Effective immediately, Linkshare is moving to weekly payouts and doing away with minimum amounts for those payouts.

From the official press release:

LinkShare, a leading pay-per-action marketing network, has announced an aggressive new payment plan for publishers in which it will pay publishers weekly, and from the first dollar earned.

By moving to a weekly payment schedule, LinkShare will reduce publishers' wait time to receive commissions and effectively double the number of paydays from its current plan.

The new schedule, combined with LinkShare's arrangement to pay publishers on everything earned over $1, rather than waiting for them to earn over $25 or $50 like other major networks, makes LinkShare the most publisher-friendly payment plan in the market.

The new plan is part of LinkShare's ongoing commitment to enhance its products and services to foster successful online partnerships between advertisers and publishers. Under the new payment schedule, LinkShare is helping publishers improve their cash flow so they can invest resources in their growing businesses.

The new payment schedule is effective immediately.

Payouts have always been a tricky subject with publishers and affiliates in the network economic model. Figuring out the best balance to ensure speed along with accurate and fair reporting has led to more than one affiliate and CPA network causing publisher uprisings.

It's too early to tell how the reaction will be from the Linkshare publishers, but I'm guessing this will be a positive. It's also too early to speculate if competitors Valueclick, Performics or ShareASale will follow suit or offer their own improvements on their repsective payout solutions as an enticement to new and existing publishers.

I'm not so sure that will be the case as the networks are continuing to evolve in their relationships with small and large publishers.