Best affiliate program for selling products.

[ws3222877]

I am looking for a good affiliate network program to sell products though, would like the network take care of as much of the sales process as possible to be certain linking issues or networking issues do not cause affiliates not to get credit - configuring software on the producer host is an issue.

Looks like amazon would do everything but would like to be able to pay out more than what amazon pays affiliates, (8% of $20.00 is not worth the affiliates time -- got to be at least 25%). CJ has a high setup cost, clickbank sells mostly electronic media. The products are political and Christian media and DVDs and the goal is to move product.

I would really like it to be easy for both sides ... Letting affiliates make some money and not require anything from the producers site that requires major configuration.

So I would like to hear from anybody who has two cents; The program must be affiliate friendly. Be nice if it could to be ready to rock and roll within a week on the producer site.

[markwelch]

When you wrote that you "would like the network take care of as much of the sales process as possible" I would assume that this means you'd prefer something like ClickBank, ccBill, or RegNow that would process payments? This can make sense for a "downloadable" product or web subscription, but is rarely affordable for merchants offering tangible products for sale. I have very limited experience with this strategy, but my perception is that these are always viewed as less reputable than the top-tier or even second-tier affiliate networks.

If you're actually looking for a true "affiliate network" solution (one that does not include payment processing), then I'd strongly recommend that you consider ShareASale.com, which has lower expenses and much higher satisfaction ratings than any competitors I'm aware of.

[edited by: jcoronella at 10:11 pm (utc) on Dec. 19, 2007]

[ws3222877]

I'll check out ShareASale, It matters little if the network collects the money. The company has been in business for years and has all the banking relations they need. Although I recently got them to setup a paypal account for online sales. It would be ideal if the network makes it easy for affiliates to make money - assures they get paid, hence tracks the sale, I could use my host to install an API but honestly it should be the producers site; for a variety of reasons installing software is an issue on their host, best to do as little as possible.

They have little presents on the internet, they contracted with some people and paid up front and little happened.

A few of their products I believe could do well selling on different types of sites (this is likely a extreme understatement), they want to move product and the fastest way for them to move lots of product would be across a network of sites. It would also be nice if the network does not require a high dollar value to be earned before sending affiliates their money -- I'd like to bring some sites into the network that does not currently sell products. I would not want a site that only sells one product to not get paid until after they sell 10 of them.

[Marcia]

ws, if it's products you'll most likely need to have a product datafeed. And if you want affiliates to be able to just plug something in and have it on their site dynamically, you don't need to host that yourself.

Two good networks are Shareasale and Avantlink (supportive and ethical), but if you want a dynamic solution done for you for affiliates to use, Avantlink is the logical choice because they have a unique set tools for just that. They're more than SAS for start-up (the hardest part), but their on-going percentage is very low.