By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
June 6th, 1998

See Also   The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet   Alternative Payment Solutions   Fraud Prevention Tools   Top Tools to Help You Boost Customer Service   iV-Caller Verification Service   Make Your Price Sell!   FindWhat.com   Make Your Knowledge Sell!   HumanClick   Netship   iFulfill.com   Nexchange   Nothing But 'Net   Netwhistle.com   Bigstep.com   Make Your Site Sell!   AWeber   GoTo.com   Constant Contact   WebAdverts   PersonalStore   SiteInspector   LinkExchange   ClickTrade   Safe   eCHARGE   MilliCent

The ClickTrade link partner program has been around for some time now, seemingly locked in an endless beta testing cycle. However, on May 20th it finally emerged from its beta testing and was formally launched. The two most obvious changes are that advertisers now have to pay a fee to ClickTrade and that the program is being marketed as a tool for managing affiliate programs.

The ClickTrade concept is very simple. It is a Web-based service for advertisers and direct marketers who want to set-up an affiliate program for their Web site and for site owners who want to earn money by joining affiliate programs. It does this by allowing advertisers to pay affiliate partners on a click-through, lead or sale basis. The scheme is free for affiliates, but advertisers pay ClickTrade a 30% levy on payments to their affiliates.

To use the service, advertisers must first register with ClickTrade and make a pre-payment of at least $100 dollars for click-through based programs or $500 for per lead and per sale programs. To launch a program, advertisers need to decide on the payment amount and mechanism, whether by click-through, lead or sale. They then post the payment details to the ClickTrade site, along with their URL and the categories of Web sites they are interested in partnering with. Advertisers can also add a link to a page on their own server that can carry special information such as details of any buttons or banners they want their affiliates to use.

Affiliates also have to register with ClickTrade before they can start hosting links. They can then use the ClickTrade search engine to identify potential partners. Once a prospective partner has been selected, the affiliate makes a request to join their program. An affiliate can not start to earn money from a link until the advertiser has reviewed their request and accepted them.

This review process can be can be quite time consuming for advertisers, as they have to review every "link partner request" made by potential affiliates. This problem is made worse by the fact that there is no mechanism for an advertiser to detail the exact profile of sites they want to link with, although they can specify the broad categories they are targeting. As a result, a significant proportion of link requests can come from sites that the advertiser has no interest in partnering with.

Similarly, the time it takes for affiliates to administer the program can be significant. Although ClickTrade automatically generates a piece of HTML code for the link, the affiliate needs to manually insert this in a page on their Web site together with any banners, buttons or other special requests the advertiser has made. Other problems for affiliates stem from bad practices by some advertisers, who either don't respond to a link request or allow their pre-paid balance with ClickTrade to run out which prevents the affiliate from getting paid.

One of the biggest problems with programs like ClickTrade is that they can be open to fraud from the affiliates. ClickTrade claim to have this under control by only counting click-throughs from approved affiliates and only recognising one click from each unique IP address in any 24 hour period. They also use a number of heuristic techniques to try and limit fraud.