What factors do you consider when choosing an affiliate company?

I am in the process of trying to find the best affiliate company for my product that is about 75% of the way developed. I keep reading threads on various forums related to this but I cannot get a straight answer, so I thought I would ask here.

This product is an ebook. I have researched the following affiliate companies, and this is what I have learned:

Clickbank - seemingly the most popular for digital products.
Pros:
- Well-known
- huge affiliate salesforce
- easy to use
- doesn't require the merchant to manually pay their affiliates
Cons:
- not secure (supposedly easy to get products without paying)
- Requires a 60 day refund policy
- claims of shaving affiliate commissions
- costs money to join
- sets maximum price limits

PayDotCom - supposed to be everything that Clickbank is not, but the reviews don't support that.
Pros:
- Free to join (altho $30 if you want to sell more than one product)
- No forced refund policy
Cons:
- Smaller affiliate sales force
- Merchants must pay affiliates manually
- People complain about downtime

Click2Sell.edu - The newcomer from Europe
Pros:
- Free to join
- No forced refund policy
- Accept payment in USD, EUR, and/or GBP
- Secure download link on *their* server (supposedly cannot be bypassed without paying)
Cons:
- Merchants have to pay affiliates themselves
- Smaller affiliate sales force
- I've heard more than one person say they are a bit suspicious of a company based in Lithuania (I think that's where they are... however, in fairness, this comment is usually always followed by a reply of someone saying they've never had any trouble and they pay on time)

Plimus - I cannot find a single person who uses Plimus so I haven't heard anything good or bad about it. Everyone seems to suggest them ("oh yeah dude, check out Plimus!"), but I haven't found anyone who uses them.

And then there's Commission Junction, but they require $50k in monthly sales for you to join, so that's not going to happen for me anytime soon :D


So let's have a discussion about who you use, and why, and what your experience has been.

Thanks!

Brian Rockwell

PS. Sorry if this is the wrong forum. This is my 2nd post and I'm just learning my way around this forum

Hey Brian,

I can't say anything about PDC or the other ones, but here are my thoughts on what you said about Clickbank.

You're right that it can be easy to get products without paying, but that has nothing to do with CB, but rather with the fact that many product owners don't use the proper tools to hide their download pages. The easy way to get around this is to use scripts like DLGuard.

I don't see how having a two-month refund policy is a bad thing. If anything, it makes potential customers more confident when they're thinking about buying.

What do you mean by "shaving" commissions...like taking extra chunks from every sale?

Clickbank only costs $50 to activate an account which allows you to start selling a product. I don't see that as a bad thing at all...if that's beyond someone's budget, they should just join CB for free and promote products until they get that money or offer a service or something.

As for the price limits, the easiest way to step around that is to ask them.

So in conclusion, I like Clickbank :) PDC is nice too, I just don't have much experience with them.

Curtis

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Curtis Ng

You're right that it can be easy to get products without paying, but that has nothing to do with CB, but rather with the fact that many product owners don't use the proper tools to hide their download pages. The easy way to get around this is to use scripts like DLGuard.

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So it is possible to protect your downloads with CB?