There has been a lot said and written about Clickbank and most of it is glowing about what a great organization it is and a great marketplace.  But there is no company or even internet service that is perfect.  So as you study getting involved with the Clickbank “movement”, it is good to know the great things that this, the largest internet marketplace ahs to offer.  But it is also to know the weaknesses of Clickbank as well.   That way you don’t have any surprises and nothing comes up to surprise you once you are an active member of the community.

Clickbank definitely puts their best foot forward in taking good care of their merchants and their affiliates.  And that is as it should be because these two large communities are the very reason why the service is such a smashing success.  So without question the ease at which you can sign onto Clickbank, set up an account as a merchant or as an affiliate and be right into the middle of the marketplace makes this one of Clickbank’s greatest advantages.

The only negative about not only the ease of getting started on Clickbank but of the hundreds or thousands of glowing reviews and articles about the service is that it is easy for a “newbie” to come to Clickbank thinking that with 20 minutes of signup, they will be making big money in the Clickbank marketplace.  Of course, seasoned Clickbank veterans know that the laws of economics have not been suspended in the world of Clickbank and the law that says “you only get back what you put into something” still is in full force even here on the internet.  So there is work to be done to become really prosperous on Clickbank.  But because the potential return on the investment is so huge, that effort is likely to pay you back handsomely.

The customer service side of the ClickBank corporate culture is both their strongest hand to play and their Achilles Heal in many respects.  Clickbank has done a superior job of setting up policies and an approach to customer service that is clear to the customer and easy to take advantage of.  The language of their help pages is well done and Clickbank maintains a live help desk so there is never a time when a customer cannot get help to move to the next phase.  So this is one business area that Clickbank truly shines at.

The Achilles Heal which also comes form their zeal to offer world class customer service is the Clickbank refund policy which while certainly a great policy for the customer, it is one that causes endless problems for Clickbank, its merchants and affiliates.  In context all products sold in Clickbank are digital products.  That means a digital copy is delivered after the sale.  But this also means that the very idea of a “return” is absurd.  And yet Clickbank has an iron clad, no questions asked refund policy.

This policy opens the door for massive problems because there really is no way to check customers who are buying digital products and then filing for a refund.  That means that this refund policy is basically open season for shoplifting or theft on Clickbank.  Any customer that wishes to can purchase a product, pay for it and download it or acquire the product and any product keys or codes needed to use it.  Then it is just as easy to get a refund as there is that “no questions asked” policy.  So that customer can virtually continue to get products, pay for them and then cash in on the refund.  Since there really is no such thing as a “return”, they get to keep the product free of charge.

It’s a virtual authorized and legal method of getting free products from Clickbank.  It’s a problem that Clickbank is addressing as best they can. One possible solution that will only work on some products is a follow up usage code.  You can issue a temporary code to enable the product to work for the timeframe of the refund period.  Then you can implement internal timings into the software so the customer must receive a permanent code after the trial or refund period passes.  In that way if customers “steal” your digital product, it’s only for a few weeks.  But obviously this solution won’t work for every product.

The Clickbank Guide

Getting a new product out on Clickbank is always a moment of supreme optimism.  What we envision is getting a product out there on the marketplace that truly takes it by storm and is one of those big sellers people write books about.  And there is not reason to believe that any one product on Clickbank might just get there.

It’s good to go into this kind of situation with your eyes wide open though and be aware that one thing can put a monkey wrench into the best marketing plan for a product.  And that is the Clickbank refund policy.  Now a good refund policy has to be at the very heart of a marketplace like Clickbank so people can buy with confidence knowing they can get a refund if the time comes.  And since Clickbank is a full fledged merchant account in its own right, they can handle refunds directly.

Clickbank Refund Policy

Unfortunately a refund policy that is iron clad is also an open door for people trying to scam the system.  Even for the best of products with a huge army of happy and satisfied customers, you will be asked for a refund from time to time.  That is to be expected.  But when what is happening is someone is trying to get your product for free milking the refund policy from Clickbank, that’s just wrong.

The Clickbank extensive tracking system tells us that five percent of sales in their marketplace come back as refund requests.  When you give a buyer a refund, you might hear any sort of complaint. Some of them are legitimate and others are bizarre.  And others just won’t offer an explanation for why they want the refund.  For many of these refund requests, the odds are you are dealing with an unethical buyer.

The problem is that all of ClickBank’s products are digital products.  That means your e-book, your software product or your music can be downloaded and paid for and then the buyer can ask for a refund, no questions asked. And because the product is digital, it’s pretty silly to ask for the product back as they have a copy on their computer and perhaps copied to other computers.  You can paint it like you want, its just plain theft no mater how you cut it.

This is a tough problem to solve.  Even if the entire Clickbank community banned together to fight the problem, about the only possible solution is pretty weak.  A reference system could be created that recorded users who were habitual customers of the refund policy.  Then if that reference system actually worked, you could conceivably refuse service to a refund policy abuser who had been “busted”.    But this is a system fraught with holes at best.  A refund abuser is intestinally stealing product so they are going to be one step ahead of your tracking list.  It simply is not that hard to come back into Clickbank as a customer with a new ID and new credit and your tracking system is out the window.

It would be nice to come to the end of our discussion with an announcement that the problem has been solved.   But that is not the case yet.  Clickbank is aware of the problem and is putting time and effort against it.  But for now we will have to wait until Clickbank comes up with a solution.  But its still worth supporting a strong refund policy because that is what makes Clickbank a solid marketplace.  And if you do have to entire a 5% refund but keep 95% of the sales Clickbank delivers to you, that still is not too shabby.

The thing that is so great for you when you sign on to be an affiliate in Clickbank is also the thing that can be so frustrating about the marketplace and that is how big it is.  With over 10,000 products available for you to promote, just the task of discovering them all and then selecting and organizing them, can be a real challenge.  And if you have wrestled with how to get as much Clickbank product in front of your customers and still keep an orderly system you can work with and your customers can use, a little help goes a long way.

As with a lot of marketing needs though, Clickbank has a way to help you kick your management of the huge Clickbank catalog to another level.  The resource they give you is the Clickbank Mall which is a tool you can have for free that is a great way to organize product.  It can also be a huge boost to your sales and profitability as well.  There are extra profits to be made using the Clickbank Mall and promoting the Clickbank products using the mall concept.  So this one tool can create various streams of income for you just doing what you already do well, marketing products on Clickbank.

Free Clickbank Mall

Because you can use the Clickbank Mall concept to organize the better products on Clickbank into understandable categories, you make it a lot easier for your customers to find the things they want to buy through you.  The potential for commissions becomes quite lucrative as many Clickbank affiliates have reported up to 75% commissions and the ability to market thousands of Clickbank products because of the organizational power of the Clickbank Mall.

One way that the Clickbank Mall is so profitable is that it can serve as a way to centralize the use of some powerful internet marketing tools that Clickbank makes available.  When you set up a Clickbank marketplace, you can provide webmasters with a free Clickbank search box that will bring customers right to your mall to make purchases.  Then whenever a customer uses that search box, you get a commission on top of your existing Clickbank commission as a direct Clickbank affiliate.  It is yet another layer of profitability for you.

On top of these benefits, Clickbank has an advertising mechanism that works much like the Google Adsense approach but it far more profitable because it is targeted at the Clickbank affiliate team and enhancing your profitability, which of course makes them and the merchants on Clickbank more profitable as well.  You can use the Clickbank Ads free and they even better than Adsense because you earn a commission by the sale rather than just by the click so your take per sale is far greater than the tiny amounts pay per click can generate.

The beauty of the Clickbank mall is that once you step through the process of creating your own free mall, it really will become your marketing presence that you can use as your total front end for your affiliate business.  In laymen’s terms that means that if you have been looking for a way to make a lot of money through internet marketing using affiliate sales but you don’t want the overhead and fuss of your own web site with all the cost and technical effort that takes, the Clickbank Mall is the perfect solution.  You can of course use your existing web property and expand the marketing value with the search bar and links that will make the Clickbank Mall work virtually as another page of your web site.

But if you have been looking to get into internet marketing in a big way without the burden of a web site, this is the perfect solution for you also.  The Clickbank Mall will generate a fully functional marketplace web site that can provide the front end for your sales and generate large volumes of Clickbank sales but still be presented to your customers as your web site and your marketplace.

When you begin to get moving using this powerful feature of Clickbank, the money making functions that are still to discover will continue to convince you that this is a great way to go.  And the more you exploit this resource, the more money you make for yourself and your partners.  That’s why this is such a great tool that Clickbank provides to its affiliates.

A lot has changed in the world because of the internet and nowhere is that more noticeable than the publishing industry.  At one time the big publishing houses ruled the land like wizards from stone castles and any fledgling author who wanted to have a prayer to get a book published had to scale those walls.  That meant a lot of talented writers and some excellent books never saw the light of day because the executives in those companies did not see a profit margin in it for them.

Just as in the music industry where music distributing has been completely overhauled by the internet, publishing has gone through a similar revolution.  It’s a people’s revolution too because no longer is it the large publishing houses that tell the public what they can or cannot read.  Now good authors can get their works out there simply by producing an ebook.  And merchandising services like Clickbank have completed the cycle by making merchandising, marketing and distribution a breeze as well.

There was a time that the term “self publishing” created the image of some pitiful quack with an axe to grind paying one of those do it yourself companies to put his book into prepaid print to be sold out of the back seat of his car.  But there is a new respectability to self publishing because so many ebooks have reached the public that were of just as high a quality anything the big publishers could have put out.  And for the aspiring author, moving to an internet based business model when it comes to publishing your book makes a lot of sense.

It is the ability of even writers just starting out to be a big success with online publishing that has made this revolution possible.  And there is no doubt that the reason for that ability becoming so easy for writers to access is due in a large part to Clickbank.  Clickbank being an internet marketplace devoted 100% to digital product sales and distribution is an ideal place for an ebook writer to find success.  And by simply going through the well known steps for merchandising their works, an author doesn’t have to become an “expert” internet marketer at all, just be good at following directions.

Step one is simply to write your book.  You, the author know how to do this and the merchandiser doesn’t need to teach you your craft.  A word processor any sort is a fine tool for the composition and you can put the finished product together as a PDF file or as a compiled ebook using a commercially available ebook compiler.

Now to give Clickbank what they need to merchandise your ebook, you will need a very simple web site.  This doesn’t have to have dancing babies on it, just basically two pages of html that can respond to internet traffic flow when Clickbank sends it your way.  After setting up the web site, just follow ClickBank’s instructions to set up the ecommerce software on the site which will also make possible the payment for the book.  That’s all you need and you have the means to make a lot of money selling your ebook on Clickbank.

Now you are free to play with that web site and make it as elaborate as you wish.  But the beauty of the simplicity of the basic Clickbank system is it can work at the barebones level just fine and let you go back to do what you are good at doing and what you love to do which is to write.  As you compose your next masterpiece, things will be happening in the marketing of your existing book on the market that you don’t have to do a thing to help along.

The 150,000 affiliates on Clickbank will get wind of this new exciting ebook product and they can quickly link it into their sales mechanism without even telling you it happened.  That means that a virtual internet marketing army will be able to sell your book with complete liberty taking their small commission and bulging out your bank account while you never know who they are and you never will know.  All you know is the market value of your book will be fully realized on Clickbank which means financial stability for you.  And for a creative soul, that is a highly prized commodity.

Clickbank eBook

Venturing into the world of the Clickbank marketplace requires that we start from a fresh slate and not go in with any presumptions.  The two presumptions that seem to slow people up the most is that Clickbank is for internet guru types who know every trick of the trade of internet technology and marketing to be successful.

But Clickbank isn’t a marketplace that requires that you have tremendous technical knowledge to use.  The designers of Clickbank have made most of the functions you need to operate either as a merchant or as an affiliate in the system fairly easy to use.  That is one of the keys to why Clickbank is so successful.  So to smooth your entrance into using Clickbank, it pays to look at the inner workings of the gears of Clickbank to get a feel for what you should expect when you sign up and want to get going fast making money there.

Like a lot of successful online markets, Clickbank doesn’t make anything and it doesn’t sell anything.  The value Clickbank adds to the world of internet commerce is that it provides a “place” for vendors of digital products can place their goods for sale and for people skilled in marketing to take those products and sell them to a large internet community.  Clickbank has cashed in on two basic principles which are (1) people who make things don’t like to do marketing and (2) people who love to do marketing don’t like to make things.   By getting these two groups together, merchants, affiliates and Clickbank all take away a nice profit because each makes the other successful.

Clickbank then at its core is a clearing house that works as a meeting gourd for merchants, affiliates and customers who can order the product, pay for it and download it or receive it by some other digital delivery system.  It is very important to understand that Clickbank ONLY DEALS IN DIGITAL PRODUCTS.  So you cannot sell clock radios, salt shakers or children’s clothing through Clickbank.  If you were looking at Clickbank for any other than a digital product, look elsewhere for market such as eBay.  The kinds of products Clickbank will allow to be sold include ebooks, computer courses, digital music and software programs and games.

Clickbank also offers real value to both merchants and affiliates because they handle all of the financial details and take a lot of the administrative work off of its members.  Clickbank operates a fully functional merchant account so there is no need to use PayPal, 2co or any other funds management system.  The handling of money is secure so when a sale is made, the money goes to Clickbank who then pays the affiliate his or her commission, keeps what is deserves by way of commission for the sale and delivers the balance to the merchant efficiently and without fail.

The “gears” of selling on Clickbank are simple and straightforward.  To get set up, you step through the registration procedure as you would with any membership service online.  For a merchant, there is a one time set up fee of $50 which should be easy to make back because Clickbank can get your product into the hands of over 150,000 affiliates which represent a customer base that numbers in the millions.

Once you have you account, you begin listing your digital products in the marketplace.  You don’t need many accounts for more than one product as Clickbank can be used to sell up to 50 products under one account identity.  Once you have completed setting up the product on the service, you then take a link that is given to you which can be used to direct customers to your Clickbank product listing and you put it on your web site.  When affiliates pass customers to Clickbank to sell them the product, Clickbank will take them to your web site to use that link to complete the ordering process.  It is a truly collaborate process and yet entirely seamless because Clickbank has taken care of the details.

You have a little more information to give to Clickbank such as the commission you will give to affiliates who sell your products and the URL for the “Thank You” web page that you will use to assist the customer in downloading what they bought.  And with those simple steps, you are a Clickbank merchant.  It’s as easy as that.

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