You may well have bought something from it in the past as it is one of the old-timers on the Internet now.

It's been around for years and has a very successful business model.

What it does is provide a central service for people to list products for sale and to recruit affiliates. Unlike running your own affiliate program you have no worries about taking payment from buyers, paying your affiliates or all the support enquiries this entails.

It really is your friend as an affiliate manager.

First, you have no worries about paying affiliates! Clickbank does it all for you and gives you the money that is left over. So there is no chance of you spending money that is meant to go to affiliates.

Second, it is less risk for your potential affiliates. They may not know that your friends call you Honest Jack and may be wary about signing up for an affiliate program and potentially not getting paid. They know that with Clickbank you, the affiliate manager, don't get involved in affiliate payments, it's all done by Clickbank on your behalf.

Third, It gives you the opportunity to automate your business completely. Clickbank takes care of everything for you, and all you need to do is occasionally open the mail and deposit a check. Yeah, I know it's inconsiderate of them to make you do this much work and it disturbs your day at the golf course, but I am sure you will manage. This automation is an incredible feature as it allows you to set a website up, promote it, get it high in the rankings and then leave it to do its stuff with NO involvement from you, the affiliate program owner.

Fourth, you (and your affiliates) have no worries over refunds, it's all done through Clickbank. In fact, you can almost have no contact with those pesky customers if you want to and just accept the cash!

Fifth, your product can be picked up by any one of hundreds of thousands of potential affiliates to be promoted or listed on a website with no involvement from you! As you are sleeping, relaxing and playing golf, people can be choosing to promote your product and setting up webpages all about it for you.

Admittedly the user interface looks like it fell off Noah's Ark and they still insist on paying by check instead of joining everyone else in the 21st century and using direct bank transfer.

However, this is a very small price to pay for the massive benefits that you, the affiliate manager, can gain from using Clickbank to promote your affiliate program. It's sheer size and effectiveness allows you to forgive its shortcomings.