The first rule of success when operating an affiliate program is to view your affiliates as real business partners - you both grow your businesses together.

The days of 5% commissions only if the customer buys then and there is unfair to affiliates and doesn't lead to a long-lasting and profitable relationship.

Looking after the interests of your affiliates could be the smartest decision you'll make all year.

Fortunately, one benefit of using Clickbank is that all visitors sent to your site by your affiliates have a 3 month window in which to buy, during which your affiliates will still get credit.

That is to say, if someone is sent to your site, then decides to think about it. And they then come back a few weeks later, after they've got paid, to buy your product, the affiliate that sent them to you the first time will still get their commission.

A further limitation of Clickbank along the same lines is that using Clickbank you don't know who your affiliates are.

What happens when you decide to change the commission rate for a special "affiliate promotion" or when you bring out a new product that fits your affiliate's business model perfectly?

One that they can make some easy money with because they're perfectly placed?

The answer is simply that it's too bad. You have to start again getting affiliates for your new product, and your current affiliates lose out because you've got a product that would be perfect for them to offer to their visitors.

Lastly, using Clickbank you can only send referrals to one page on your site. So what if you've got 10 products on your site? Or what about if you've got 10 different websites with a different product on each?

Again, too bad. You either need to send referrals to a "generic" page listing all the products you sell so they can click through to the specific product they're interested in or set up a new $50 account for each product.

And that startes to get rather expensive!

In contrast, Clickbank does make running an affiliate program childs play - they work out all the commissions and send out the checks to all your affiliates.

Mulling over this reality, and wondering if there was any way around it for one of our new websites I decided to do some research and came across a piece of software called easyClickGuard.

The software solves all the problems I've already mentioned to create a powerful and professional affiliate program very easily indeed.

It allows you to require all your affiliates to register with you before you provide them with their affiliate code. You can then, if you choose, receive an automatic email notification of every new affiliate with all their details.

You can sell unlimited numbers of products using just one Clickbank account and so save yourself a huge amount of money.

And using advanced link strategies, it becomes near on impossible for your affiliates to be robbed of their commissions. Great stuff, eh?!

The only requirement for the use of the software is that you have PHP access on your domain server. If you have a website currently, it's easy to find out and luckily our webhost does offer it.

The software is programmed in PHP and contains a batch of scripts.

I have to admit to begin with that I was wondering if I'd over estimated my technical skills. I'm not a techie. I know HTML and can get by with Perl and JavaScript, so long as I can have a few books to hand, but I'd never touched a line of PHP in my life so was a bit apprehensive.

Heck, I thought, if the worst comes to the worst, the author of the software (Adrian Ling - who incidentally is a really nice and helpful guy) offers an installation service at a very reasonable $30 so what have I got to lose?

As it turns out I needn't have worried. The software is very easy to set up - and I mean very easy - even for me - a nontechie.

Adrian provides you with 30 or so pages of instructions and guidelines which literally take you by the hand in a step-by-step fashion.

It literally says "open this up in Notepad, then find this line. Then just add your own email address. Next find this line, and enter your website address here."

He even tells you how to upload it to your server and trouble-shoot the script incase of problems. He even provides points for coffee-breaks during the tutorial!

Despite all the different scripts provided you actually only need to modify one of them, save it, then upload the whole lot to your server and you're done.

Basically, if you have a website and have uploaded the pages to your server, I'd bet you can install this software.

Well I uploaded the software and hesitantly carried out the test Adrian suggests to ensure it's all working perfectly.

With baited breath I typed in the website address, just waiting for the "parse error" or "script not found" message. And you know what? Not a sausage!

From initial purchase to downloading the software, to modifying it for my site then uploading and testing it took me a few minutes under an hour.

I was honestly expecting it to take a day or two (as it really has with some other pieces of software I've bought over the net) so I was very pleasantly surprised.

It's the exact affiliate-management software I use to sell my own ebook known as Ebook Sales Assistant so you know I'm serious when I recommend it to you. You can even join my affiliate program there if you like to see it from the affiliate's point of view.

Important Update: Adrian has recently updated this software and added a new feature I love so much you wouldn't believe it. As part of it now your affiliates can log into their own password-protected "affiliate admin" section to see how much traffic they've sent you, how many bought and more. It's an amazing tool!

To read more about easyClickGuard click here now.

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