Business Affiliate Programs – What Is The Best Affiliate Network?
You may be wondering why not just list your product on multiple affiliate networks for maximum exposure and gain additional affiliates. You can do this, but then you have to create multiple sales pages all with the same copy on the same domain that the search engines won’t like and your affiliates will quickly recognize and abandon.
The reason for this is if they send traffic to your sales page with your affiliate link/cookie and that customer doesn’t buy the product at that time, but tries to come back a few days later and inadvertently finds one of your OTHER sales pages. with a different network, that affiliate obviously won’t get credit for the sale.
This will severely put off any affiliate who realizes this, but more than that, it seems extremely awkward to have multiple sales pages on the same domain, so it’s not seen more often.
However, in the case of the commercial affiliate programs that I will cover in this article, I will address this as there is one exception that I will get to in a moment. Right now, let’s talk about which is the best affiliate network to sell your new product.
ClickBank vs. DigiResults
With the completion of my new informational product, I had to consider through which affiliate network I would sell it.
My first instinct was to go with ClickBank; They have been around for years, are a reputable brand, are known for their informational products, have a large market and affiliate base, and handle all aspects of payment on your behalf. Then I found out about an up and coming affiliate network that was getting a lot of praise called DigiResults.
The battle lines were drawn, let’s see who emerged victorious in each of the most important categories.
Product Registration Cost/Transaction Fees
Winner, DigiResults
Obviously, there will be costs associated with selling your product through an affiliate link because they are doing a lot of the work, like tracking and payment processing.
ClickBank requires a $49.95 (bare) activation fee for each new product you list on their marketplace, and each new product must be approved to ensure it meets their strict guidelines for merchants. Plus, they take a cut of every sale you make. The exact cut is $1 + 7.5% of the product price, regardless of price. So with a $100 product, for example, ClickBank will keep $8.50 for the transaction fee.
DigiResults, on the other hand, is completely FREE to list as many products as you want on your marketplace and it’s pretty straightforward to get your products listed as well. DigiResults also has to make money, so they get a cut of each sale as well, but it’s more manageable than ClickBank. For products that cost less than $10, the fee is $0.25 + 7.5%. The real advantage is for products that sell above $10 (most products) where the rate is $0.50 + 5%. Again, with a $100 product, DigiResults will be left with $5.50, $3 less than ClickBank in that scenario.
With lower fees and no product activation fee, DigiResults is much cheaper for merchants, and it’s also great to try out a new product to see how it sells without spending $50 to try it out first.
Paying Affiliates
Winner, DigiResults
Another place where DigiResults beats ClickBank; DigiResults pays the affiliate and merchant instantly through Paypal after a customer purchases the product through the affiliate link, while ClickBank affiliates have to wait up to 2 weeks to get money from the sales they make on a day. After you record a sale, ClickBank even locks up part of the affiliate commission as collateral to cover any returns/refunds you issue.
Additionally, ClickBank requires you to make 5 sales between 2 different types of credit cards before you can get paid, and you must earn 3 checks within 12 weeks before you can switch to direct deposit.
Finally, while both affiliate networks allow you to choose the amount of commission you give your affiliates, with ClickBank the ceiling is 75%, while with DigiResults you can offer up to 100% of the total product price as commission. to your affiliate. Why would you want to offer 100% commission? I will cover it later in this series.
Returns and refunds
Winner, DigiResults
Refunds are where it gets a bit trickier. ClickBank handles refunds entirely, which is nice and stress-free. They automatically deduct the commission from both the seller and the affiliate in the event of a refund. The criticism that many merchants and affiliates have of ClickBank in terms of refunds is that they are too lenient on refunds.
DigiResults, on the other hand, puts the responsibility of granting a return in the hands of the merchant. The customer must contact the merchant directly to request a refund, and if they agree to provide the refund, DigiResults’ direct commission technology automatically deducts the money from the vendor’s and affiliate’s Paypal account.
This is one area where ClickBank trumps the DigiResults system. Because affiliates get paid instantly through Paypal with no payment restrictions like ClickBank has (no waiting to claim commissions), there’s nothing stopping a disreputable affiliate from booking a few sales and then closing. your Paypal account so that, if there are refunds from your customers. , they keep their commission and you keep the full return invoice. Admittedly, this makes a trader, particularly a new one like me, a bit uncomfortable.
That being said, affiliates must apply to promote your product, so you can drastically reduce the number of disreputable affiliates you allow to promote your product by requiring them to complete a short email questionnaire before granting them access to your product. product. Ask them how they will promote your product, ask to see their website/websites, etc. Don’t approve of anyone who obviously doesn’t answer in the first place or sends you a questionable answer.
While some affiliates won’t like the extra time it takes to be manually approved for affiliate status (vs. ClickBank where you can start promoting a product right away with no owner knowledge required), these are probably the same affiliates who will probably jump on you.
Regardless, I recommend that you also write an official refund policy to post on your site if possible, which you can direct your customers to if they complain and are outside of your policy’s jurisdiction.
With this in mind, DigiResults comes out a bit ahead of ClickBank in this category.
tax information
Winner – Division
DigiResults and ClickBank require affiliates to enter their tax information and both have the option to send affiliates their tax revenue form at the beginning of the year on their behalf.
Market
Winner – Division
Again, both ClickBank and DigiResults have pros and cons when it comes to market discussion. ClickBank has a sizable market that is great for affiliates, especially since there are so many product options to promote. It is not so ideal for traders who may find themselves swallowed up by all the competition.
By contrast, DigiResults doesn’t have nearly the size or accessibility of the marketplace that ClickBank has that can disable affiliates. It’s a bit plain compared to ClickBank in that there are no categories, just a search box and a display of the current most popular products to promote. On the plus side, at least in terms of size, at DigiResults your product is likely to be more visible to affiliates using that network because there’s definitely less competition.
Each product has a product, a commission percentage, the amount the affiliate will earn, and popularity. Clicking on a particular product ALSO displays a link to the product’s sales page and also displays the refund rate for that product, which is much easier than trying to calculate a product on the refund rate of ClickBank using its various statistics. Another point to note about the DigiResults marketplace is that it’s efficiently made up of IM and MMO offerings, so you could argue whether that would help or hurt you if you’re in a different niche.
Final decision
Ultimately I decided to use both to get maximum affiliate exposure between the two and to keep in mind that I can integrate ClickBank with DigiResults very easily. Note that I can only do this due to DigiResults’ embedability; You normally wouldn’t be able to do this with most commercial affiliate programs.
One of the biggest marks that DigiResults has against it is that it is still very new and untested, so this way I can make up my mind after using it myself for a period of time while using ClickBank, then I’ll give my experience with in a month or so.