MaxBounty Review 2024: Pros, Cons, Reviews & Alternatives

Most affiliate marketers cut their teeth with networks like Amazon, CJ, or Rakuten Advertising.

But what if you want something a little bit different?

Something with familiar products or services but with much higher payout rates.

If that’s the case, it might be time for you to look at CPA offers.

And that’s why you just might be interested in reading our MaxBounty review.

Maxbounty Homepage Screenshot

Look, we get there’s no shortage of CPA networks.

The problem is that most of them are relatively new, so you have no idea who you’re dealing with.

MaxBounty, on the other hand, has been in business since 2004.

It’s always comforting to know that your preferred affiliate marketing network (and cash) won’t just disappear overnight.

Although MaxBounty specializes in CPA offers, you’ll find lots of CPS offers to work with, too.

So you won’t get stuck with just roofing companies or teeth whitening services.

MaxBounty actually has some pretty impressive brand names in its portfolio.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with our review.

First things first.

Signing Up to MaxBounty

MaxBounty does a pretty good job of talking you into signing up with them – they sell you on the “…verticals you want, rates you’ll need”.

So, once you’ve read through their pre-sell you head over to their signup page for new affiliates.

Maxbounty Affiliate Registration

This page is a bit confusing because they already have a separate login page for MaxBounty affiliates.

But you click ‘Next’ here if you don’t already have an account and then enter your name and email address:

Maxbounty Affiliate Registration Account

And then add a password and answers to security questions:

Mabounty Affiliate Registration Security Questions

The next step is to add some contact details, including a mandatory Skype ID…which is a bit odd considering they tend to verify by phone.

Maxbounty Affiliate Registration Contact Details

Then add your address details:

Maxbounty Affiliate Registration Address

And then, finally, some details about your site, traffic sources, and the MaxBounty campaign(s) you want to promote.

Maxbounty Affiliate Registration Details

And then the 8th page of the signup form is the final one.

There are two points worth paying attention to here.

Maxbounty Affiliate Registration Terms

You have to promise to:

  • Not sell your MaxBounty account
  • Not send fake traffic to offers

That’s the nature of the CPA affiliate market.

Unscrupulous affiliate marketers will sign up for accounts and then just churn and burn them overnight.

Big CPA payouts can attract a very cut-throat crowd where every potential scam is on the table.

Anyways, the final step is to click ‘Submit’ and then wait for your MaxBounty account to be approved.

Their signup process probably saves their admin team a lot of time in weeding out the dodgiest affiliate marketers. 

But other affiliate marketing networks need a name, address, and your site’s URL.

So this feels like overkill.

Also, the MaxBounty account approval/review process is prone to delays, so be prepared to reach out to your affiliate manager.

What brands can you promote with MaxBounty?

If you’ve heard people talking about CPA offers, it would be all too easy to assume they’re all the same.

That you’ll wind up promoting life insurance offers to people.

Or some weird berry-based supplement that “melts fat away”.

And yes, you can find those types of offers on MaxBounty, but once you actually review MaxBounty, you find brands like the following:

Maxbounty Top Brands To Promote

And that’s just a random sampling of the big names you’ll find on MaxBounty.

Just bear in mind these are in the minority, probably around 20%.

The other 80% of the offers are what you find on most CPA networks.

Ease of Use

This was my first time using MaxBounty’s interface, and the first word that springs to mind is “Busy!”

Maxbounty Interface

It’s not that the UX (User Experience) is awful, but you’re presented with a full page of offers, each of which is like a mini version of a landing page.

But there’s no white space – your eyes are constantly overloaded with information.

Most networks also offer some training at this stage, but not here.

Next, let’s take a look at the various menu options:

Maxbounty Menu Options
  1. Dashboard
  2. Reports
  3. Browse
  4. Search
  5. MaxMoney
  6. Resources
  7. Blog
  8. FAQ

Most of these are self-explanatory so I won’t get into too much detail.

The only one that kinda stands out is “MaxMoney” – this is their internal rewards system for monthly competitions for affiliates.

If you hit certain milestones, then you earn ‘MaxMoney Points.’

Each of these is worth US$1 in real currency.

My final take on the MaxBounty interface and user experience is that it doesn’t do anything particularly well or particularly bad in relation to UX.

It’s just kinda “there”.

Finding affiliate programs

And now, we get to the interesting part – finding affiliate programs that you can earn money with.

Head on over to the left-hand menu of the MaxBounty dashboard and choose ‘Browse’, and you get the following:

Maxbounty Finding Affiliate Programs

Choose ‘Browse’ defaults to the (1) ‘New Campaigns’ tab, but you can also choose from:

2. Top campaigns

3. Trending campaigns

4. Suggested campaigns

5. Recently viewed campaigns

6. Campaigns you’ve just been approved for

7. Campaigns you’ve bookmarked

And that brings us to something we need to highlight.

MaxBounty isn’t ClickBank – it’s like pretty much every other affiliate marketing network in that you have to apply to promote individual advertisers.

Except MaxBounty is even more restrictive than other affiliate networks with this stuff.

You have to receive your first payment from them before you can promote CPA offers.

Basically, affiliates have to successfully promote at least one of their CPS offers before they get to touch the MaxBounty CPA advertisers.

Smart move.

You can also use the ‘Search’ function to find CPA (Cost per Action), CPL (Cost per Lead), or CPS (Cost per Sale) offers:

Maxbounty Affiliate Offers Filter
  1. Search directly by campaign name 
  2. Choose the type of traffic you plan on using
  3. Search by primary categories and then sub-categories
  4. You can also check for programs you’re approved to run
  5. Choose between ‘Pay per lead’ and RevShare CPA options

To be fair, MaxBounty does make it really easy to find relevant offers from the 2,000+ in its database.

So, you’ve researched and found offers that are perfect for your niche.

Now it’s time to build an affiliate link.

Or what MaxBounty refers to as a ‘Tracking link’

All you need to do is navigate to the affiliate program you want to promote, and click ‘Build tracking link’:

Build Tracking Links In Maxbounty

And this is where MaxBounty really impressed me in terms of their approach to ‘User Experience’:

Tracking Link Builder Maxbounty

You choose the type of traffic you’ll send to the link, then the type of ‘Creative’ you want, and then whatever landing page you want to use.

A simple 3-step process that anyone can manage to complete.

There are also options to set up sub-IDs from here and your tracking pixel.

But overall, the entire link creation process feels really fluid.

Getting Paid

Let me take my crystal ball out and predict that you’ll earn money from your MaxBounty affiliate marketing efforts and will need to know how you get paid.

I prefer a Palantír, but that’s just my inner geek speaking.

Anyways, what payment options does our MaxBounty review see in your future?

Payment timeframe

The “When” of getting paid as a MaxBounty affiliate is actually a two-step process.

You start off on net-15 payment terms.

So whatever you earn during a given month will be paid to you on the 15th of the following month.

However, affiliates who earn enough to receive a payment are then automatically placed on a weekly payment schedule instead.

Payment methods

If you’re living in a Western country or a country not on some “ban” list, then you can choose from check, eCheck, direct deposit, wire transfer, and Payoneer as payment options.

However, some options won’t be available to affiliates in certain countries.

Your commission payments are also converted into your local currency so that NZ affiliates will receive payment in New Zealand dollars, for example.

Payment Threshold

You must earn at least US$100 in commissions to trigger a payment from MaxBounty.

That’s a bit higher than some networks, but if you’re entering the CPA (Cost per Action) scene with your eyes wide open, you’ll realize this is chicken feed.

Publisher Help

Well, here we find MaxBounty’s major failing – no knowledge base or support forum.

Or anything of the kind.

Sure, you get dedicated affiliate managers, but should you really need to ring them to answer a basic question?

They have an FAQ page within the MaxBounty affiliate dashboard, but this is the weakest “Help” section I’ve seen on any network.

It feels like a complete afterthought.

Which is a shame considering how polished other aspects of this network are.

MaxBounty Reviews

It’s easy to say good about any network or program, but what do other people think?

When it comes to MaxBounty reviews it’s something of a mixed bag.

Maxbounty Reviews
Source: SiteJabber.com

This guy went into quite a bit of detail about his experiences:

Maxbounty Reviews
Source: SiteJabber.com

At face value, it would appear that MaxBounty does have a PR problem here.

With that said, a lot of the stories had the same basic narrative:

“I joined and earned $100 after 2 days…and then they closed my account.”

Probably because you just tried to rip MaxBounty off with dodgy traffic and clicks.

But I also found lots of positive feedback for this MaxBounty review.

Maxbounty Reviews
Source: G2.com

Here’s another one of the positive reviews.

Maxbounty Reviews
Source: Trustpilot

The real problem here is that because CPA (Cost per Action) offers are so lucrative, people get really pissed off when they’re cut off from the “source.”

This is why I always advise affiliates to never, ever work with just one affiliate network. 

MaxBounty Summary

URL: MaxBounty CPA network

Year established: 2004

Number of merchants: 200+

Offer types: CPA, CPL, CPS

Weighing it up

Let’s take a few minutes to give you a TLDR of this network – a mini MaxBounty review:

Pros

  • Really well-designed interface, for the most part
  • Lots of CPS offers from big brand names 
  • Thousands of CPA offers to play with
  • Their search function is excellent
  • Huge commission rates of $50/50%+ per sale or lead
  • MaxMoney promotions are a nice touch
  • Their link creation tool is very intuitive
  • Dedicated affiliate managers


Cons

  • The most long-winded signup process. Ever
  • Slooowwww account approval 
  • They will terminate your account in a heartbeat
  • Absolutely no helpdesk support system
  • No option for creating deep links

MaxBounty Review Summary

And that brings us nicely to the conclusion of our MaxBounty review.

Max Bounty was an interesting network to take a deep dive into.

Partly because they’ve watered down those CPA offers with many CPS programs.

And despite a really “busy” interface, they’ve nailed things like their link creation tool.

One of the best I’ve used on any affiliate marketing network.

Just bear in mind they’ll shut down your account (and keep your commissions) if they even suspect you’re up to no good.

So you’re much better off starting with more vanilla offers and networks when you build your first affiliate site.

Do you have no idea how to do that?

Well, why not check out our free training on that very subject?

You’ll learn how to research a niche, find the right keywords, and even get a basic site online.

And all without paying us a single cent.

Yup, honestly. 

Let us know where to send your invitation, and we’ll take care of the rest.