I know this subject has been raised before, but as time goes by we all learn more, discover more and experience more.
Time for a re-visit.
Depending on your product, your needs and your launch, then you may be interested in some or all of the following from Set A:
1. The ability to do OTO's & downsells.
2. The ability to pay "invited JV partners" a higher commission rate than normal affiliates.
3. The ability to offer a second tier commission.
4. The ability to process customer details into a membership program where you can offer member-only downloads.
5. The ability to "seamlessly" include your customer details into your autoresponder service (like Aweber) when they sign up to your membership program.
6. The ability to automatically process recurring billing for monthly membership programs.
7. The ability to track all affiliate sales and make payments as and when required.
As I say, depending on your needs you may need some or all of the above.
My experience so far has been using Clickbank, 2Checkout, Paydotcom and Paypal. I also have experience of 1shoppingcart and Aweber as well as few other services.
However, in order to handle more complex product launches, I may need some or all of the following from Set B:
1. Merchant account
2. Gateway processor
3. Payment processor
4. Affiliate tracking & management software
5. Customer membership software
Now in order to match Set A with Set B, I guess I may need some of the following from Set C:
1. Paypal
2. Clickbank
3. 2Checkout
4. Paydotcom
5. Aweber
6. 1shoppingcart
7. Getresponse
8. LaunchFormulaMarketing
9. ButterflyMarketing
10. JV Manager 2 (Fantastos)
11. Powerpay.biz
12. Authorize.net
13. Amember
14. Membergate
plus many, many more which I am less familiar with... (feel free to add to my list of payment processors and affiliate management solutions)
The first task is trying to work out which category/categories in Set B do each of the programs mentioned in Set C fall into.
Then (having worked out what each program is capable of) the second task is to see which "combinations" of programs will satisfy your list of needs from Set A.
Of course, there may be more questions which crop up, such as do I really need a merchant account, but unless you know which part of the jigsaw a merchant account fits into (and knowing what it can do for you), then you may not be able to answer that question.
Over to you guys......Lets see if we can start to join things up. What program combinations do you use/recommend for being able to do tasks from Set A?
Chris