Should I Use Clickbank or Use My Own Affiliate System?

Hello,

most professional affiliates prefer instant payment, so using PayPal would be ideal. There is software which can automate the product delivery and affiliate program for you called Rapid Action Profits(I am not sure what DAP does in relation to affiliate program functionality) which allows you to list your products on www.rapbank.com which has a very active community, especially in the IM niche.

As for Clickbank, don't make the mistake of assuming that if you list your product with them that affiliates will magically materialize out of nowhere promoting your product making money rain from the sky.

You will have to actively recruit them, the same with any other affiliate system.

Clickbank is also notorious for their high processing fee(average 9%) and rather dubious refund policy and handling.

My 2 cents

Chris

I'm not a product vendor, but I can tell you that as an affiliate (and with exception to Amazon) I always shy away from promoting products/services for which the vendor handles their own affiliate sale tracking and payments.

For me, promoting through a well-established, "independent", middle-man affiliate network (CJ, TradeDoubler, AffiliateWindow, or - in the case of e-products - Clickbank) instills more confidence within me.

Another benefit to using a third-party service for affiliate management/tracking/payments is that you can list your products in their "marketplace" (in the case of Clickbank), or whatever their equivalent is, and recruit extra affiliates that way as they browse through the inventory, without as much direct promotion of your affiliate programme being necessary on your part.

A couple of random points...

(Disclosure: I'm the founder/co-developer of DAP)

* The best way to start recruiting affiliates, is to make every member an automatic affiliate, and set your commissions high enough so that they have an incentive to promote your product. After all, the ones who can promote your product with the most passion and conviction, are your (happy) members. So that's why DAP's affiliate program is very powerful and can go viral, because each member is instantly made an affiliate, and you can even send them their custom affiliate link right in the welcome email itself.

* It is understandable that some people will trust a third-party affiliate program like CB more than your in-house affiliate program, but even that model has flaws. If you use CB, for example, to sell IM-related products, then you can pretty much expect that everyone's going to be stealing your affiliate's commissions, and will end up using their own aff nick to give themselves a nice little discount on their purchase, and the actual affiliate will get screwed.

CB works great in non-IM niches where people are not savvy enough to hijack the hoplink, but it works very poorly in the IM-niche. Which means, as affiliates see that they're not getting much commissions, they'll stop promoting your product slowly, over a period of time. Even though you're probably making sales in the beginning, because the visitors are hijacking the hoplinks and stealing the commissions, you'll see that this is not a self-sustaining model, as over a period of time, people will simply stop promoting your product, because they're not seeing much conversions.

You could of course use a system like e-junkie, which allows "approval" of affiliates, but then this means that your members have to sign up separately for your e-J aff program, and get approval. And this is bad especially in the not-very-savvy, non-IM niches, where they go "Huh??" if you even say "Affiliate" and ask them to go to an entirely new web site, sign up over there, get approval, get links from there, etc. And then you won't be able to embed those custom e-J links within your mailing program.

But if you use a program like DAP, then you have everything integrated into one place. Even in the non-IM niche, you can simply send them their custom affiliate link as part of the autoresponder or broadcast email, and tell the non-savvy folks - "forward this special link to your friends and family, and we'll give you a special cash gift if they buy from us". You don't even have to say the word "Affiliate".

So, every model has its pros and cons.

The hardest thing is to get people to promote for you. And no one is going to do this without you convincing them to do it for you.

That's where other persuasion tactics come in.

But that's a whole 'nother post for 'nother day :-)

Cheers!

- Ravi Jayagopal

I agree with DireStraits in that I'm more likely to promote something through a trusted site such as CB. I'm not saying that all (or even most) in house affiliate systems aren't up to par, I just would rather have an established site or team tending to an affiliate program so I know that there is support in place.

When I had my Photoshop site I had my own affiliate programme. Never again! Frankly, it was just too much hassle: setting up the software, approving the affiliates, keeping track of the refunds, sending out the payments, the list went on and on. I know CB takes a fee for doing all of this for you, but it's money well spent IMHO. CB makes it very easy to recruit new affiliates, too.