What Is Affiliate Network Marketing?

Updated: May 2026

Oleksandr Honcharov, CEO at FlawlessMLM 

Affiliate network marketing is a hybrid model that combines affiliate marketing with network marketing principles, where affiliates earn commissions on their own sales and a percentage on the sales of affiliates they recruit. What is affiliate network marketing? It is sometimes called multi-tier affiliate marketing or 2-tier affiliate programs, and it sits between traditional affiliate programs and full MLMs.

How affiliate network marketing works

• Two-tier commission structure — affiliates earn from their own sales and from sales made by sub-affiliates they refer.
• Lower upfront cost than MLM — most programs are free to join, with no starter kits or inventory.
• No physical product handling — affiliates promote and link; the merchant fulfills the order.
• Smaller second-tier percentages — second-tier rates are typically 5-10%, compared to MLM downline overrides of 20%+.
• Examples — ClickBank's 2-tier program, MaxBounty referrals, and many SaaS affiliate programs.
• Legal status — legal in most countries, as long as commissions are based on actual sales rather than recruitment fees.

Definition: Affiliate network marketing is a hybrid commission model that combines affiliate marketing with a second tier of recruitment-based earnings. Affiliates earn from their own referred sales and from sales made by other affiliates they invite into the program. It is also called multi-tier affiliate marketing.

Affiliate network marketing is often confused with MLM, but the key difference is scale: most affiliate networks pay one or two tiers, while MLMs pay 5-10 levels deep. Two-tier is legal almost everywhere; deeper structures cross into MLM territory and face more regulatory scrutiny.