There is an outstanding thread taking place at Search Engine Watch for those of you that are deeply involved in the affiliate industry. The thread is about Favorite Affiliate Management Software and is already on post number 11.
Stuntdubl, WMW mod & WeBuildPages SEO, asks about some good choices for affiliate management software. He specifically wants to know which ones pass link popularity and are not too expensive. Linkconnector has a solution for this, but he says that is a bit on the expensive side these days.
Moderator of the forum, 5starAffiliatePrograms, gives some outstanding advice.
UltraLinks - www.ultra-affiliate-software.com claims that they are the only ones that do true direct linking to help link pop. They don't use any type of redirection. Users go straight from the affiliate link to your website. They also don�t tack a query string on the end of your URL. Again I can see some advantages from the ad blocking perspective and also giving affiliates links that don't look like standard tracking links, could improve click through for affiliates. HOWEVER I have never tested this software and am not endorsing it in any way. Just trying to offer an answer based on what I know about. Do your own due diligence.Another POSSIBLE option - don't know for sure is www.AffiliateClicks.com MYAP's baby brother from Kowabunga. Since Kowa raised the MYAP price so steeply, I need to find out more about this one for smaller merchants. Need to talk to Wade and Todd about the differences.
The thread also gets into a deep discussion about the concept behind an affiliate management software passing link popularity. I'll save that for a separate entry, coming up right now.