Gr8 answer my Trusted Advisor. Keep them coming.
Great question.
There are several affiliate networks and although many are similar, you will want to do your own research to evaluate the pros and cons of each as fits with your particular business.
For instance, there are tradeoffs to going with larger, more established networks like the aforementioned as well as clickbank which boasts more than 70,000+ affiliates in its network or paydotcom.
With clickbank, the all the accounting is handled for you as they are a third party who even mails out the checks to your affiliates every 2 weeks for you so that you don't have to manage it yourself.
While this may be heaven for some, others prefer to get the money made from a sale instantly and waiting two weeks isn't going to work for them.
However, with paydotcom or someone who owns the butterfly marketing script like I do, you make the payments to your affiliates yourself and can pay out all the commissions to all your affiliates at a set time using the "mass pay" feature available within the script.
Also, one that is a big hit with both publishers (product creators) and affiliates because of the instant payments made as soon as someone completes their payment after buying a product is rapid action profits.
It pays the publisher first on the first sale, then the second sale goes to the affiliate as the third goes to the publisher and the fourth to the affiliate and so on.
There is also postaffiliatepro, resellers power cart, jam jrox, infusionsoft and several other options.
One of the advantages of going with an established, huge network like clickbank is that the affiliates already trust that name
and there are also 70,000+ in the marketplace there which means it doesn't take long before
"super affiliates" (pros with huge lists of tens of thousands and some with even hundreds of thousands of subscribers/clients/members) find your product if it converts well....
and begins promoting it for you.
That's the true power of generating affiliate traffic because you only pay them when they close a sale for you and those are sales you wouldn't have made otherwise because they are reaching those you haven't.
This means you are getting massive traffic.
One of the businesses I own is a web design company and we kept receiving a huge increase in traffic just after beginning our affiliate program.
The head of design who was working closely with me at that time told me that when he checked analytics, that it was one of our affiliates who was sending that traffic daily.
That was when the true power to generate massive traffic with affiliates really began to hit home with me and it is a fact that is often overlooked in traffic generation discussions, so I'm glad it is being mentioned here.
Hope that helps,
Doug
