Does anyone know of any affiliate program software that counts as backlinks? I am interested in starting an affiliate program, but I only want it if it will also offer me some backlinks also. I don't want to put it in my terms that affiliates have to offer a direct link to me in order to participate....thx guys -Adam
We currently use Post Affiliate Pro. You get actual links to your site, although they do contain a few variables in the url. Otherwise, the administration, management and tracking are very good. http://www.qualityunit.com/postaffiliatepro/
It would count as a link, but it wouldn't count as much because of the extra variables in the url. Something that you could do, is perform a 301 redirect if people are referred through the affiliate program. That way search engines would see the 301 redirects for any url with the affiliate variables in it, to the actual page. I haven't tried this but I think that it should work. You may have to configure your tracking cookie differently, but that's the only problem that I see with doing it this way.
The linkconnector network is setup that way with (livelinks.) http://www.linkconnector.com/ There is a $200 minimum monthly processing fee. I should mention that I can't seem to generate anywhere near $200 / month in leads on this network (yet) whereas I'm generating far more than $200 / week on other ones. That's just my experience though and I think if you market your program independently it could pay off. If you get some solid affiliates it would be worth the minimum fee just for the pagerank.
http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com/ is the network providig direct linking. But it is somewhat expensive.