If you do a large number of online businesses, you have probably heard or done affiliate marketing. By affiliate marketing, I mean "someone else who promotes your goods for a commission".

Any business that has an affiliate program must use some kind of affiliate marketing software to track affiliates, links, click statistics, sales, commissions, etc. This is almost impossible to do manually, so systems like Affiliate Pro or JEM do the work for you.

If you are like me, you might have tried several types of affiliate marketing software and found them not as you wanted, wasting money and valuable time (some might be difficult to manage). This type of software comes in four types:

• Affiliate Tracking
• Shopping Trolley
• Content Manager
• All-in-one package

Depending on your business goals, each type of affiliate marketing software is very different from the next one. Not only is buying the wrong type frustrating, but it can also make you lose a lot of money in sales and promotions.

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Affiliate Tracker:

Affiliate trackers do what their name suggests – track affiliates, their links, and their commissions. They manage the registration and entry process for current and potential affiliates and provide their special links to start using to promote your business for commissions.

Shopping Trolley:

This type of affiliate marketing software handles product purchases and money exchanges. Many people who try to start an affiliate program realize after they spend a lot of money and time on an affiliate tracking system that they cannot sell anything to be promoted by affiliates.

This is a common misconception. The shopping cart works with payment gateways like Paypal to make products, process orders, and track their progress. In this way, the affiliate software knows that a product was purchased and which affiliate referred it, but did not handle the product buying process like a shopping basket.