Q: I would like to ask a couple questions about affiliate recruiting software: have you used them and what kind of results can I expect? I hear these are the top solutions: Affiliate Finder Pro, Super Affiliate Tracker, Internet Success Spider, and Link Capture. The prices are all very different, there seems to be no gauge in quality based on price here, so I am looking for a recommendation based on any knowledge you may have of the software/program itself–not based on “friendships” with any of the developers. I appreciate it.
A: I’ve personally used the Internet Success Spider and Link Capture, and settled on Link Capture as my tool of choice.
The reason for these choices is that they were the products available years ago when I was looking for something. Link Capture cost more than the Internet Success Spider, but it’s also more robust.
I’d urge you to take the free trial for any of these products to get a better idea about which suits you best. I know Link Capture has a free trial – can’t say for sure about all of the competing products.
Another tool to consider is ARELIS. It’s a good affiliate prospecting tool with competitive pricing and a free trial.
As far as the results you can expect, I would liken these affiliate recruiting tools to a hammer that you’re going to use to hang up a picture. It’s not up to the hammer as to how well you do it, rather it’s your use of the hammer that will dictate the results.
Each of the products out there will help you generate lists of prospective affiliates – it’s just a matter of how much data you are hoping to gather on each prospect. In general, the more you want, the more the affiliate recruiting tool costs.
One word of warning – many of these tools offer the ability to e-mail these sites that come up in your queries. Unless they offer functionality to send out e-mail that is CAN-SPAM compliant, I would not suggest mailing from any of the products.
Personally, I use them to build target lists that I then approach either by phone or direct mail.