Affiliate Management Software
Affiliate management software has always
been big business and with several new comers to the industry
in the last few years it may be hard to identify with affiliate
management software would be the best choice for your business.
There are several factors to consider when
selecting affiliate management software that best fits your
needs. Fees, tools, linking, shopping cart and ease of use
are some of the most important factors to just name a few.
Below we have listed our top 5 favorite affiliate management software applications. We reviewed 12 of the most popular systems in the industry ranging from a whole array of features. This was no easy task as many affiliate management systems can be quite user un-friendly. We tested almost every feature in every affiliate system to give you the most up-to-date feedback possible.
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One
of the newest players in the affiliate management
software market, but boy did they ever come to
play. PayGear released their latest version in
July 2010 and it was nothing short of astonishing.
PayGear
customers will receive more bang for the buck
than any other affiliate management software hands
down. Probably the easiest decision our review
staff had to make in this affiliate management
software show down.
PayGear
not only gives its customers more features than
another affiliate management software it gives
it to them with the lowest prices in the industry.
Free sign up, add as many products as you wish
for free and more affiliate tools than most people
will ever use, but if you need it PayGear probably
has it.
What
are some of those? Well the list really can go
on and on, but to list a few of our favorites
include:
•
Easy to use interface
• Checkout with credit card, PayPal, or Google
Checkout
• Integrated shopping cart
• Multiple checkout page payment options
• Built in tax reporting
• Checkout page analytics compatible
• Built in 2-tier affiliate program
• Contact your affiliates
• Secure download pages
• Custom skinned checkout pages
Tthese
top 10 features that really stood out. If you’re
looking for an easy to use system with tones of
feature and comes with the lowest fees in the
industry, which also by the way has so far showed
100% up time then PayGear.com is a great choice
for your business.
[ Visit site ]
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$29.00 - $99.00 |
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Another great choice for your business affiliate
needs is 1ShoppingCart. The interface is very
easy to use once you get set up, but getting
set up with 1ShoppingCart was the most difficult
of our top 5 finishers.
Features
are abundant and we liked the fact that we can
combine email marketing with our checkout system
very easily with the 1ShoppingCart system. Especially
good if all your products are in the 1ShoppingCart,
the only down side to such a feature is if you
had other products outside the 1ShoppingCart
system you would still need another email marketing
software package with an outside source.
Affiliate
software was easy to use and although had limited
features compared to PayGear the features it
did offer were delivered to affiliates in an
easy to use application. After market scripts
can also easily be customized and integrated
with the 1ShoppingCart checkout system.
Things
we did not like included no marketplace for
your product to be listed, affiliates had to
sign up to each program they wished to promote
individually and a monthly fee to use the services.
Probably
not the best choice for users just starting
out, but for those with already sizeable business
who wish to move to a more robust system 1ShoppingCart
can be a great choice for you.
[ Visit site ]
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$49.95 |
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ClickBank has been around for a long time and
have pretty much lead the way of the affiliate
management software over the past decade, but
not without both love and hate feeling by its
customers.
Reason
to love ClickBank include:
•
Easy to use
• Secure order processing
• Easy affiliate linking
• Reporting
• Basic analytics
Reasons
to hate ClickBank include:
•
Waiting weeks for payments
• Must get product approval
• Many cases where vendors accuse ClickBank
of stealing payments
• Support being rude to users
• Automatic refund policy
• Very high fees
It
is true that affiliates love the fact that ClickBank
collects all the fees from customers, so there
is no chance of the vendor not paying. But that
one great feature for the affiliates is such
a negative for the vendor. Not only do vendors
have to wait several weeks to receive payment
they have to deal with constant refunds. It’s
very common knowledge that any customer can
order your product, download it, then contact
ClickBank and ask for a refund. It does not
matter what the reason is, refunds are granted.
This makes it almost too easy for a customer
to steal from you.
However,
the exposure and the affiliate access scores
very highly for ClickBank, unfortunately that
is where most of the love ends.
[ Visit site ]
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We also really like the features Click2Sell offers
its customers. Click2Sell offers easy set up and
allows its vendors the ability to add unlimited
products for free. Members of Click2Sell get tones
of great features at a reasonable price per transaction.
But there are 2 main reasons why Click2Sell did
not rank higher with us in this show down.
First,
having a .eu domain in a global market is somewhat
of a joke. How is Click2Sell suppose to compete
outside of Europe, especially when the majority
of possible customers are going to be in the USA.
Second,
although they ranked second in features on our
list, they were still behind PayGear in almost
every way. Sure Click2Sell has secure thank you
page, but PayGears secure thank you page system
is better. Sure Click2Sell has low fees, but PayGears
fees are lower.
Plus
with Click2Sell you do not get the more robust
features like shopping cart or tools to contact
all your affiliates.
Don’t
get me wrong, if you only plan on selling in Europe
Click2Sell could be a great choice for your affiliate
management software needs. Their biggest issue
was that their system works very similar to PayGear
just slightly worse in areas where they have the
same features. Plus they really offer nothing
that PayGear does not offer to their members.
[ Visit site ]
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$29.50 |
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PayDotCom was a quality system when it was first
introduced back in 2005 and a viable alternative
to ClickBank who had a monopoly on the affiliate
management software business. Today PayDotCom
is still used by many as it’s easy to set
up and gives users lots of freedoms.
PayDotCom’s
problem is that they have not changed much since
2005. Although the programming behind the site
works well, it looks like they forgot to hire
someone to make it look nice for users. Its rather
hard to read and not very user friendly.
The
site only offers one payment processor as well
which is PayPal. If you do not want to use PayPal
or wish to give your users multiple payment options
PayDotCom is not the site for you.
They
have also been hit with several hours of downtime
here and their where vendors could not process
orders which ended up costing them who knows how
much. If you then went to their support section
for help you would be lucky to receive a response
back within a week or two. Saying their support
is slow is a complement.
We
did like that listing the first product was free,
so if you’re unsure if this is the right
affiliate management software for you can sign
up and set up one free product. Unfortunately
if you do like the software and want to set up
additional product you will have to pay a onetime
listing fee.
Also
note that for lower priced products fees can be
the highest in the industry, higher priced products,
such as those over $100 are more fairly fee charged.
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