Which Affiliate Management System is Best?

Hey folks,

I have a product launch coming up for an internet marketing product. I'm wondering which affiliate management system affiliates prefer.

It is most beneficial to me to launch the program through clickbank. It's easier and the high gravity from a launch will attract long term interest from affiliates. However, as an affiliate myself I don't like clickbank for IM products because I am convinced that anyone will just go to the CB market place, find the product and sub out there own link an I won't get the credit. I assumed others felt the same way.

What do you guys recommend I do?

Is there a solution to launching the product with clickbank that most JV partners will be comfortable with or should I go with a private management system such as 1shoppingcart? Any other suggestions?

I appreciate any suggestions anyone can offer on how to best do this.

Thanks in advance.

What about putting your products on RAP bank? Maybe Rob Toth will come in and see this thread, I know he's been using them, but not sure what his experience has been, I've been pondering them over clickbank and he also has experience with 1Shopping Cart.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John Oszajca

Hey folks,

I have a product launch coming up for an internet marketing product. I'm wondering which affiliate management system affiliates prefer.

It is most beneficial to me to launch the program through clickbank. It's easier and the high gravity from a launch will attract long term interest from affiliates. However, as an affiliate myself I don't like clickbank for IM products because I am convinced that anyone will just go to the CB market place, find the product and sub out there own link an I won't get the credit. I assumed others felt the same way.

What do you guys recommend I do?

Is there a solution to launching the product with clickbank that most JV partners will be comfortable with or should I go with a private management system such as 1shoppingcart? Any other suggestions?

I appreciate any suggestions anyone can offer on how to best do this.

Thanks in advance.

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John,

There are always Pro & Con in using different Affiliate Management System.

For Clickbank, because of its reputation, affiliate partners tend to have more trust if your product is on Clickbank & they know that they get their commission for sure.

If you want to use other affiliate management system, you can go ahead with Post Affiliate Pro.

Our team have been using it for 2 years for our affiliate program. It has been serving us quite well till now.
We have done 2 global product launches using the system & we are talking about 6 figures sales revenue here.

Of course, there might be other better system but since Post Affiliate Pro serve us well.. we never really go to try out other because so many affiliates have registered in our affiliate program under Post Affiliate Pro system.

It would just be a mess & trouble to all affiliate partners if we ever switch to another system.

Advise: Make a very good choice on your affiliate management system if you are looking at long term business relationship like what we are doing. Once you started, switching to other system is almost a catastrophe for all your good affiliate partners.

Hope my long-winded info helps :)

Thanks for the feedback. Am I mistaken in thinking that affiliates are uncomfortable with clickbank for promoting Internet Marketing related products?

Is no one else concerned about losing the sale to people who sub in their own clickbank ID? If not then clickbank would be a great option for me. I have a product with them already and would like how easy they are to work with, but I assumed affiliates wouldn't like the risk of getting their links jacked.

Am I wrong here?

Thanks again.

I would say Clickbank 8)

John we're on the same page and trust me a lot of players are entirely turned off by a CB launch.

It's been estimated 25%+ of an IM niche product's commissions are "stolen" because it's actively taught (there are reports teaching newbies how to buy through their own aff link).

Even the guys launching on CB, I've had private convos with, and they too agree that it's extremely rare that they'd promote a CB offer... and if they do, it's because of the bonuses attached, the relationships attached, some sort of reciprocation etc.

HOWEVER... CB does have a lot of affiliates and a tonne of me-too courses teach how to promote CB products and get rich. Which is GOOD if you're a merchant.

What I recommend, is the same strategy you'll find plenty of seasoned marketers using... toss your offer on CB to syphon in affiliates. In short, use it for the marketplace exposure.

You can still do a launch (or self-buy black-hat tactics which are all too common) but then your Affiliates link actually should recruit your affs into your in-house system.

As for the best in-house platform, soon it will be ours. ;) But it's only in private beta right now. It's a $600,000 beast though and beats all of them.

However, in terms of what's available, hands down, Nanacast .

As for RAP Bank, the concept holds potential but isn't growing nearly as fast as they could be. You'll attract the "instant commission" type affiliates with that, just like on CB you'll attract the affs who are accustomed to getting the bi-weekly "pay cheques" from CB ... but if you really want full control and a true army of affiliates, AND the advanced affiliate management features... Nanacast is the way to go.

Other networks, including PayDotCom can be worth being on (if you can afford the time to get setup on all of these), as they do have active affiliates on them. So basically that serves as great "advertising" for you to pull in affs.

In summary...

Depends on your experience and clout level OR ability to pull in the larger JVs. If you want the strong 7 figure and 8 figure guys to promote, it won't happen via CB in many cases unless they're doing it because they owe you a favor.

If you don't have any affiliates and this is one of your first products, then you SHOULD put it on CB knowing full well that some of your affs WILL be losing commissions (it's just the nature of the beast and the affs promoting IM-niche CB products are already experiencing this affiliate-leak) and also be aware that you'll be losing a good porition of your profits to CBs high fees.

You can also explore RAPBank, a little more cumbersome to get initially setup but then the fees are pretty much out the window (if you sell a lot of copies, you'll save A LOT) and they too have a built in aff base... though, obviously, nowhere near as large or as trained as the CB guys.

Good luck pulling some sort of use out of the rant I just wrote. lol.

best of success to you!!

Hey Rob,

That was great. I really appreciate you putting the time in to that response. Exactly what I was looking for. I suspected as much but I was looking for someone to confirm what I was thinking.

What do you think about doing an initial launch privately through something like 1shoppingcart (I'll check out Nanacast as well) and then closing the doors on the product and reopening a month or so later on CB. I know how powerful that gravity spike is on CB for attracting affiliates but as you say, I was concerned the big guys wouldn't touch it at CB.

Ever try launching a product with 2 sales pages? One for CB affs and one for the folks that are uncomfortable with CB? Any thoughts on that?

This is my first IM product so I don't have the network yet, but I have ben doing very well in other niches for several years now so I'm not new to the process. Point being that I am trying to shoot big and build a big list and network of affs with this first product so that I can release a larger product \a little later on. Hence my dilema between wanting to benefit from the clickbank exposure but also wanting to be able to approach the big JVs and not turn them off with CB.

Thanks again and if you, or anyone else, has any more thoughts I would really appreciate them.

I'd go vice versa actually.

Do a dumbed down version at $97 (or whatever). Push it on CB. You'll attract the C and B level marketers. They'll help you push some sales on CB, which attracts other, new affiliates to you.

Then once you have an internal leads base (from that CB promo) and the start of an aff base...

You take that same offer, dress it up a bit, raise the price point, toss it into your in house aff program and you can then even offer 2nd tier to your past/current affiliates ... you can build a strong buzz from the leads you now already have... you can gain testimonials from the initial batch of customers ... and you have some conversion stats to better approach the A player marketers.

As for launching the product with 2 salespages... don't do it. If you had a team who can handle the extra complexity, sure. Maybe. But even then, why. You confuse the market. Some will see buzz an be taken to Funnel A... some will hear of it and buy from Funnel B. Affiliates could end up registering to both programs. It's a gong show and pointless.

Get ONE setup, launch it and leave it. Then get the other setup, launch it and keep tweaking it as your long term funnel.

Thanks Rob! Thats great advice. I'll do as you suggest.

Thanks and all the best.

I stronly recommend CB and this is way:
- you have affiliates paid on time
- weekly payments for you and affiliates
- good reputation and an army of affiliates
etc..

But I also recommend to "scan" all this forum if you are a beginner. There are true value info and i think you will realize yourself witch is the best marketing network. I mean try making a warm-up, presale, contact jv, upsells,....(a bit off the post)

CB is a trusted player!
If your product convert well you will very very fast get more than 200 affiliates there are ready to do all the hard work for you! The higher commision you pay the more affiliates you get if your product convert well!

You could use www.plimus.com

It depends on your goals. If you have already have affiliates then don't use CB. You can save a lot of fee's if you have your own setup.

But if you need to gain affiliates then just go with CB and get as many affilaites as you can.

Charles

I agree with charleskirkland

You can save yourself alot of fees using your own affiliate software but you can gain a lot of affiliates by using clickbank.

I personall use both...The affiliate software I use is JAM by JROX, Its pretty inexpensive, I think I paid around $150 for it.

It also depends on the niche you are in.

The commission hijacking Rob mentioned is more prevalent in Internet marketing niche, since the subscribers of a JV partner are more likely to be savvy enough to replace the JV guy's CB hoplink with their own so the subscriber gets the commission...

However, as I understand CB recently introduced a white list feature where only allowed affiliates can promote a product which is ideal for a JV launch. 8)

Given this, Clickbank also has many other advantages like being a third party affiliate tracker which gives some impartiality. An in house affiliate system is more easily accused of shaving as well since most of the time you host the mysql tables and can easily go in and change some values here and there...

With Clickbank you can save an accounting department, since they take care of that for your affiliates, with wiring all the money keeping the tab etc etc.

Given all this, I plan on using Clickbank all the way :)

Clickbank is my vote. The sheer # of affiliates is amazing & the fees are affordable relative to having an inhouse system. Plus I think a lot of power affiliates may be little wary about promoting a new product with an independent system (Might worry if they'll actually "get paid").

And, for physical products, CJ is a great way to go for offline business'.

We have 2 sites, 1 on clickbank, and a different unrelated site on Shareasale.

We just did a launch on the clickbank site and it was MUCH easier to get affiliates and partners involved, simply because everyone already has an account, knows the systems, trusts they will get paid, and it is just really easy for them to copy and paste and get involved very quickly.

For this reason, especially as it sounds like your first time, I would recommend using clickbank. If it is a success and you want to move to another in the future you will have some partners from this to contact and let them know, and at least you know the JV / launch process a little better and what will be required from another network or your own solution.
Dan

This is great information folks...really useful.

As a newcomer to JVing I am trying to expand my knowledge base as quickly as possible, and this sort of thread helps immensely.

Thanks and all the best - keith

I have my new product over at Payspree.com as I think for getting paid and the requirements of 5 sales with different types of payment including one that is a paypal payment at Clickbank is a little steep..

Once you pass the requirements it seems like easy sailing tho. I was surprised when I read the payment requirements.

Good info..
Adrienne

if you are starting with no affiliates it's better that you launch your first product with Clickbank.com.That's because people not have known you and some big marketers might inclined in promoting your offer if they have not heard about you.they do not want to jeopardize their own reputation among their subscribers by promoting some crappy products that is just re hashed and doesn't convert.


encourage people to sign up to your affiliate sign up page by setting up a link to it and then put in your description as "affiliates register here to get your marketing tools".so instead of they loggin into clickbank and creating their hop link in the marketplace they would sign up to your jv list.by this way you can keep track of your affiliates and you can use the same affiliate list for your next product.

ya i know their fees can be high in long terms and but at least they have build reputation among affiliate marketers.just like someone who mentioned here they are many affiliate courses that teaching people to go to clickbank and find offers to promote from clickbank marketplace.

so i bet most of the people are doing that and following that technique unless you are advanced marketer who can search manually for the merchant's affiliate program.

once you have a list of affiliates ,then you could go for private affiliate management software such as 1shopping cart.and if your 1st product launch was successful you would not have any problem in approaching big marketers as right now you have proof that your product do converts well on Clickbank

so they would not be inclined to sign up for your private jv offer even if you're not using clickbank for your next product launch.

It seems like a lot of people like Clickbank for affiliate management, but what about self hosted solutions? I prefer to have as much as I can in-house so I use Post Affiliate Pro. It's so robust that it is almost a pain in the butt, but once one you get up and running all of the extra reports make your marketing efforts so much easier.

Is there a reason why most poeple don't want to use a self-hosted solution?

hey....
i will suggest clickbank....
as for me i think it is best....It has lot of power affiliates may be little wary about promoting a new product with an independent system