Kolimbo is an affiliate network which differs from some other popular ones like clickbank, Comission Junction, and paydot.com Kolimbo is a more open network for affiliates and merchants to connect and sell or promote products. Most people use it for tanginble goods, similar to Comission Junction. To compare, clickbank and paydot.com are more focused on downloaded content for electronic delivery.

Kolimbo doesn’t charge fees for transactions like the above mentioned places. They also allow the merchant to drive buyers to their site directly, which can help with search engine ranking by building backlinks from their affiliates. The dowside to this is they don’t do the payment processing. For clickbank, they charge a fee, but they do handle the financial transactions as well. Paydot.com can link purchases through your Paypal account, which reduces the fees from clickbank’s 8 percent, down to the 3 percent Paypal charges merchants.

Kolimbo does have optional campaigns where they will do the full management of your products, which none of the others offer. They are best if you have a tangible product (not an electronic download) and especially for higher ticket priced items, since they don’t have transaction fees which can really reduce margins.

As an affiliate, Kolimbo shines since you can promote a merchants products and their third party system “keeps everyone honest”. Sending direct traffic to any company is a risk, as you’re relying on them to acknowledge your sales, and simply put, some places pad the books or don’t credit sales properly. I have seen this happen personally, and would only do affiliate marketing with a place like Kolimbo, Clickbank, or Paydot.com reporting the transactions and credit to both parties.

Overall, Kolimbo is good if you have tangible products and you want to build an affiliate network, or don’t have the expertise and want them (for a fee) to do it for you. Comission Junction might be their next closest competitor, as they specialize in tangible goods, but they do charge comission fees.