Need some sage advise on hiring affiliates

What kind of product? Digital? Actual pills? Physical book/guide?

Recently, I've taken a little different way towards attracting affiliates.
When someone indicates they wish to be an affiliate for a particular product I have, I suggest they purchase the product, use it and honestly review it independently of any ad copy I have. to help the affiliate, after 5 (or 10, depending on price and status of the product) affiliate sales, I refund the affilate's original purchase of the product. This has had two major effects:

First, this has severely reduced the number of "affiliates" that I attract, because many folk only seem to want a free copy of the product and don't necessarily follow up with actually promoting the product.

Second, those that do purchase the product find out how honestly it is presented and how valuable it is, and they have personal knowledge of it in their particular environment, so they can better represent it. Thus, their copy is unique and fresh, not just the major bullets of my sales page.

Third, my sales through affiliates have actually increased. Because the smaller number of affiliates are actually promoting it, compared to those that were just pretending to want to be an affilate to get a free copy, the word gets around, and sales increase as a result. Most of them are direct affilate sales, but a few seem to be fallout from the affiliate promotions. The unfortunate part about this fallout is that I know somebody should be getting a commission for some of these sales, but don't know where they came from... (You know the drill, the affiliate promotes the product, the potential customer delays days or weeks, then comes in from a different link that isn't coded by the affiliate because the customer searches for the product name instead of the particular affiliate copy...)

The large networks like CJ etc... already have networks of affiliates in place. You need to give them a decent piece of the pie to attract them, many will try a product but if it doesn't convert they'll drop it regardless of the percentage they can earn. Also keep in mind a low percentage of a large dollar amount can be better than a large percentage of a low cost item. It really comes down to conversion.

First of all, big thanks to rick! when asking for sage advice i wasnt all sure it would be that "sage", great stuff. have any of you come across online affiliate companies, such as clickbank, but more geared twords a physical product such as mine? im really scrambling here as to how to make this thing pop!