This brings us to the important issue of product ownership. The best way for an affiliate to write a credible product review is from personal experience. In other words, she should own and use the product before offering an opinion on its suitability.

So, as a merchant, it should be among your priorities to encourage your affiliates to own the products they promote. One way to do this is to allow them to buy your products using their own affiliate link. Some merchants are wary of this approach, fearing that it leads to commission theft and encourages buyers to sign up as affiliates purely to obtain a discount.

The alternative is to restrict the membership of your affiliate program to existing customers, forcing them to buy your product if they want to participate in its promotion. A number of very successful ClickBank merchants adopt this policy, although it should be noted that it carries the risk of seriously diminishing your affiliate recruitment rate.

A final - somewhat drastic - step is to offer your product free to registered affiliates, thus encouraging them to become familiar with it and properly endorse it. Of course, you would need to employ this tactic discreetly, or you run the risk of being overrun by freebie seekers.

If the thought of giving your product away free is too intimidating, consider making the offer conditional on a tacit commitment by your affiliates to participate in your coaching program. In other words, you get the chance to interact directly with the affiliate, mentoring her in her quest to deliver high-quality targeted prospects to your sales page. This kind of one-to-one relationship with affiliates can be extremely time-consuming at the outset, but as each affiliate tunes in to the most effective pre-selling tactics, she becomes self-sufficient and low-maintenance. And little by little you build a marketing SWAT team that delivers immediate results whenever you launch a new product.

Copyright © Tim Coulter. All rights reserved.

Tim Coulter is a consultant and software developer who helps netpreneurs to harness marketing technologies.

He is also the author of "ClickBank - The Definitive Guide" The Ultimate ClickBank Tutorial & Reference Manual.

http://www.clickbankrevealed.com/