If you are selling digital products, then you should certainly consider Clickbank as an option for setting up your affiliate program. Clickbank is probably the world's largest affiliate network – with 12,000 vendors and over 100,000 affiliates, and an impeccable reputation for on-time payment. It is not a true affiliate software, but rather a payment processor with a major affiliate marketing element.
Pros
The most obvious pro for you as a Clickbank vendor is access to the massive pool of Clickbank affiliates, which typically includes most of the "super-affiliates" in the industry, including the PPC specialists. Many affiliates love Clickbank because they pay regularly and reliably (in fact, they boast that they "have never missed a payment in 10 years"). Since Clickbank provides independent third-party affiliate tracking software, the affiliate does not have to be concerned that the vendor will interfere with their results in order to cheat them out of commissions. (By the way – this is something you should never do! Besides being a mean and ungrateful trick to pull on your hard-working affiliates, if word gets out (and it probably will) your company's name will be down the Internet Marketing toilet.)
From the customer's point of view, buying through Clickbank is attractive because they have a no-nonsense approach to refunds, which means that Clickbank will hold you to any money-back guarantee you make on your sales page. This gives peace of mind to the customer (though often customers don't know what Clickbank is and do not realize that Clickbank will protect them – so if you use Clickbank, make sure to point this out when you offer your money-back guarantee.) Another advantage is that Clickbank will act as your payment processor, so you don't need a credit card merchant account or any other payment arrangement. Moreover, Clickbank has almost water-tight fraud prevention mechanisms, to prevent your affiliates from trying any funny tricks on you and to reduce your refund and chargeback rate. Also, Clickbank takes care of all tracking pays both you and your affiliates. If you are like me and number-crunching is not your strong point, then that's a big, boring job off your shoulders.
Cons
The pros and cons of Clickbank seem to be flip-sides of each other. The pro of that massive marketplace becomes a con since how will jaded affiliates find your great product in the sea of junk (and there is a ton of junk in the Clickbank marketplace). Also if you are in competitive niche, it will be very hard for you to catch the attention of affiliates, who are more likely to be attracted to products with an established reputation and earning record. Clickbank affiliates also tend to expect extremely high commission levels – up to 75%. If you offer below 50%, many will ignore you. Depending on your niche, it may or may not be realistic for you to pay these kinds of commissions. The strange thing is that Clickbank's affiliate system can actually work against you, since they do give you have the email addresses of your affiliates and so there is almost no way of building a relationship with them, and motivating them with incentives and special offers. Both of the above points mean that you will find it very hard, if not impossible, to attract, manage and motivate your affiliates. The best way would be to encourage potential affiliates to visit a special page on your website, and from there try to sign them up to a mailing list. In terms of using Clickbank as your payment processor, keep in mind that you will have to pay Clickbank a fixed fee of $1 plus 7.5% of your sale amount. This can certainly add up, compared to a one-time fee for private affiliate software.
Recommendation
If you are selling digital products, the lure of Clickbank is hard to resist – many vendors have made millions selling their products with Clickbank. Or should I say, many vendors have made millions letting other people sell their products with Clickbank.