Joint ventures are a profitable and powerful way to market a product, but affiliate networks are very profitable as well. Clickbank has 100,000 affiliates waiting for products to promote and sell, making it the ideal place to go if you have a product to sell. The system in place makes it easy for vendors with an account and a product to connect with affiliates and conduct highly effective affiliate recruiting.

Affiliates can sign on to sell a product without your having to pitch it to them or convince them to sell it. All of the sales made through affiliates are tracked and accessible through your control panel. It will even take care of the banking hassles that small businesses have to deal with when selling items. Clickbank processes the orders for the product and approves the customers' payment. It also takes care of the bank inquiries that may be necessary, as well as questions from customers.

Opening an account with Clickbank is free, but there are other fees. Contact information must be given to the site by the vendor so that checks can be sent from Clickbank. When the time comes to sell a product, there is an activation fee required of $49.95. This is a one-time fee and opens the door to a lifetime of sales. When an item is sold, Clickbank also charges a fee based on the selling price. There is a $1 charge plus 1.5 percent of the sale. This is deducted directly from the sale and the vendor and the affiliate are sent the rest of the sales price.

When signing on to sell a product through Clickbank, you must specify the price that will be charged for your product. Then, decide what your commission rate for affiliates will be, with the maximum amount of commission allowed being 75 percent. Clickbank will then show the vendor a page where potential customers can find out how to purchase the product. A customer will click on an order link to buy the product, and is then shown a window with the price. Customers enter their credit card information which must be approved by Clickbank before the sale goes through. Upon approval, the commission is deducted from the price and sent to the affiliate and the rest of the price, minus Clickbank's fees, is sent to the vendor. The entire system is automated and the vendor has to do very little besides signing up and deciding a price and commission rate. Affiliate recruitment efforts are now underway in a highly automated fashion. The rest of the time may be spent looking for profitable joint venture partners.

There are more than 10,000 web businesses using Clickbank for its ease and effectiveness, which draws more affiliates than any other site of its kind. Clickbank works only with digital products, such as software and ebooks. These are items that are simple to sell online and don't need a complicated shipping process.

And by using Clickbank to set up your joint ventures, potential partners know that with the automated system they will be paid their commission as agreed. This takes a great deal of the risk out of a joint venture enterprise and may help garner the trust of potential partners. The sheer number of affiliates and potential partners also means that there is a very good chance that some of them will have products similar to your niche item, no matter how specialized it may be. Make sure to find a partner with a very similar item to use their customer list to its full advantage.

One downside to the Clickbank affiliate system is that you do not personally choose your affiliates. Affiliates are free to sign up with products they want to promote, so your influence is minimal. But, vendors do choose their joint venture partners, which gives an element of control over the businesses that will be endorsing your product. Joint ventures tend to be slightly more personal deals, with more interaction between the vendor and the partner than a vendor with an affiliate.

With joint ventures, getting your product out in the virtual marketplace and in front of interested customers has never been easier. Affiliate networks and joint ventures have the potential to help your business earn a steadily growing income with much less effort on your part. Your affiliate recruiting process is now in large part on autopilot.