Good money with GAN (Google affiliate network)

GAN is an affiliate network through which many merchants/retailers deal with their affiliates. It's just like TradeDoubler, Commission Junction, ShareASale, etc. It might be "home" to some very large merchants - I don't know either way - but I'd wager none are as popular as Amazon, in a general sense.

By contrast, Amazon Associates isn't exactly a network: it's just the affiliate arm of Amazon the online retailer. The only merchant(s) involved in the program are Amazon themselves and those owned and operated by them.

The Amazon Associates programme is, I believe, nearly as old as Amazon itself, and they're one of the web's longest established retailers. Associates always was, and remains, an integral component of Amazon's brand-building/reinforcement strategy, and has played a large role in making them what they are today.

A huge proportion of all online shoppers in the countries in which Amazon operates will have bought from them at some point in time, or are bound to do so in the future. Likewise, nearly everyone in the world of online/affiliate marketing and webmastering has heard of Amazon Associates. The same just cannot be said about other retailers and their respective affiliate programmes.

Thanks to the huge level of trust that Amazon commands, affiliates have a relatively easy time of referring sales to them, whereas one might have the added obstacle of alleviating prospects' concerns about shopping through other retailers which they have never before used, and perhaps never heard of.

Amazon is one reputable brand. Merchants within GAN are separate and have their own individual reputations.

This is just part of the reason for why Amazon Associates is so popular, and probably vastly more so than Google Affiliate Network.

Unfortunately, however, since I don't use GAN, I'm unable to answer your questions in relation to its policies.

Can you make good money with GAN? Yes; of course, if you pick the right merchants whose products/services are in demand and competitively priced, and promote them effectively. Why not? :p

I have used GAN in the past and had no luck, Amazon is much better and have never come across anybody making $ with GAN. People buy products from Amazon affiliate sites as they recognize the site and they are the world leader

The Google Affiliate Network I don't like nearly as much as Linkshare.com, CJ.com, etc.. They're a lot more confusing in my opinion and have practices that would scare a lot of affiliates away.

And yes, they do require (last I checked) your Adsense account to be linked up to it now.

I've had issues with their support -- it seems that there's no one competent to talk to over there. I've had nothing but problems with GAN. When I first setup an account there, it was having problems verifying stuff. The main merchant I was an affiliate for, who switched from Linkshare to GAN, was being super responsive on the support end but couldn't get anyone over at GAN to really do anything fast. After what seemed like months, I finally got the account working properly.

However, then there was an issue with the Adsense account linked up to it, the support had nothing but useless robot responses, and the account won't work any more. It got to the point where the merchant was trying hard to continue getting my support for their program but GAN didn't seem to care. The GAN support would basically say it's an Adsense issue (which automatically stops your GAN account from working), and the Adsense support people didn't seem to know anything in a never ending loop.

End result -- I gave it up as it wasn't worth the hassle, and I also haven't gotten paid any of the commissions owed yet.

Not recommended in my book. Google usually does an awesome job at stuff, but this is one area where they clearly don't know what they're doing in my opinion.

Brian