When it comes to setting up your own affiliate program, you have a few choices to consider:

• Clickbank for payment processing and managing affiliates
• Your own hosted scripts or software-based affiliate management program
• An all-in-one shopping cart, autoresponder, newsletter manager and affiliate manager such as 1ShoppingCart
• A completely outsourced service to manage your affiliate program such as Commission Junction

Let’s start by saying that unless you are moving 100,000’s in revenue of products, outsourced services are likely going to be too expensive – many have large up-front fees (into the thousands of dollars, with heavy commissions on your product)

So – we’re down to Clickbank or 1ShoppingCart systems.

Let me start by saying that I have and continue to use both programs to manage affiliates for my different online businesses – so I am not biased either way and do have hands-on experience with both solutions.

Benefit of Using Clickbank As Your Affiliate Manager

1. They handle all affiliate payments and returns for you – this can become a major factor as your affiliate list and sales grow.

2. You will gain affiliates through being present on the Clickbank system, though I’ve found the degree of interest differs greatly depending on the product niche or topic, title, commission you offer, and popularity of your product.  I have also noticed that sometimes it takes a few months to get your product noticed by affiliates on their system.

3. Nice, simple, effective and trusted system for handling both payment and affiliate management for online businesses – with a strong emphasis on digital download or digitally offered products such as e-books, reports, private sites, etc…

Disadvantages of Using Clickbank To manage Your Affiliate Program

1. You lose some granularity in tracking – an affiliate tracking system you run on your own server will give you good statistics on visitors, page views as well as purchases by affiliate

2. Not integrated with an autoresponder system such as a 1ShoppingCart solution that allows you easy access to your affiliates via broadcasts, autoresponders, etc…

3. Cannot offer two-tier programs that may become important in the case of certain joint ventures where a jv broker wants to promote your program for you and take a cut

Really is a trade-off.  I tend to offer my core products through my own affiliate program with other niche products in health and wellness, alternative health and personal development field on Clickbank – but that’s just me.

Finally, the signup fee for Clickbank is reasonable, so it’s simple to try while 1AutiomationWiz/1ShoppingCart offers a free trial so you can test the system to see if it matches your needs  – little risk to find which system you like the best for your online business.

Jeff