Pepperjam Affiliate Network Review
As we continue our series on some of the best affiliate networks, today’s article is going to focus on another you might not have even heard about before. But Pepperjam has been around for more than 20 years now during which the company was even acquired by eBay.
Read on to find out more about how Pepperjam compares to other networks, what programs you can find on the platform, how you can get paid, and all the other important details you should be aware of.
Pepperjam Review
What is Pepperjam?
The Pepperjam affiliate program is actually derived from an eCommerce website created a couple of decades ago. The business evolved into an affiliate network and became pretty successful over time.
Is Pepperjam legit? If you’ve been feeling wary about joining this platform, we’ll put your mind at ease by telling you that it is in fact, legitimate. They have good customer support, which we are going to discuss in a section below, but they also pay their affiliates properly and also twice a month.
The network is pretty solid and has a number of brands that you can promote, but we’d note that the variety is a little limited compared to what other affiliate platforms have to offer.
Even so, chances are that you are going to come across at least several offers that you can promote, depending on your specific niche.
Becoming a Pepperjam Affiliate
So, how difficult is it for you to join Pepperjam? It’s actually rather easy. Becoming a partner is possible depending on what you are looking to achieve with Pepperjam. You can join if you’re an advertiser or publisher or if you are a marketing agency, too.
They obviously ask for some information such as your contact details. You will also have to provide a description of your website and the niche you are in. Additionally, you’ll specify what category your blog or website best fits into and how you tend to get hits online.
The location of your users is another detail you will be asked for, but you don’t have to worry about getting rejected. Finally, you will also have to note the types of marketing you use to increase your traffic and what social media networks you’re most active on.
There’s not a lot of room in terms of payments, in that you are not going to be able to pick direct deposit or bank transfers — PayPal is pretty much the only payment method, but we’ll go into that more in a section below.
The application process is pretty straightforward and there will be a Pepperjam employee looking at your signup information. You’ll get your answer in less than a week.
Brands you can promote with Pepperjam
This is perhaps one of the most important details that should be on your mind, and the good thing is that there are a wide variety of well-known companies present on the platform.
It obviously depends on the niche of your website, but just to give you several examples of reputable brands, there’s Bath & Body Works (in Personal Care), Bonobos (in Men’s Clothing), Nordstrom Rack (also clothing), Lindt (chocolate and sweets), and even 888 Casino.
The clear advantage to becoming a Pepperjam affiliate is that you will have access to all of these offers and their corresponding marketing tools. But the downside is that there are fewer than a thousand such offers on the platform, which means that it’s smaller compared to others.
But as you know, it is never a good idea to put all of your eggs in one basket, so you can simply diversify the income you get from affiliate marketing by using several different networks.
Marketing tools on Pepperjam
There are five major marketing tools available for most publishers, and they are the following:
- Affiliate links
- Advanced links
- Banners
- Coupons
- Product deep links
What’s interesting about this network, and this is an aspect that sets it aside from pretty much all of the others, is that you can scroll through the list of the advertisers based on the marketing tools you are interested in using at a specific time.
User experience
This is another reason to use Pepperjam instead of other networks. Believe it or not, the interface is much cleaner and easier to understand compared to that of other platforms, especially since that of ClickBank or ShareASale, for instance, seem to be taken straight out of the 90s.
The dashboard is user-friendly, and you get all the information you might be interested in, such as your advertisers, your applications, whether you were invited by an advertiser, and any inquiries regarding your transactions (this is all available on the left side of the dashboard).
The top menu is also very easy to work with since it basically shows everything you want to know. You can get info on earnings, advertiser mail, account details, feedback, customer service, and you can also use the same portion of the page to log out of your account.
Finding publishers
This is also made easy by the ‘Find New Advertiser’ option you have on the left-hand side of the dashboard. You simply click on that link, and you’ll be directed to the page containing all of the advertisers.
You can then separate the wheat from the chaff based on category, currency, the type of offers these programs have available, their features, and whether they also offer mobile tracking.
Using these filters is super easy, and you’ll simply be displayed a list of advertisers that should be right up your alley.
Payment details
Every potential affiliate wants to find out several details on the payout methods that a new network might allow them to use and also how frequently they are going to get their money.
Well, there’s not too much to say about Pepperjam in terms of payment methods as the only one available is PayPal.
Whether that is a drawback or a pro is something that only you can tell, but we’d say that this gives people across the world the ability to use the program, too, not just those that are specifically based in the United States or other countries.
As it is to be expected, there is a minimum threshold involved, but it’s just $25, so that is definitely one less thing to worry about.
Payments are sent out twice a month, on the 1st and 15th.
As for how payments are accepted and processed, Pepperjam does have a pretty complicated system in place. Some payments can be pending, locked, delayed, unconfirmed, or updated, depending on what the advertisers are saying.
The locking periods vary from 30 to 60 days, so it is best to think that you’ll get your money for your January affiliate earnings in March or even April. Of course, this can be considered a serious disadvantage by some Pepperjam affiliates.
Customer service
This is another aspect that makes Pepperjam stand out from the crowd, and even though it might seem like we’ve had nothing but good things to say about the network up until now, their customer support is actually much better than what other platforms have to offer.
In fact, customer representatives seem to have a lot of experience with the network and the technicalities involved with it, so whenever they reply to an affiliate who is experiencing an issue, they often give a detailed answer.
There are a number of ways you can get in touch with someone from Pepperjam, but the best one would be to reach out to them directly on a social media network such as Twitter. If your tweet is public, they’re likely to respond much faster than if you were to try to contact them through their support pages.
On top of everything, the site has a pretty effective bot that, depending on your query, can direct you to a page where you might find the answer to your question. Most affiliates seem to be quite pleasantly impressed with this feature.
Pros and cons to becoming a Pepperjam affiliate
As you might have noticed from this Pepperjam Network review, there are not a lot of reasons to steer clear of it. Some of the pros that we can note here are the fact that the signup and approval process is straightforward and happens in a timely fashion, and the fact that the dashboard is extremely easy to use.
Moreover, even though there are fewer than 1,000 brands on the platform, most of them are so well-known that you don’t have to go somewhere else to get offers.
Despite there being a minimum threshold for payments and those locking periods in place, Pepperjam does pay twice a month, which is clearly better compared to other networks.
As for the cons, the limited number of companies you can promote the products of might be one, especially if you are in a particularly large or, on the other hand, narrow niche. For example, if you’re in online dating, there are so many offers you can promote with Pepperjam and you’ll have to look for a different platform at one point or the other.
But the most significant drawback that does have to be noted here is the fact that the only payment method currently used by Pepperjam is PayPal. The reason we’re saying it could be a drawback is that Paypal has pretty hefty commissions both when you receive the money and when you transfer it to your card, for example.
How does Pepperjam compare to other networks?
ShareASale vs. Pepperjam
This comparison is a bit challenging because ShareASale is clearly a much larger network compared to Pepperjam. For this reason, there are many more publishers available on ShareASale, which means that you have a lot of other options to promote.
There aren’t too many differences in terms of the products you can promote, meaning that both specialize in both physical and digital products (with an accent put on the first category).
There is a clear difference when putting these two side by side and it’s the way payments work. ShareASale does not have a PayPal option at all whereas on Pepperjam, this is pretty much the only way to get paid. In turn, ShareASale can pay through mail cheque, direct deposit, and Payoneer.
Pepperjam vs. ClickBank
Despite ClickBank being a much larger affiliate platform compared to Pepperjam, both in terms of offers and in terms of functionalities, Pepperjam is actually a lot better.
They win in customer support and also because the offers you’ll find on Pepperjam are legit, which means that you are not going to waste a lot of time sifting through spammy sellers and products.
ClickBank pays its affiliates through direct deposit or cheque whereas Pepperjam does the same only through PayPal. There’s a so-called ‘locking’ period on ClickBank, too, which means that affiliates can sometimes wait for four to six weeks to receive their earnings.
Pepperjam vs. Awin
This is another quite difficult comparison also because Awin is huge. There are tens of thousands of advertisers present on the platform and over twenty thousand affiliates using this network.
The brands you’re going to come across on Awin are also pretty large and well-known, so we’d argue that this network might actually be worth considering over Pepperjam. Except for the user experience, Pepperjam is not a winner in this case.
The payments differ, too, and Awin pays its affiliates through ACH, BACH, and international wire transfers, as well as Payoneer. No PayPal is available, like it is on Pepperjam.
The bottom line
So, is Pepperjam worth joining or not? We’d say that given the pool of well-known brands present on the platform, it is actually worth considering.
There are certain drawbacks that you have to consider, mostly related to how you can get paid, but other than that, this is a good and solid affiliate network that can help you diversify your income.
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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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