Shareasale, Clickbank, Linkconnector, or who?

[scottkeith75]

Hi everyone....
I am a new affilitate who has been working hard to get my site up and running, posted, and can potentially monetize now. But now I am faced with questions about which 'company'/'companies' to use.... Shareasale, Clickbank, and LinkConnector are the ones I am currently with, but I hear good and bad about all (except Shareasale, I heard only good things about Shareasale, but I need a wider variety of products than what they offer). I hear Clickbank has some 'shady' practices (i.e. if you earn a million in commissions, they will not pay you a dime until you have atleast one customer paying by mastercard [who has MC's nowadays?], Paypal, or a Eruo debit card. stickly Visa's will stop you from getting monies paid)... Linkconnector I have heard mixed things on, but I have heard/read some derogatory things about them as well. Please post some suggestions ...
Thanks.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Scott,

To some degree it depends on what your niche is and what type of products you are looking for. You'll hear mixed reviews on every network, except like you said SAS is almost all positive. For the largest product selection and an easy interface you may want to try CJ.

 

[scottkeith75]

What is 'CJ'?

Hi Scott,

To some degree it depends on what your niche is and what type of products you are looking for. You'll hear mixed reviews on every network, except like you said SAS is almost all positive. For the largest product selection and an easy interface you may want to try CJ.

My bottom line concern is the integrity of these sites. It seems some of them are less than 'honorable'. Another concern is ... what is to stop a merchant from under stating the amount of sales your generate...ect. I am probably blowing this out of porportion, but I just don't get exactly how it is safe, so I am looking for networks that are based in honorable business practices.

Thanks very much for your reply....

 

[Linda Buquet]

Another concern is ... what is to stop a merchant from under stating the amount of sales your generate...ect. I am probably blowing this out of porportion, but I just don't get exactly how it is safe, so I am looking for networks that are based in honorable business practices.

Well there are lots of different issues. 1st with networks like SAS and CJ, they make a % of what you make, so if they are not honest and don't report sales they are cutting their own income. As far as the individual merchants, the network tracking pixel is on the merchant's thank you page and picks up the actual sale amount. So the merchant can't really short you on sales that way.


There are other ways a merchant can try to short affiliates commission, but I don't think many do intentionally. If affiliates don't make enough commission they leave and low commission payouts show in reports, so other affiliates won't join either.

One thing you can do is look at numbers like EPC and return rate and that will to some degree tell you how well a program is paying out and if they have a lot of returns.

 

[scottkeith75]

Very helpful and informative Linda!

Your reply has me feeling better educated, and more at ease. Thank you for taking of your time to respond. I truly appreciate it!

Well there are lots of different issues. 1st with networks like SAS and CJ, they make a % of what you make, so if they are not honest and don't report sales they are cutting their own income. As far as the individual merchants, the network tracking pixel is on the merchant's thank you page and picks up the actual sale amount. So the merchant can't really short you on sales that way.


There are other ways a merchant can try to short affiliates commission but I don't think many do intentionally. If affiliates don't make enough commission they leave and low commission payouts show in reports, so other affiliates won't join either.

One thing you can do is look at numbers like EPC and return rate and that will do some degree tell you how well a program is paying out and if they have a lot of returns.