of payments, so we’d say that the only downside to joining it would be that you need to invest a lot of time into researching the products available on the platform.
But this is a con that you will come across as a part of your JVZoo membership, too. You’ll find that no one has heard of some of the digital products listed here, so that’s definitely a disadvantage.
JVZoo vs ShareASale
These two are very, very different and in many ways. While the first heavily relies on all sorts of digital products and services, from webinars to tutorials and software options, the second is heavily focused on affiliate marketing based on physical products.
Recently, some new sellers on ShareASale that are in the digital domain have appeared on ShareASale and they range from plugins such as OptinMonster to SEO tools like SEMRush and editing tools such as Grammarly.
In any case, as you might have noticed, some of these digital brands are pretty well-known, so you will have an overall less difficult experience promoting them to your blog audience.
JVZoo vs Amazon Associates
These two are incredibly different, and we might argue that they are even more different than JVZoo is when compared to ShareASale.
As you know, there are quite a fair share of products available on Amazon, and there are digital ones, too (although they’re mostly in the ebook category).
Amazon is incredibly well-known, so the worry that you might have to work hard to convince people to order from this giant should be thrown out the window.
But can you make good money with Amazon? Can you make better money with Amazon compared to JVZoo? The answer to this question is very easy — no.
Unfortunately, not only does Amazon have a very restrictive cookie length (lasting just 24 hours — probably the shortest in the game of affiliate networks or programs), but the commissions are also not even close to what they used to be.
We’d also like to add that the number of digital products on Amazon, despite it being one of the largest retailers in the world, doesn’t really compare to the number of digital products found on JVZoo.
Perhaps creating a JVZoo account would make more sense, in this case. Do keep in mind that Amazon has other restrictive policies, such as the fact that you are not allowed to use the API if you recommend products from other affiliate programs on your site, too.
Final thoughts
So, is JVZoo legit? Yes, it’s perfectly legit. However, it does have a number of cons, so you have to carefully weigh out everything and decide for yourself whether becoming a JVZoo affiliate might be a good idea.
We’d like to see the platform improve some of the brands available on it. In this sense, perhaps the very quick approval process for vendors should be something that JVZoo eliminates in the future so as to separate the wheat from the chaff.
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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