Why ClickBank is a poor affiliate network
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008Clickbank is a popular affiliate network. Most of clickbank’s products are “get rich” e-books. I am asking that all publishers boycott Clickbank due to their outrageous policy changes.
A few months ago Clickbank changed it’s policies making it very difficult for everyone, except the highest earners, to get paid.
A few months ago they added this rule:
"...ClickBank will withhold payment of any account balance until it contains standing sales made with 5 or more different credit card numbers, including at least one Visa card, and one MasterCard. PayPal and eCheck purchases do not count toward the minimum."
http://www.clickbank.com/affiliate_faq.html
It is very hard to get 5 or more different purchases from Clickbank containing at least one from visa to mastercard. 5 may not sound like a lot, but you have to have quite a bit of traffic to get 5 sales. On top of that, If you don’t make consistent sales, they will start taking your money out of your balance!
Accounts with a positive balance but no earnings for an extended period of time are considered dormant. Dormant accounts are subject to a charge of $1 per pay period after 90 days of inactivity, $5 per pay period after 180 days of inactivity, and $15 per pay period after 365 days of inactivity.
http://www.clickbank.com/accounting_faq.html
To make matters worse,Clickbank charges a 7.5% fee + $1.00 on all transactions and $2.50 per check they send you. And don’t forget that the customer can return the products leaving you with nothing.
Tripology.com Review
Monday, December 8th, 2008Tripology.com allows you to register an account with your travel plan details. Then Tripology has up to 3 travel agents in their network contact you for travel quotes. The Tripology.com network contains thousands of travel agents, that can handle any kind of travel trip around the world. They have been featured on MSNBC, Motley Fool, and Travel Leisure.
Tripology.com affiliate program is apart of the Shareasale affiliate network. Affiliates earn $5 per lead (account registration). You can earn an additional $5 dollars by just referring other affiliate marketers into the program. They will manually review affiliate accounts before being accepted into the affiliate program. They are not set on auto-deposit, but their program uptime history is excellent in shareasale. This is a well known travel site, with a long standing and good paying affiliate program. This is a good affiliate program for any kind of travel related site. One other great thing about Tripology, is they have over 2.7 million landing pages you can link to, which helps maximize conversions. Join Tripology.com affiliate program.
LinkConnector Review
Sunday, December 7th, 2008LinkConnector is a small affiliate network, but there are some useful affiliates for certain niches. Linkconnector has one nice feature that other affiliate networks have, called naked link technology. Instead of a encrypted or funny looking affiliate link, it looks just like a normal url thereby increasing click rates. Unfortunately, not all merchants use teh naked link technology. You can’t modify their html code for affiliate cloaking because then it won’t track clicks properly. You can use the same affiliate link on multiple websites.
Linkconnector has datafeeds, but they don’t have 2nd tier affiliate programs, coupons, or the ability to deep link custom affiliate links. They also don’t give EPC earning rate history or any kind of compliance tracking or auto-deposit information to affiliates. This makes it tough to know the reliablity of affiliate merchant in the network.
Payments are done by check when you reach a $25 dollar balance. You have to be paid $600 previously in payments before eligible for paypal payments. If you are using whois privacy protection, LinkConnector will require you verifying ownership of the site for getting into the network. This can be done by creating a special hidden page.
Join LinkConnector.com Affiliate Program
Chitika eMiniMalls Review
Friday, November 21st, 2008Chitika eMiniMalls is a one of a kind PPC network. The ad consists of a product in a little display search box. The box looks very professional and doesn’t look like an ad. Chitika is most appropriate for websites that would do good to be centered around product displays. Not all general sites (like personal sites, humour sites, entertainment sites) do that well with product orientated affiliates.
Unfortutunately, it isn’t very easy to get in the program. We tried to get in on one of our new websites (done professionally) and were rejected. They don’t tell you exactly why you were rejected either. The products they display are usually electronics and equipment type stuff, so Chitika won’t work very well on many websites.
Ads come in a variety of forms and allow the users to view a product description, a small image, and search for more information all in the ad block. You can set the ad to contextual or non-contextual in order to be allowed to use it with Google Adsense. You can also set the keywords so it displays certain types of products or brands.
Once accepted into the program you can display the ads on any quality site you want without approval. You can get paid by Paypal ($10 minimum) or check $50 dollars minimum. If your referrals reach that level you can also earn money from them too.
Visit Chitika
DieselSecret.com Review
Thursday, November 20th, 2008Gasoline prices are rising faster than ever and with Diesel rising the fastest. This is now a great time to be promoting DieselSecret as people scramble to find a way to lower their diesel fuel costs. This is an entirely new way in America to make your own fuel from fry oils that takes only minutes. It can be used as a 100% replacement for petrol diesel fuel OR as a fuel offset by using it with petrol diesel fuel in any percentage you desire. DSE fuel and petrol diesel fuel are perfectly compatible. They’ll even include a complimentary bottle of our specially formulated Alternative Diesel Fuel Additive ($12.99 value) at no additional charge. It’s an essential catalyst for their fuel to perform as intended. If you need more, simply add another bottle to the order.
DieselSecret affiliate program is apart of the Shareasale network. They pay 10% per sale on 60 day cookie. They also have a 2nd tier affiliate program, paying 10% of lifetime earnings on affiliates you refer. Membership is set on auto-approval in Shareasale and auto-deposit is on with an excellent program uptime history record.
Join DieselSecret.com Affiliate Program.
About Amazon Affiliate Program
Friday, November 14th, 2008Amazon is one of the oldest major affiliate programs on the net. But with all the name recognition, how good is the Amazon affiliate program?
Amazon is actually a really a poor affiliate program. Late last year, they dropped the cookie lifetime from 30 days to 1 day. On top of that they only pay 4% on sales. 4% without a cookie is just downright pathetic. Most affiliate programs pay at least 10% with a cookie of 30 days. Many of your earnings in affiliate programs are going to be from purchases 10 or 30 days down the line, so cookies are an important part of making good money off of affiliate programs.
This is not to say, Amazon isn’t a good idea for some sites. Amazon has the ability to show individual products with their image and prices in the affiliate ads. This makes amazon ideal for product orientated type sites in music, electronics, or books. For most websites however, this type of layout is very poor for getting sales conversions. On most websites, visitors are unlikely to be interested in the exact product you pick to display in your ad. That is why amazon is most appropriate for producted orientated sites that do a good job of integrating these individual ads.
Another thing to consider is, Amazon often won’t send some of the products overseas either. So, for example, if you sign up for U.S amazon affiliate account, you won’t be getting many sales from a U.K visitor. The best way around this, would be to sign up for multiple country amazon programs.
Visit Amazon
Commission Junction Review
Friday, November 14th, 2008Commission Junction is a popular affiliate network. A lot of reputable affiliates are part of this network. You may want to sign up, if you’re looking for an affiliate program, just to see if they have affiliates in their directory to fit your website. I have used commission junction heavily and recommend them as they have many good affiliate programs and it’s a solid reputable affiliate network.
Once you are accepted in the program, you can then quickly “apply” for any affiliate. Some allow instant approval, others are manually checked by that individual affiliate. Commission Junction pays by check and requires you to mail/fax your tax information in order to get paid. Minimum payment is now 50 dollars. They pay by direct deposit or check.
Visit Commission Junction
LinkShare.com Review
Thursday, November 13th, 2008Online since 1996, Linkshare.com is the oldest major affiliate network and has some established big players, like ESPN, AT& T and Wal-mart.
The user interface for LinkShare is confusing and not very convenient. You have to add each website to the network and use a different affiliate link for each website. Some important features that Linkshare.com lack are detailed program uptime history and visible affiliate tracking compliance like Shareasale does. They don’t also tell you the EPC earnings that the affiliate earns inside their network. Linkshare has no 2nd tier affiliate program features for merchant programs inside their network or even direct product url link creators. Linkshare has datafeeds available at participating merchants, but you have to pay a fee to use them.
Linkshare is different from other networks because payments depend on the affiliate merchant. Some affiliate merchants send the payments themselves, others send them through Linkshare for them to send it. We feel this is a major con to Linkshare, as they are the only affiliate network that leaves it to some merchants to actually send payments. Sometimes you can wind up waiting months for a payment from your merchant. One positive to Linkshare’s payment system is the minimum payout balance is only $1, unlike most other networks requiring $25-$50. Linkshare also has their own affiliate program, paying $1.50 for referring other affiliates to signup with LinkShare. Payments are sent by check or direct deposit.
Join LinkShare.com Affiliate program.
ABCTickets.com Review
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008ABCTickets.com carries sports, music, and other entertainment event tickets. It is by far one of the best affiliate programs you could put on a sports, music, or entertainment related website. ABC Tickets affiliate program is apart of the shareasale network and pays a flat rate of $30 dollars per sale on a cookie that never expires. If you figure the average ticket sale is maybe 150 dollars, then a 30 dollar payout is averaging 20% per sale to their affiliates!
Most of the other ticket affiliates I have found are around 10% or less. I have personally found ABC Tickets to out do the earnings of my other sports affiliate programs on my sports websites. Everyone visiting a sports website is interested in eventually buying tickets, unlike memorabilia and sports clothes they could get at a clothing store. That is why I believe ABCtickets.com converts so well.
Join ABCTickets.com affiliate program.
Modernclick Review
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008Modernclick is a CPA(Cost Per action) affiliate network. Like with Commission Junction, Linkshare,etc once accepted in program you will have access to hundreds of advertisers to choose from for your CPA ads. CPA means that you can be paid from anything ranging from signups, clicks, or sales.
I have read from some other bloggers that Hydramedia(another CPA network), pays it’s publishers better than Modernclick for the same advertisers. So, unless you are rejected from Hydramedia, I would first sign up with Hydramedia. I have personally not used these networks, but if you have trouble finding affiliate programs within the other networks or you have trouble with the others, Modernclick and Hydramedia are a couple others you can try.
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