Archive for July, 2008

Time to Give Up on Clickbank?

• July 23, 2008 • 76 Comments

Resolved: I've decided to stay with Clickbank.

For years and years I have been saying Clickbank is an awesome payment processor.  People always complain that they don't add features quickly enough (like two-tier payments, recurring payments), but I consider that a good thing... it's always the same.

To be honest I already have my buttons coded to default to PayPal, but show a Clickbank button if my visitor comes from affiliate traffic.

The "straw that broke the camel's back" today was... they told me they wouldn't approve my product, because it mentions list building!

I have heard of lots of stories before from other Internet marketers because their sales letter mentioned list building or social marketing.  CB doesn't want you promoting stuff like this because they had problems with people promoting spam-related products.

They lumped it all together into one category, and double opt-in e-mail marketing done correctly definitely isn't spam.  It's very difficult to write any infoproduct on internet marketing without talking about list buildling.

I can also understand if they were to ban infoproducts that mention list building and NOTHING else.  I go into list building several times but that's definitely NOT the focus of most of my products.

Many people I know changed the phrase "list building" to "autoresponder building" or just removed the list building content from the sales letter.

I removed what they asked from the sales letter, but they tell me I have to remove it from the product as well.

What the F!!!  Maybe it's time to move somewhere else.

  • I don't have 100% of my products on Clickbank but for those that do, affiliates who refer people to my blog automatically get credited if I mention any of my products on the blog.
  • I store affiliate cookies for 365 days instead of Clickbank's 60 days.
  • I have upsells on almost all my offers, so an affiliate might promote a $40 product for 50% commission and end up getting 50% commission on a $247 sale instead.
  • I make sure to HIDE the non-Clickbank upsells when an affiliate sends me traffic.

Basically here are the pros and cons of Clickbank for me...

PROS

  1. Lots of affiliates -- no signup.
  2. I already have lots of Clickbank backlinks from affiliates... changing processors would screw some of those people.
  3. Automatic payment to affiliates (none of this mass pay crap).
  4. Easy affiliate links -- no super-long links like most affiliate networks.
  5. Clickbank Marketplace - high traffic.
  6. All my payment links are already setup for Clickbank.

CONS

  1. They don't approve list building products.
  2. Affiliates lose a lot of sales.
  3. Higher than normal refund rates.
  4. Doesn't allow squeeze pages (even if they are tagged with the affiliate ID).
  5. Waiting to get paid, plus they lose my checks and refuse to send new ones sometimes.
  6. $250 price limit for me and it can only go up to $500 (I have an $800 product in the works)
  7. Have to wait for product approval.

More pros than cons, maybe I should start bailing out.

The ONLY payment processor I would move to, if I left Clickbank, is PayDotCom since it's at the point where many internet marketers have an account already.  (None of this 2Checkout, AlertPay, iKobo garbage.)

Do you use Clickbank?  Do you use PayDotCom?  Would you make the switch from Clickbank even if it meant pissing off a few affiliates?

Please comment below...

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