It would seem that Clickbank would provide more to its customers. Obviously, when it comes to internet marketing and affiliate programs, you could put it in your top 10 links. No other affiliate program database offers such earning potential, be it from the affiliate side or the product building site. And you can’t get over the fact that commissions for over 10,000 products are consolidated into one check. But there are still some lingering questions that might make you think.

What about the site? I mean, a site shouldn’t be too complex. In fact, the complexity can be a turn off. On the other hand, I have found more complex site templates from free sites. And that is not all. How many of you Clickbank affiliates found Clickbank news or Clickbank FAQ in a forum, clicked the link and the FAQ is on Clickbank domain? But, if you go to the Clickbank home page, there is no link to the page you just visited.

I don’t know about you, but if I had a business, I would make sure that customers and vendors could get as much information as possible and not have to search for news through third-party sources.

But, on the other hand, I can’t complain. The checks come in. I have never had to look for a customer service link on the site, because there has been no reason to. You make sales and receive a check. It’s that simple and I’ve never come across anyone who says otherwise.

So you have to wonder about the search function. There are none. But why? For one reason, if Clickbank had a search function, any Internet user familiar with Clickbank would recognize it by clicking on an affiliate link. They could then go to Clickbank and buy the product with their own affiliate ID at up to 75% off, which Clickbank or the seller of the product wouldn’t care much for, at least at first. They still collect your cash.

But eventually, the seller of the product would notice a drop in sales. Affiliates would be less than satisfied with the results of all their hard work and stop working so hard to make sales that weren’t coming anyway. Therefore, there would be less advertising of the product in total. The value of an affiliated army that is rewarded accordingly cannot be underestimated.

There are many third-party products available that will essentially build a search engine on a Clickbank affiliate’s site for them.

Even without this, there are some who know what a Clickbank Hoplink looks like and where to put their own Clickbank ID to earn a commission.

The affiliates themselves must be responsible for protecting their sales. I do not think. Of course, there are products that can help you protect your links, but the responsibility should not lie with the developer of the product. Our heroes, third-party software developers, come to the rescue again by providing software to do this for you, but only a few of the developers of products that sell through Clickbank trust these products. This leaves many affiliates out in the open, relying on link cloaking to protect their sales.

I love it when I sign up for an affiliate program and click on the link given to me to try it out and land on the front page of the site. There is no “?hop=” after the URL, just “http://www.mysite.com”. This lets me know that my only job is to get the word out about the product and not to become a crypto expert just to make a sale. Just so developers know, it’s also good not to create an affiliate link from any page designed for sales. You have just defeated any work we as an affiliate or you as a responsible marketer have done to save our commissions. Send out the link after the sales if you want, but don’t treat your affiliates like dirt by telling them they can get 50% off by signing up for your affiliate program.

Another reason for product developers to check out link cloaking software: link popularity. If you use the conventional skip link, Clickbank gets a link back to your site. If the affiliate has to encrypt the link himself, no one gets credit for the link. If you buy one of these scripts, your affiliates will advertise a link pointing to your site. Just something to think about.

Then there are the sales notices. There are none. There was a time when Clickbank sent you an email every time you made a sale. spam? Only if you consider a check from the IRS spam. Personally, Clickbank could fill my inbox to the brim with ads like this. But this service no longer exists.

I don’t even want to get started with Clickbank’s sales reporting features. Let’s say they could be improved, a lot.

This is yet another area where third-party providers help. You can create affiliate sales reports, earnings reports, email your customers, and even chart sales trends with such software. Some are scripts that you run on your site. These will send a thank you email, add the customer to your database, and even trigger an autoresponder to email your customers in the future. Others allow you to have multiple products, multiple sites and a single Clickbank account.

So what am I trying to say? It’s just that with the money you’d think Clickbank is making, it looks like they could build a more elaborate, user-friendly site. Despite this, you can’t beat Clickbank when it comes to high commissions and consolidated payouts. In fact, some of the holes in the Clickbank system have allowed some innovative software developers to step in and provide very useful tools. Those who use Clickbank to sell their products should take note and ensure an effective affiliate sales force by at least checking out these solutions. In turn, they will be rewarded with more sales and affiliates who trust them.