The reason why I decided to run my affiliate program through PayDotCom is because Clickbank has so many rules you need to follow. One of the rules they have is that you can't promote other products on your download page. They also withhold some of your initial earnings and you have to wait to receive your earnings. PayDotCom allows you to get paid right away through Paypal. This is a huge convenience for me. But I still can't ignore the fact that Clickbank is the top marketplace for digital products. The big question here is whether the affiliates find me or is it the other way around. If I have to find the affiliates, then what's the use?
Affiliates will find you but you need to also find affiliates eg by posting a thread here about your product once its been added to the Clickbank marketplace. If you have a good sales page, good converting product and low refund rate then affiliates will hop on board and do all the selling for you!
Wouldn't it be great if you could just post your product in the Marketplace and tons of affiliates would promote you and become insanely rich? Unfortunately there are 10s and 100s of products launched every single day and affiliates prefer to promote those that have proven to sell. And not only sell but also have a small refund rate, more than average conversion rate, up-sells, etc etc... Alex
Getting affiliates really a big question and getting the quality affiliates is more than big questions no matter which network you are going to use.Paydotcom also has a good response now a days.Participation in your niche related forums on a regular basis plus the affiliate directories can be two good options to promote your affiliate program.
Running your program direct through paypal is just a recipe for disaster, if you are making any significant sales you can be sure paypal will limit your account and a worse case scenario is that they will hold the balance for 6 months and close your account after, it seems to be there business plan to do this to as many people as they can and make money off the interest, take a look at paypalsucks and you will see thousands of similar stories.Persoanally I never leave any money in paypal any more and would never consider running a product direct through it either.
I'd use the Clickbank or PayDotcom, depending on which one had the weakest competition for the niche of the my product.
Have you considered creating another version of your product, branding it slightly differently, and going after both marketplaces? If you already have all the materials prepared, why not do both?
Yes there is some very sound information here from our members. My take on this is - Use Both - as many have advised.
Long Term commitment and credibility are important. My view is go with any one. You need to make your product popular and not make your customers confused. Affiliates will come whatever vendor you choose. But if you have one payment processor it will be easy. You have mentioned about the paypal convenience of Paydotcom, remeber how much Paypal cuts into your hard earned money. Not that I am ruling out Paydotcom, I am simply stating Paypal is more messed up than you might think. So my short view is Go for clickbank. They will give you a more bigger pool of affiliate.
As johnhunter said, Paypal is a nightmare!!! We had a top product on paydotcom and we were doing over 10k a week through paypal. We were froze multiple times and eventually put on a 6 month reserve. Also, you wont get too many decent affiliates at PDC because they have to trust that you will pay them and that usually becomes a problem for any affiliate who can bring you a decent amount of steady sales. As for clickbank, you may get lucky and pickup a few affiliates naturally but you WILL have to go find guys if you want any kind of decent traction out of the gate. Once your product is listed in the top 50+ products you'll see some nice momentum of new affiliates getting on board.
Why not use both? Clickbank has a bigger marketplace tho but I mean if you use both, the more reach you will have.
This was a great thread. I am in the same boat trying to figure out which market place to launch on. paydotcom does have some convieniences, however clickbank is the main digital selling forum for a reason. Not as much hassle I guess. All the rules are there to protect you. Not being able to advertise on the download page isn't that bad. Once you collected the buyers email address you should be ok.
I agree with using both. Variety and options are nice. It's cool to see everyone's input about this.. Interesting.
If your niche is not internet marketing, I would suggest you to promote your product on Clickbank.com.