Affiliate Management Services

Since I've added the Affiliate Program Manager section to my Discussion Forum, the top question has been about which service or software to use to manage an affiliate program.

For small operations or virtual products, some of the more popular options include: ClickBank, PayDotCom, Groundbreak, and ThirdSphere (which is hosting with a built-in affiliate program manager). All of these are relatively cheap to set up, and fairly easy to maintain.

When you start looking at more complex systems or service providers, the pricing takes a big leap. Of course, most of these options also include support staff and marketing services - among other things...

Which brings me to the second most-asked question on the Affiliate Managers section of my forum: how do you recruit active affiliates? From looking over the affiliate management services at one Affiliate Manager's site - Apogee - I can see how just the recruiting services alone could be very beneficial (ie well worth the buck spent) to a merchant:

Apogee Search maximizes the success of each managed affiliate program through diligent affiliate recruitment efforts. We provide the following affiliate recruitment efforts for all clients.

Recruiting relevant affiliates from Apogee's database of over 1,000 affiliate publishers

Negotiating the promotion of advertiser's offers with "Super Affiliates" that are able to drive large volumes of traffic

Promoting affiliate programs on niche and "closed" affiliate networks to reach additional affiliate publishers

Prospecting for and recruiting highly-relevant publishers via search engines and publisher directories

Improving performance from existing affiliates with email newsletter and special promotion announcements

Which Affiliate Program Manager do you use? Do you outsource it to 'the experts' or do you manage your affiliate program internally? I would love to hear some pro's & con's, as well as personal experiences.

If you dont have any personal experience as a merchant - which of the systems do you like most as an affiliate, and why?

Being part of a larger network certainly has its appeal. From an affiliates perspective there are combined payments, combined stats & tracking data, more options, etc. That said, I am usually working with the program that has the best offer matches, competitive payout and plenty of creative - regardless of whether it is independent or part of a large network.

Whether you are an affiliate or a merchant, I'd love to hear which features appeal to you most when it comes to Affiliate Program managers... Are there any deal-breakers? Do you have a wish-list? Let us know!