clickbank

Can You Trust Clickbank?

Hey how’s it going it’s Sam Frost here from reviews boss calm back with a another Clickbank video today I’m asking are going to be answering the question whether or not you can trust Clickbank so I’ve seen a few people ask this I’ve had people ask me this through comments on my website and contact form messages and all sorts of things like that basically can you trust Clickbank

so what I’m going to do in this video is cover really

sort of key angles from which we can look at this because there’s actually a few different ways you have to look at Clickbank you’ve got to look at it as just Clickbank as a whole. So can you trust the whole sort of business model they’ve got? You want to look at Clickbank from the perspective of affiliates. Can you trust the platform as an affiliate? Can you trust it as a vendor? And also can you trust it as a customer if you’re buying a product on there, so this will be a slightly longer video, but hopefully you’ll find it helpful. As with all my videos in this channel, it’s largely me talking with some screen recording in the background, but hopefully you’re cool with that concept. So as far as the bigger picture goes Can you trust Clickbank? I think you can, you know, long storey short that’s been around for a long time. You know they’ve been in business for number of years now and I don’t think you get to be as big as you are. So this is successful as you are if you’re not a trustworthy business. Now that doesn’t mean that people don’t have complaints and what I’ll do in this video is talk a bit more about where some of those complaints tend to come from. But as a whole, I think Clickbank is a trustworthy platform. You know, if you’re looking to buy a product or sell a product or be an affiliate, you can trust Clickbank, you know, to not sort of rip you off that they’re set up in an honest and ethical fashion in terms of how they operate. Now, what I do want to do is preface that by saying there are some things you need to be aware of as to how the platform works, and a lot of that is where some of the accusations of Clickbank being untrustworthy have come from. So what we’ll do first to start by looking at whether you can try Clickbank from the perspective of a customer so but customer owning the end user is buying the product. So you might find yourself in the position of asking this question if someone’s recommended you a product maybe you’ve gone to a website you’ve clicked on a link and it’s taking you to product Oh use you know, let’s say you’re trying to learn French and then as part of learning French someone has recommended that you buy rocket languages or you’re trying to learn how to sing and someone’s recommended that you get Superior Singing Method. And so you’ve seen that the product is sold through Clickbank probably when you’ve got to the checkout process. You will have seen that it takes you off to a Clickbank page and maybe you’re sitting here thinking Oh, can I trust Clickbank are they going to take my payment details are they gonna you know, relieve me of money any of that kind of thing? Well, truth is no you can definitely trust Clickbank in this regard. You know, they’ve got a good secure payment processing gateway you don’t need to worry about that. I mean, Clickbank for customers is very trustworthy in terms of how the platform operates. You always want to be careful with anytime you’re buying anything online or handing over personal information. So you know, you want to make sure that you check for the security symbol in the top left corner of the screen. You know, you want to make sure that you know you’re sort of progressing through a legitimate Clickbank interface you know, not that I’ve heard of that happening but I guess they would possibly be people out there who might fake a sort of Clickbank you know, checkout process and then actually use it to steal your details. So just because Clickbank is a Trusted Platform as a customer doesn’t mean that common sense doesn’t fly, you still need to think about these things and sort of use your common sense head that you should use when you’re operating online because there are people out there who want to get you with bad stuff. You know, the another reason you can trust Clickbank as a customers, they do have a very generous refund policy that’s pushed on the vendors. You know, you have to offer a 60 day money back guarantee on your products. You can’t you know, sell them With a shorter refund window, at least that’s my understanding. I don’t think there’s any way around it. So if you’re sitting there thinking all what if I buy this product and it’s not good and then the vendor doesn’t want to refund me? Well, the first port of call is always to go back to the vendor and ask for a refund.

But in most vendors are really good at just giving you the money back because the marginal cost of making a digital sale is not very high. Some though some less scrupulous ones are sometimes a higher value products, you know, they will try and keep you, I guess, you know, rectify the situation. Maybe if you didn’t quite like the product, they might offer your bonus or something like that. And, you know, sometimes people will complain there they’ll say, all vendor on Clickbank tried to, you know, stop me from getting a refund, if that happens, and you really just need the refund, just come here and go to support and go to the order support, which is this piece here, you know, and that will help you get your refund or your cancellation of a rebuilding subscription or anything like that. So from a purely end user perspective, Think you know if you’re buying a product that is sold through Clickbank you don’t really have anything to worry about it is a good platform that should look after you you know it enables smooth and efficient delivery of the product it you know it helps keep your payment data secure all that sort of stuff you know you’ve got good support if the vendor falls through so definitely Clickbank is good in that regard now where the sort of trustworthiness of Clickbank you know, arguments of common and sort of you know, some people are not so funded it is from a couple of different angles mainly looking at vendors and affiliates. So if we look at vendors one bone of contention with indoors has always been the 60 day refund policy that Clickbank forces now the reason Clickbank does this is because especially going back a while but even now Clickbank products that there’s some niches that have horrendously high refund rates for various reasons. The best example is the make money online niche so there’s tonnes and tonnes of products on Clickbank About a business and a marketing. There’s just just heaps and heaps of them just, you know, endless numbers. And the problem with a lot of these products is a lot of them aren’t that good. I think Clickbank has done work to clean up the marketplace, but there’s a lot of crap on the marketplace to be honest. You know, especially, I mean, when I first started on Clickbank from about 2007, I mean, some of the trash that was being sold on here was just unimaginable. And even today, there are a lot of these products especially in make money online space that that promise a huge amount. You know, we’ve all seen the overhyped claims, you know, copying anything that’s like copy and paste method to make, you know, thousand dollars a day passively. Part of the problem is people buy into the hype and the whole way that a lot of the vendors operate. Now who was selling these products is they know they’re going to have massive refunds. But as long as the sales pace outstrips the refunds, you know, this selling the up sales on the back end and all that kind of stuff. They’re making bank, you know, They’re doing really really well and people make money like you wouldn’t believe on Clickbank selling some of the stuff but one area where people say can I trust Clickbank or can you trust Clickbank is if you’re a vendor and you’re selling a legitimate product a really good one. And then basically you’ve got this problem whereby you know you often you’re selling an information product and because of the 60 day refund period, most people will have consumed that product within 60 days. Like if I buy an E book, I’ll generally read it within a day. You know, often I’ll buy something before I’m getting on a plane for a couple of hours flying over to Australia for work or something like that. I’ll read it on the flight and then I’m done. Now what was happening and what still happens a lot of specially in some of these niches like make money online health and fitness, self help. You know, the big sort of big money making niches is people know how Clickbank refund policy works, especially people who bought multiple products as end users. And so they’ll buy your product for 100 bucks, 50 bucks, whatever. They’ll consume it and then they’ll refund it and get their money back because ultimately Clickbank requires you to give a refund. Now the reason they require that refund is because the refund rates are so high and if they didn’t do that it basically cuts down on chargeback. So any merchant platform you know Clickbank being one hates charge backs because charge backs basically threaten the they almost threaten the viability of your business because obviously most people pay online with credit cards and because Clickbank can get a whole lot of charge backs and if their refund policy wasn’t so tight, you know if someone buys a product for $500, a master class on copy and paste online, immediate profits, buys it realises it’s a load of crap. You know, can’t get a refund so issues a chargeback through their credit card company. well enough of those could get Clickbank shut down. So my understanding is basically the arrangement Clickbank has there’s still the old chargeback here and there, but basically the arrangement they’ve got with credit card companies is look You know, we forced this really long refund period onto the indoors and therefore onto affiliates as well. And in exchange that that, you know, we cut down the risk of challenge packs and therefore you’ve got to keep giving us payment processing facilities. Because you know, most platforms most businesses don’t allow for products like this you know, it’s not normal to allow such a long refund period you know, I do see people do it on other platforms. I mean, I’ve bought info products where you have a year’s refund you know, lifetime refund, but Clickbank you know, with the volume of business that doing this is one of those real buttons of contention because as a vendor you can make all these sales of a really legitimate good product that some people are just unscrupulous and refund that for no good reason. And the thing is, Clickbank doesn’t discriminate between a legitimate refund request, and one that’s like I bought the product and I’ve used it and now I just want my money back. It’s a bit like going to you know shop buying a shirt to wear out to a party on the weekend and then taking it back on the Monday because you don’t want to wear that shirt again it’s really no different now with physical products that’s harder to do but with with Clickbank I did make it easy so a lot of vendors wonder, can you trust Clickbank because of this refund system and ultimately, that’s just something you have to be comfortable with. If you aren’t comfortable with that concept, look to a different platform. You know, if you don’t need affiliates, maybe you just want to sell a product online to your own audience. I would probably say don’t use Clickbank as a vendor. You know, if you don’t see affiliates being a big part of what you want to do that you’re better off with your own system. You know, even things like Shopify now make it super easy to set up an online store for info products or software or anything like that. There’s heaps and heaps of options. Things like gum road are super easy. And you can specify your own refund policy and all that kind of stuff. Because I do agree that if you have a legitimate product, you know, you shouldn’t have to offer a refund. Just because someone has changed their mind after 60 days you know I think Clickbank would Copley’s hate here if if they said Hey, you got 24 hours or 48 hour refund window for any reason and then up to 60 days thereafter if you know, but maybe there’s like a dispute process or something like that, but that’s never going to change because Clickbank has to reduce the risk of challenge packs because that has a massive risk on a business model. So can you trust Clickbank from the perspective of a vendor look, you can but you just have to be aware of how this refund thing works and what it can do to your business. Because obviously, it’s really frustrating you make a whole lot of sales and then you know 59 days later they will get refunded and you haven’t made the money you thought you’re gonna make me maybe you’ve already spent it I don’t know. Now that leads us on to the last piece for this video, which is can you trust Clickbank if you’re an affiliate, and this is generally where most of the sort of, you know, anchor, an anchor anxiousness comes from around Clickbank So once again, as I mentioned with the vendors The refund policy on Clickbank can really affect you as an affiliate, I have had it so many times, there’s a couple of, you know, high end info products that I recommend, you know, that are up sort of, you know, 567 801 of them’s about thousand dollars and some good products, you know, I only recommend products that I actually genuinely recommend. But of course, with an expensive product like that, especially anything in the make money online space, people will buy it, they realise that spending $1,000 doesn’t mean that they’re going to click their fingers and start making a grand a day every day. There’s actually work goes into it. It’s hard, hard work seriously hard work. And so what happens is, you know, you see that nice juicy commission come into your account, and then lo and behold 50 days later, 35 days later, whatever that money is refunded. And as an affiliate that can actually cause a whole lot of problems because you can wind up in a situation where Clickbank paid you out for some sales, but then you get refunds like later on in a sort of now the payment side And depending on the value of the product you sold and was successfully paid out on versus the value of the products refunded you might actually want to owing Clickbank money now my understanding is they don’t sue you for the balance but they’ll keep harassing you saying that you know you need to square this off with accounts and then what they can do is actually shut your account down as well you know, it’s it’s really frustrating I personally don’t really think that’s that’s okay I think the way it should work as as an affiliate your balance should not be able to go below zero dollars just should be right you know, if people have if people have refunded the products you know, in Clickbank your clickbank account balance goes below zero dollars as an affiliate because you’ve you know, been paid out on some sales and then refunded on more later. Well, Clickbank, I think you’d have to wear that difference. You know, that’s, that should be the punishment they should have to face for their ridiculous refund policy. You know, or the fact that there’s no ability to sort of fight back against some of these lists. Genuine refund requests but that’s just my opinion. You know, obviously I welcome any other opinion that may come along as well. But yeah, can you trust Clickbank as an affiliate? Well, you have to be comfortable with the way that refund system works. Now, if you’re not comfortable with that, look at a different platform, maybe something like JV Zoo that be similar products on there, you know, and vendors have a bit more control or maybe in house affiliate programmes as well. Another thing you want to be aware of is a Clickbank affiliate as to whether you can trust the platform or not, is some people do have issues with vendors. It’s not so much Clickbank fault, but vendors

trying to do all sorts of unscrupulous things with overriding affiliate cookies. So a classic example where you say this is you a landing page for a product that has some kind of newsletter opt in. So you know, the landing page should be selling the product, but then the vendor will say I’ll get our free secret, you know, seven day report or something like that seven day email course. And when the user signs up for that basically what happens is the link that comes out in the first email when someone clicks that goes back to the product sales page, it overwrites your cookie with one of their own, you know, or friends one or something like that. And then you’ve driven them the traffic that you actually get shot out of the sale. So you need to be wary of that. I’ll do a video on how you can spot some of these scams. They’re not that common. They’re not as common as they were, but it’s just something to be aware of. Some affiliates have claimed that Clickbank themselves sort of shave conditions. I don’t know if there’s any evidence for that, you know, I don’t want to accuse Clickbank of something that they haven’t done. I mean, I certainly know way back when I first did affiliate marketing, Clickbank and sort of did more than I do. Now. To be honest, most of the affiliate marketing I do through Amazon these days, um, you know, there was, I mean, I can definitely remember a time where I was making really, really consistent sales and most people who’ve claimed Clickbank shaving, or sort of, you know, put out official holds on your account or something like that. Most people have had a similar experience. You know, I was making really consistent sales every day hundred and 5200 bucks in commissions a day. And all of a sudden same level of traffic, same level of clicks, it would slow right down to, you know 20 $30. And what I did was just shut down that account open it shut it down, but I opened another one changed my links over and lo and behold, straight up to the same figure I was making. And some people theorise that what Clickbank is possibly doing is, you know, once you reach a certain level, maybe you know you’re making some sales, but you’re not quite a super affiliate, as some people call them. We’ve got good influence within the platform. Basically, they’re trimming a little bit of money here and they’re swapping out some hops. Who knows what goes on in the background. I don’t think they do that. It’s probably just you know, random coincidence, but it is something to be aware of some people do complain of that. So you know, be aware. The other thing that you do need to be aware of as well. And this is not just for affiliates, but it’s also for customers to is it as I mentioned other points in this video. There are a lot of crappy products on Clickbank it’s not as bad It was, but you know, ultimately there is a lot of junk on here, you know, people will create a product very quickly listed for sale, you know, a lot of the top selling products in my experience, more hype and marketing and they are substance and you know that they tend to lead to big refunds, you know, all sorts of problems. So, you know, you do want to do your research into the product you promote, ultimately, it’s, you know, let the buyer beware. But the problem with that if you’re a customer looking for reviews of a Clickbank product, it’s almost impossible in my experience to find a genuine review because if you search for, you know, product nine plus review, so if we search for it, you know, mobile monopoly two point O review, almost all of the top links you’ll find on Google will be affiliates of the product, who you know, you just read the reviews and they just usually the affiliate price release content, tweaked up a little bit and linking you straight through. So finding genuine reviews of Clickbank products can be very, very difficult. One way To find a piece of advice I can give is if you look for the product name and review and then go plus read it so read it is an online discussion board but what read it’s quite good at doing is is the way it’s set up you know people can still scan it but relatives tend to be pretty diligent at filtering that out so you can often find more honest reviews of products on there you know any kind of forum as well it’s probably easy to find a genuine review but my experience pretty much any Clickbank review even if you search almost Clickbank review you know honest product name review

7580 maybe even 90% of the reviews out there are just people who will say anything positive about the product to try and get a commission now I you know, I review Clickbank products I’ve got, you know, I’ve done it for years, but I do try to keep relatively honest reviews, obviously I want to make commissions as well. But you know, if I see a product that I really don’t like and don’t think it’s good, I will, you know, avoid using my affiliate link for it. So you You can get a good feel for whether that product is trustworthy or not. Because if it’s not good, I won’t try and make money off your purchase of it. But anyway to read this up, can you trust Clickbank? Yes, I think Clickbank is a good platform, they provide a useful service, you just have to be aware of the issues most of the issues to be honest stem from the fact that, you know, they’ve allowed selling of products and niches especially make money online health and fitness and relationships that just have a tendency to probably overhyped things a lot because there’s so much money to be made. And off the back of that you get tonnes of refunds. Because of that they need to avoid chargeback. So they have this really over the top refund policy which is great for customers that badge of indoors and affiliates. Like any affiliate network, there’s always gonna be accusations of shaving and thing I don’t think Clickbank is anywhere near as dodgy from an affiliate perspective as some of these you know, little second tier CPA networks which are really shady a lot of them. You know Clickbank is a genuine business not I think it’s just part of their perhaps tarnished reputation, if you will call it that simply comes from the fact that, you know, they, they’re relatively democratic, they you know, they allow people to buy and sell the products they want to buy and sell within reason. And you know, they sort of come along for the ride and they then they make a cut in the process. And you just have to be aware, you know, let the buyer beware let the affiliate beware let the vendor beware. And as long as you do that click banks have legitimate platform and I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble with it. So thank you so much for watching. If you’re interested in learning how to make money on Clickbank as an affiliate, click the link in the video description below and you can go and check out my recommended free training programme on Clickbank affiliate marketing. It’s called a filler Rama. Now filler Rama does have up cells up but you don’t have to buy them you can still get some good training for free, which is why I recommend it and it’s a good place to start. That’s my affiliate link if you click that, and then you buy any of the premium products. I’ll get But you don’t have to spend anything if you don’t want to. There’s good free training.

So thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you next time.

What Is Rebill On Clickbank?

Hey how’s it going? It’s Sam Frost here from the reviews boss.com YouTube channel back with another quick Clickbank video. Today I’m going to be looking at what Clickbank rebills are – you’ve possibly seen people talking about rebill on Clickbank before you know maybe you’ve you’ve

purchased something with a rebill and you’re not quite sure what it is.

But basically, let me give you the quick rundown. So there’s two types of product or two types of sale

on Clickbank ones are just a

standard buy at once and you get the product sale. And another one is recurring subscription. So a lot of vendors like selling recurring subscription products, because you you get customer once and they keep paying you money over and over again. You know, so a common sort of implementation will be that there’s a base product that you pay, you know, a one off price for and then there’s a upsell, which is a recurring subscription. So I’ll use an example of a product I know If we look here at product could fill aroma, there is a basic product. You know the basic product is those actually a free version of filler Rama then they were premium products like Philip blueprint, for example a pathway to passive or a fellow jet pack. So these are all sort of add on products that you buy one off cost, but then there’s a thing called a filler I’m a premium and that’s actually a rebill product. So each month there’s a charge I can’t remove what the charges off the top of my head, but there’s a ongoing subscription if someone signs up to a filler. I’m a premium. And you can see here a few stats around this. So you get a average rebill percentage of 50%. So of the subscription that occurs each month if someone stays subscribed the filler on a premium, you get 50% of the value and the average rebill total is $1,687 and 62 cents, which is Quite impressive indeed. So, rebill basically, it’s just Clickbank language for recurring subscription. So if you are a potential customer and you say something relating to rebill, it means that you’re going to be charged on a monthly basis for a ongoing subscription, you can cancel those, you know, much as with anything on Clickbank, you can cancel, you can’t, you know, you do need to be a little bit careful with rebills because where a lot of people get caught out, is they’ll buy the base version of a product heaps, heaps of products do this actually, heaps of vendors, in my opinion are a little bit naughty. But what they’ll do is they will have the basic version of the product, say a $50 ebook course. And then in the sales process and the sales sort of sign up sequence. There’ll be some kind of checkbox that says, hey, do you want our mastermind course or you know, monthly premium subscription, I will give you 30 days for free, and you can cancel before that and of course, people will hit the checkbox or sometimes the checkboxes even enabled by the Felt although I think Clickbank might crack down on that. And then what happens is you wind up getting that free trial to the premium product forgetting you’ve signed up for it and then hitting the rainbow. It’s a little bit like gym memberships right a lot of the ways that gyms make their money as people sign up and almost like forget they’ve got the membership and hardly use the product. And then, you know, most gyms my understanding is that will have heaps and heaps of members who basically never use the product never go there but they’re just paying money each month, sort of forgetting that they’ve got a subscription, maybe seeing the money eight go out and saying all I should cancel but keeping forgetting to do it. So really, that’s what rebills our subscription, repeating subscription products, affiliates library, those oftentimes because of the fact that they can make a sale and keep making money. There’s some discussion or contention around with our higher initial sale price, or sort of better rebill terms or advantageous, you know, because oftentimes who don’t hang around on the rebill for that long For information products in a little bit different for things like web hosting or software, where you have to keep paying the bills and sort of get the value, but some of these mastermind things that get up sold are often not that great and my experience and you know that they tend to rely on what I discussed before, which is someone buying subscription getting a free trial, you know, forgetting to cancel and sort of shifting over like that. So your Clickbank rebels, if you’re wondering what they are, they’re just recurring subscriptions. You know, vendors can like recurring subscriptions to their products for up sales, anything like that. You can even make it the default sort of purchase method of your product if it is something that needs a recurring subscription. And so just be aware of that if you do see people around you now know what it means. So thank you so much for watching. I’ll see you next time.

Where Is My Clickbank Affiliate ID?

Hey how’s it going Sam Frost here from reviews boss calm back with another really quick video looking again at Clickbank and in this video we’re basically going to show you or answer the question where’s my Clickbank affiliate ID I’ve covered this a couple of times in this channel but just want to cover it again because it’s still keep saying the same question so if you’re wondering where’s my Clickbank affiliate ID or where is my Clickbank ID and you’re not really sure what that means Allow me to explain so here’s Clickbank com homepage of the platform I’m going to assume that you’ve already created an account so when you created an account you would have created a username and that username becomes your Clickbank affiliate ID. So whatever your username is for Clickbank when you go to login so you can see here that the one that’s safe for me is this one here at MKTG. That is my Clickbank username which is also my Clickbank, affiliate ID or Clickbank ID so if you want to know where is my Clickbank ID all you need to know is that it is your Clickbank username. If you can’t remember what That is go back and look through your emails from when you signed up because it should be listed there somewhere and if you’re still stuck if you’re still not sure you can actually contact support as well and basically say hey, here’s my email details can you look it up for me but you shouldn’t need to do that. So just remember that when you sign up for your clickbank account you create your account they’ll prompt you to give a username net username becomes your Clickbank affiliate ID. So if you’re ever asked for your Clickbank affiliate ID if you’re wondering where is my Clickbank affiliate ID, all you need to know is that it is your Clickbank username,

hopefully found that helpful. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

Clickbank How To Cancel Recurring Billing

Hey how’s it going? I’m back here with another affiliate marketing video looking at Clickbank again (make sure you read my Clickbank review) and today what we’re going to do is look at how you can cancel recurring billing on Clickbank so this is really more to be honest this video at people who may have purchased a product on Clickbank and a lot of Clickbank products contain rebuilds or sort of recurring subscriptions. Quite often when you buy a product, what will happen is they’ll be like a free trial offered or a $1 trial offered to an upsell. So you might go to buy a, you know, a $30 ebook, and then as part of the checkout process, it’ll be you know, do you want access to a mastermind programme, which is normally $100 a month that you’ll get the first month for $1 or you get the first month for free, and they’ll be somewhere along the checkout process a checkbox. And so a lot of times, you know, often through no real fault of their own customers wind up accidentally leaving those checkboxes checked or cheating And by mistake, we’re not really changing the terms and conditions. I know that the buyer needs to be aware but but some products are quite bad in my experience of trying to hide exactly how they’re going to get you with rebuilds. Not all of them but some of them. So, if you’re wanting to learn how you can cancel a recurring billing on Clickbank, there’s a couple ways to do it, the first thing you should look to do is actually contact the product vendor or directly. So when you place your order and made the purchase, you should have received some documentation including contact details for the vendor. So talk to the vendor first, email them, you know, they might have a support ticket system, depending on you know, the sort of professionalism of the vendor and sort of how big they are. smaller ones usually use email bigger ones often use support ticket systems. And you can always request a refund through there and cancellation of any subscription. Now, depending on the product you’ve got, there may also be an option within the product itself to cancel the subscription. So if there’s a login area to the product,

Login first in the first instance, have a look through Is there any option to cancel subscription? If there isn’t? Then contact the vendor. Say, Hey look, I want to cancel my recurring subscription. And if you don’t get any luck with that, remember that with Clickbank you’re always pretty well protected simply by the way that their refund policy and cancellation policy work. Clickbank pretty much always sides with the customer, which is a good thing for customers, it can sometimes cause some stress for affiliates and vendors because you do occasionally get people buying products who had no intention of ever keeping them they just buy it consuming information and request a refund. But that’s a topic for a different video. But if you are wondering how you can cancel recurring billing on Clickbank for product you’ve purchased and you have tried cancelling through the product interface if there’s an option and you’ve tried contacting the vendor and you haven’t had any luck, well the way you get it sorted finally as you come here and you click on Support, and you hover on support, and you click order support and that will open up A slightly different domain CLK bank.com. And then all you need to do is if you’ve got the order information in front of you, so the email address you used to place the order and the personal verification so last digits of the put in your order number will last four digits of your payment method or your zip code that will bring up your order. And then what you can do it if you follow the process from them, it’s laid out it’s really simple. And you contact Clickbank and they will basically force the cancellation of the subscription for you. So realistically, whatever happens, you’re going to be covered you’re going to be okay, um, you can always cancel us recurring subscription, what you do want to be aware of, of courses, a lot of people will buy a product that has a sort of free trial of the recurring upsell, and then think I’ll check it out and I’ll cancel before the date. And then you know, life gets in the way and you forget to cancel and you wind up getting charged, if that happens. So if you buy a product and it says, Hey, you know, if you buy today, we’ll give you 30 free days of our premium upsell, and then it’s $100 a month, set a reminder in your calendar, you know, for a few days beforehand, so that you, you can actually check out that product. Maybe you want to keep it I don’t know. But if you do want to cancel, at least you’re not at risk of forgetting that you’ve basically place that order because I when I used to work for a quite a well known vendor on Clickbank and I’d occasionally help out on customer support. That’s where we’d get a lot of complaints from eyes, people who, you know, they purchase the product, they got the free trial of the upsell, and then they’d forgotten to cancel it, they wanted to cancel it, they didn’t want the product or the upsell, but they basically let 30 days expire, and then we charge them automatically. It just happens automatically in the background. And then suddenly they’d say this, you know, $50 or $100 charge on the credit card statement and they’re like, hang on, I didn’t want that in the first place. So really important to bear that in mind as well. But yeah, if you’re wondering how you can solve recurring billing on Clickbank that’s how you do it really straightforward, easy to do. You know, start first with the product and the face if there’s no option then move on to contacting the vendor. And if that doesn’t get you any luck then you can go through the nuclear option which is contacting Clickbank themselves and they will make sure it gets cancelled for you. So thank you so much for watching. I’ll see you next time.

Is Clickbank A Scam?

is clickbank a scam

Here’s a question I get asked “through the grapevine” from time-to-time – ‘is Clickbank a scam?’. I’ve written quite extensively about Clickbank (including creating a very detailed review here) but this is still a common question that crops up from time to time.

Long story short – no Clickbank is not a scam. It’s a legitimate business that has been around for many years, and provides a valuable service allowing the sale and purchase of digital information products (and now some physical products as well). It also offers a proven, tested and reliable affiliate platform that has helped thousands of people worldwide – myself included – to earn great commissions and make money online.

All sounds great, right?

However, that doesn’t mean that Clickbank is perfect. With this in mind, where has that common question of  whether or not Clickbank is a scam actually come from?

Here are some reasons why this “misconception” exists:

  1. Product quality checking. This was more of a problem in the past, where Clickbank would basically approve just about any product on its platform. This led to a torrent of junk, especially in certain niches (make money online, weight loss etc). Now they are more stringent about product approvals. The problem was made worse by the fact that affiliates would take these already-shite products, and then overhype them to a completely absurd degree. For a very long time, it was a case of finding needles in a haystack when it came to getting good Clickbank products.
  2. Refunds & chargebacks.  On the affiliate and vendor side, this has always been a big problem with Clickbank that has led to accusations of the site being a scam. The problem is that Clickbank requires all vendors to offer a 60 day refund window to customers. My understanding is that this rule is in place basically to minimize the risk of chargebacks (as people can just refund instead of charging back). I think it’s also because Clickbank fundamentally know that a lot of their products are poor quality – and that their reputation as a platform could be ruined by not forcing a generous refund window. The problem with the 60 day window, and the fact that a vendor basically cannot dispute a refund request, is that you will rack up the refunds.
  3. Concerns of shaving affiliates. From time to time, affiliates pipe up and claim that Clickbank is “shaving” commissions. Basically, this means that a percentage of valid sales aren’t credited. This theory is exacerbated by the stats panel in your Clickbank affiliate dashboard, which shows ‘order form server calls’ that don’t always line up to the number of sales.
  4. Product types/niches. Clickbank is pretty much the home of digital info products in the make money online, weight loss, and pick up artistry niche. These niches are big because there are lots of people looking for a quick-fix, easy solution and they are generally “hungry” for that solution as well.

In conclusion, I want to reiterate that Clickbank is not a scam. It’s a legitimate, highly-functional platform that provides excellent opportunities for vendors and affiliates, and provides a lot of security to buyers due to safe payment processing and long refund windows. However, in the past Clickbank didn’t really do enough to sense-check the products on its network, meaning a lot of crap products were up for sale that promised the world and delivered little. Add into this the issue of chargebacks and long refund windows (which frustrated the heck out of affiliates and vendors alike) and it’s not hard to see why Clickbank hasn’t always had the best reputation.

However, they have done a lot of work in recent years to really tidy up the platform and make it a better place for everyone.

Clickbank Review

clickbank review featured image

Welcome back to another Reviews Boss review. This time I’m taking a slightly different tack and reviewing a popular online marketplace and affiliate program, Clickbank (abbreviated to “CB” at times).

When it comes to the sale of digital information products, probably only Amazon’s Kindle marketplace eclipses Clickbank. It is a powerhouse in the world of affiliate marketing, and a lot of popular digital products are sold through its payment and delivery gateway.

Clickbank also holds a very special place in my heart as the first platform upon which I made money online. Others have come and gone, but I will always have a special fondness for Clickbank. Just the name invokes some serious nostalgia for me!

I am going to cover CB from three different angles in this review, so it won’t be in exactly the same format that most of my other reviews are in. Instead, I will answer some common questions about the platform, and then look at its value from the perspective of:

  • Affiliate marketers looking to earn a commission by promoting other peoples’ products
  • Vendors looking to sell their own products online and earn money
  • Customers looking to purchase any of the products for sale on the CB Marketplace, or which are being promoted for sale via CB’s payment processing and delivery system

Clickbank Video Review

I’ve just launched a new video review on my YouTube channel. I suggest you watch this first before continuing. At the bottom of this page you’ll also find the full transcript of this video (if you’re interested in reading along!).

What Is Clickbank?

At its most basic level, Clickbank is an online sales platform that allows people who want to sell their products (known as vendors) to provide a suitable mechanism for retailing to the public.

clickbank review

Let’s say you have a great idea for a product, such as an eBook about ice water fishing (because you just LOVE ice water fishing).

You decide you want to sell it online, because you reckon other people are interested in ice water fishing and would buy from you an eBook on the subject. You create your product, and make it the very best it can be.

But now what? How do you actually go about selling it to the hopefully adoring public?

It’s not just as easy as slapping up a simple website and hoping for the best – you need to be able to guarantee the safety of buyers’ information, manage access to their product, and be able to process refunds etc if things do go wrong.

Whereas once upon a time you would have to sort out your own payment processor and secure download facility when trying to sell your product online, you can instead use Clickbank’s platform to allow you to provide a secure gateway for customers, collect payment, and ensure speedy and accurate delivery of your product.

Of course that is only half of the equation.

When I first started out on Clickbank (back in about 2007) it was much harder than it is now to sell digital products. Even physical eCommerce was out of reach for many. This meant there were fewer platforms that made it accessible for the “layperson” to sell their info online. Unless you were tech-savvy and capable of hacking together a decent cart and delivery solution, you needed to turn to a third party to sell your wares.

So part of Clickbank’s rise came from the fact that it was quite an early pioneer in terms of providing a simple, effective platform for people to sell their products online. Vendors could spend more time focusing on product creation and promotion than the nuts and bolts of how they would actually do the selling!

Another big part of Clickbank is its affiliate program, which is perhaps one of the most famous on the Internet. Many aspiring affiliate marketers – myself included – first cut their teeth with this legendary network. There are offers aplenty, and the accuracy of the Hoplink tracking system is very good which means you can rest assured that you will be credited with the sales you make. There are plenty of big time affiliates who make an impressive living on this network as well, so it’s not just for small time players. I will speak in more detail to Clickbank as an affiliate network later on in this review.

The affiliate element of CB is a feature that attracts a lot of vendors. If you can get successful and talented affiliates to promote your product, then you can make serious bank. Of course it’s not just a case of putting your product live and getting affiliates; there is legwork involved. But

And what about the humble customer who is buying a product that is being sold through Clickbank? Truth be told, you won’t notice much at all except for when you check your credit card statement and receipt email. The whole point of the system is to make everything as seamless and as integrated as possible – the power of the CB network is that it works hard in the background to protect your payment and give you your download, so that you don’t need to notice what’s going  on. That being said, I do have some comments later on in this review that specifically address some issues that product customers can run into from time to time.

The most commonly sold products on CB are information products (think eBooks, video training courses, audio guides) and software. I’m also starting to slowly see some physical products creep into the marketplace as well, which is an interesting development indeed. However, for the time being it remains clear that information products reign supreme on Clickbank.

Is Clickbank Legit?

One of the most common questions I see asked about Clickbank is whether or not it is a “legit” platform. On that basis, I’ve decided to address it early on in my review. What is most interesting is that this question gets asked both by customers looking to purchase products through CB’s payment gateway, as well as affiliates wondering whether or not they are going to get duped with stolen commissions or missed payments.

I have extensive experience with Clickbank from both sides of the spectrum; I’ve purchased a lot of products, and I have promoted as an affiliate. I have even worked for a business that sells a lot of its own products through CB, and helped a family member to sell their own product as well. Although I’m not a legendary, God-tier super affiliate, I nonetheless think I’m fairly qualified to answer the question of whether or not Clickbank is legit.

From the perspective of the customer who is buying the products sold through its marketplace, Clickbank is unequivocally legit. They offer a highly robust payment processing system, good service, and fast access to the products you buy. However, the bad press that CB has received in the past comes more from the caliber of some of the products sold (as well as what is perceived as an unwillingness on the part of the company’s management to prevent “bad” products from being sold) – I will talk more to this point when discussing Clickbank scams.

Clickbank Marketplace

At the heart of Clickbank is its venerable affiliate marketplace:

If you’re a customer looking to purchase a product, then chances are you will never actually see the marketplace. I don’t think I have ever heard of somebody browsing it to find products to buy. Instead, you will probably experience Clickbank when you go to buy an eBook or digital training course, or piece of software. Lots of different websites choose to sell their digital products through CB’s platform.

Of course you may want to go to the homepage and browse the customer marketplace just to get a feel for the products

Clickbank Sign Up Process

Signing up for Clickbank is a doddle. First, scoot on over to Clickbank.com and click “Create An Account”:

Now all you need to do is follow the instructions and fill in the fields on the registration page. This will set you up with an account that can be used to both promote products as an affiliate and sell

NB: If all you are doing is looking to buy a product that is processed via CB, then you don’t need to sign up at all.

Clickbank’s Refund Policy

One of the best features of Clickbank – at least from the perspective of the end customer – is its sound refund policy. All vendors (and I do not believe there are any exceptions to this rule) must offer a 60 day money-back guarantee on any products they sell. Furthermore, this refund must be offered “no questions asked”.

For affiliates and vendors, this isn’t quite so ideal. Nothing sucks more as an affiliate than making a bunch of sales, only to find that 10, 20, 30% of them are refunded a week or so later. Sometimes the percentage can be even higher, especially in the weight loss and Internet marketing niches. If you rely on paid traffic to drive sales, then this can make profitability calculations frustrating indeed.  Refunds are also bad news for vendors; too many too often and you risk having affiliates abandon your offer in droves.

Serial Refunding On Clickbank

Ostensibly, the purpose of the 60 day refund window is to give the end customer a good deal. It also endears Clickbank better to merchant account providers and credit card processors; due to the occasionally questionable nature of some of the products being sold, there is a high risk of chargebacks.

As you might expect, chargebacks are not good news for CB’s standing with merchant account providers. Vendors who experience too many chargebacks and also find their accounts suspended or under greater scrutiny. By offering 60 days in which a customer can refund a product there is less chance of these dreaded chargebacks occurring.

Beyond the annoyance vendors and affiliates face at seeing refunds in their accounts, there is another, darker side to these refunds. Serial refunding is most prevalent in the Internet marketing niche. There are people out there

Clickbank Scams – How To Avoid Them

While the platform itself is very legitimate, you do need to be careful of the products you buy from Clickbank. It has a bit of a reputation as being a safe haven for illegitimate vendors looking to peddle, well, crap.

The difficulty with calling these products scams is that they aren’t really that at all. It’s not like you’re going to pay and then see your credit card being used in a dive bar in Cambodia or something – CB’s payment processing system truly does safeguard you to a large extent. No matter what you purchase, you’re going to get something.

So when people refer to Clickbank scams they are really talking about products that seem good from all their promotional material, testimonials, sales pages etc … but which are total crap. This is usually reinforced by loads of reviews that extol the virtues of the product, and put it up there with the Second Coming in terms of greatness. All the “external” factors lead you to believe you are going to be buying something great, but instead you wind up with a polished turd!

Here are some tips to avoid these

  • Check thoroughly for product reviews before you buy. Just head over to Google and type in the name of the product + “review”. When researching Clickbank products that I’m interested in purchasing myself, I tend to look at reviews on forums and discussion boards as they tend to be most honest. Unfortunately, most CB products suffer the fate of having overzealous affiliates slap up copy-and-paste “reviews” that are just swiped from the affiliate resources section of the vendor site. Search for any popular product, and you’ll pretty quickly learn what I mean. I’ve got years of experience sorting genuine reviews from bad ones; if you are really keen on a product and not sure if the reviews you are reading are legit, then feel free to contact me and I can take a look for you. I always have time to help my readers, no exceptions.
  • Exercise your right to a refund within 60 days. If you pay for a product and think its crap, then don’t sit there and sulk. Provided you take action within 60 days of the purchase date, you will get your money refunded to your credit card or Paypal. In the first instance you should always contact the merchant directly and ask for assistance. If that doesn’t get you any progress quickly, then the threat of a chargeback should get their wheels spinning. If they are still evasive about giving you a refund at this point, then feel free to elevate your complaint to Clickbank support directly and they will get your coin bacl.
  • Be extra careful in certain niches. If the product you are looking at buying through CB is in a slightly obscure niche – think DIY wine making, or African dung beetle sculpting – then you are probably going to be purchasing a product that has decent value in terms of content. It is my experience that smaller niches attract honest and ethical vendors who have good experience and passion in a particular niche, and who want to share it with the world. However, big fish niches (Internet marketing, personal development, relationships/dating, and the recently popular survival niche) are choc full of the kind of “scammy” product I described above; crap information, attractively packaged, and then ruthlessly marketed.

NB. I want to make it clear at this point that I’m not wailing on all Clickbank products. There are some fantastic products out there that provide real value to customers. There is also nothing inherently wrong at all with selling information, even if that information is already publicly available in another format (if you can condense it, expand on it, or somehow make it better, then you’re adding knowledge and deserve to be able to profit).  However, I also happen to have an intimate knowledge of the quality of many popular products on the network, and the fact that they are triumphs of marketing over substance.

I guess the ultimate lesson here is, as the Romans said, “caveat emptor” – let the buyer beware. And remember that if you are ever unsure about a product you’re thinking of buying that is sold through Clickbank, I will be happy to help you determine whether it is actually good or not … and suggest a suitable alternative if it’s not worth a buy.

Vendor Review

This is where I’ve had the least amount of experience with Clickbank. On this basis I will be revisiting this section later after I have had the time to compile feedback from Internet users with more experience than me. I’m currently in the process of developing a product for sale on Clickbank that will form the nucleus of my vendor review.

However, I have also sold products in the past as a vendor – just a number of years ago so my experience isn’t quite as relevant as it could be.

I was formerly employed by one of the largest sellers of info-products on Clickbank, so got a lot of exposure at the time to the ins and outs of vendorship on the platform.

Furthermore, my dad and I actually partnered up about 5 years ago to sell a basic info product on there, and had modest success.

Here is my high-level feedback on being a vendor:

  • Be wary of refunds (same goes for affiliates). In some niches like ‘make money online’ these can be truly CRUSHING. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, you will get bullshit refund requests that abuse the 60 day refund window.
  • If you don’t need to recruit affiliates (i.e. you just want to sell your product independently) then I recommend you don’t use Clickbank as a vendor simply as you can get paid faster with other platforms like JVZoo, or even Shopify + Stripe.
  • You’ll need to be wary of chargebacks as the chances are that you’ll lose disputes due to Clickbank’s somewhat ‘murky’ reputation.

Customer Review

From the perspective of being a paying customer looking to buy a product through Clickbank’s processing platform, there isn’t a whole lot more to add above what was described above.

I really do think that CB offers a top-notch, secure method for purchasing and downloading digital products. You can use all major credit cards and Paypal, you’re kept safe with a great money back guarantee, and there are loads of different products available to buy.

As a platform itself (minus the bad egg offers) I can’t really find any glaring faults from the perspective of being a paying customer. Provided you do your due diligence on the product(s) you’re buying, and you are happy with the thought of paying for information in the case of an info product, then you shouldn’t have any issues.

Where issues do arise for Clickbank product buyers is usually in the following areas:

  • Many vendors surreptitiously add re-billing/subscription payments to their products. The way this usually works is that you purchase a product – say a $30 eBook. Without realising it, at some stage in the purchase process you have then consented to buying something like a 30-day free trial of a premium membership product, that will auto rebill at the end of the 30-day period (look out for any pre-checked checkboxes when purchasing ANY product on Clickbank). Many of the complaints I see customers make about Clickbank come from people who have inadvertently signed up to a rebill or subscription product.

Affiliate Review

If I recall correctly, I opened my first Clickbank affiliate account back in 2007, when I was still in high school. I didn’t make much money at first (for over a year in fact) but then I stumbled upon Travis Sago’s infamous bum marketing method, and went H.A.M with that. Within 3 months I was pulling $100 + USD per day which was a big amount of money for a 17 year old still at school, especially when exchange rate was factored in.

Although I don’t do so much on the network anymore – my day job and other side hustle activities keep me too busy – I still feel I’ve got enough knowledge to weigh in on this one.

Here’s what I love about being a Clickbank affiliate:

  • No approval needed to make an account. Most CPA networks require you to go through some kind of verification process where you get grilled on how you are going to drive traffic, and how much experience you have. If you’re not confident on the phone (or you just don’t have the requisite experience) then you might get denied, which means no offers to promote! With Clickbank you can just create an account and get cracking. You aren’t going to get your account suspended or blocked without having either a) terrible, woeful refund rates, which suggests that you are doing something dodgy to get those sales or b) breaking lots of TOS rules. Compared to how twitchy some CPA networks can be, this is a Godsend for a beginner affiliate. You will make mistakes all the way along your journey … Clickbank doesn’t care too much.
  • Heaps of different products to promote. Whether you’re into wilderness survival, wedding speech writing, sports betting, or anything in-between, there are loads of different products you can promote. Bear in mind that the biggest categories will probably always be Internet marketing, weight loss/muscle building, and relationship advice. However, you should not overlook the huge possibilities in some of those smaller categories and niches. There can be some real gold in products and niches that most affiliates don’t even bother to think about.
  • Big commissions. One product I promote through CB earns me over $250 USD per conversion. I would need . The vast majority of offers available will earn you $20 USD plus. This means you don’t have to sell a lot to make a nice side income (if you live in a country with a weak currency relative to the US dollar, then a couple of sales a day could equal a big annual income). There are also many recurring offers available, which means you can earn each month from the same sale until the customer cancels their rebill. Most vendors offer either a 50% or 75% conversion rate – EPIC!
  • Always paid on time. I’ve never failed to be paid correctly and on time by Clickbank, and don’t hear much about other affiliates having their payments missed either. Contrast this to some smaller aff networks where you will probably always have a nagging thought in your mind as to whether you will get paid out, you’ll never need to worry with CB. Just like Ja Rule, they are always on time.

Here’s what I dislike about being an affiliate:

  • The generous refund policy can eat into your earnings. On the balance of probabilities the refund policy is a good thing because it gives customers a greater sense of security, which increases the odds of them buying. However, as an affiliate you can’t help but feel sad when you see a good run of sales only to find 10 or 20%, and sometimes more, have been refunded. Refunds are especially painful when they come close to the 60 day cutoff date. Because of these higher levels of refunds you are likely to experience, you will also have to deal with the annoyance of the Return Allowance.
  • You’ll be competing with a lot of other affiliates. Any offer worth promoting has probably got a bunch of other affiliates, many of them with a lot more experience and resources, blasting the heck out of it. If you are a newbie this can be intimidating and put you off from taking action. It’s only natural to think that competition = low chance of success. Don’t shy away from competition. If other people are selling the offer (as indicated from the Gravity Score metric and more detailed research) then nothing is stopping you either. Market smarter, market harder, and you will do better.
  • Minimum sales requirement and initial check payment. Not only do you have to make a minimum number of sales before you can cash out, you also have to have a blend of different payment methods e.g. Paypal and credit card. Check out the exact details here for more info. When you first start your account you can also only take payment in check, which sucks if you live outside of the United States. Make the change as soon as you are allowed to for wire transfer. This means faster payment and no risk of stale checks.

Conclusion

Reviewing Clickbank has been a monstrous task for me. When I started writing this I thought I’d be done in a  thousand words. Instead I feel like I’ve redone Tolstoy’s War and Peace! Nonetheless, I have enjoyed writing this review and hope you have learned something useful from it. I certainly enjoyed writing it, and could probably talk until Kingdom Come about this topic.

Because Clickbank isn’t a product or service for sale (as opposed to most of the other products I review on this site) I can’t give you a simple recommendation like “buy it” or “run for the hills”. But here’s what I can say:

Whether you are a vendor looking to sell a product, an affiliate looking to make money promoting products, or a customer just wanting to ensure you get the item you want, there is going to be something for you on CB’s network. I genuinely think it is a good platform that has been marred with a certain less-than-perfect reputation due to some of the products that get sold on it.

Clickbank’s platform isn’t perfect. There are things about it that could be improved. However, it is important to remember that it is just a platform. There is only so much that can be done to stop unscrupulous sellers offering substandard products – especially in niches that have a reputation for this, such as make money online, weight loss and dating advice.

Therefore, there is an element of caveat emptor when using Clickbank. They are providing a platform, just like eBay, or Amazon’s marketplace, or any other marketplace out there.

What this means is that some people will sell good products, and some people will sell bad ones. The onus is on you to ‘DYOR’ (Do Your Own Research) and only purchase products that add value for you.

Clickbank FAQs

In this section, I cover some answers to FAQs about Clickbank:

  • “How do you make money with Clickbank?” There are two ways. Firstly, you can create products and sell them as a vendor You could also get others to promote them so you give them a commission on each sale on a ‘pay on performance’ basis. Secondly, you can promote products as an affiliate and earn commissions.
  • “Is Clickbank still profitable?” Definitely, but your success is determined entirely by your ability to be an effective affiliate marketer.
  • “How much does it cost to join Clickbank?” Clickbank is free to join. If you wish to sell products as a vendor, then you will need to pay a fee to do so.
  • “Can I promote Clickbank on Facebook?” – Yes. You may, however, struggle with direct linking Clickbank offers on Facebook ads. Instead, use an intermediary landing page. Clickbank’s top affiliate at the moment generates most of his commissions from this exact strategy (Facebook ads to landing page to affiliate link).
  • “Can I buy Clickbank products from myself?” – although you can probably get away with it, buying Clickbank products using your own affiliate ID is against their Terms of Service and could see your account shut down. I’d advise against doing it. Also, vendors may block you for this kind of behaviour.
  • “What is Clickbank marketplace?” – Clickbank Marketplace is where all the products that are for sale on Clickbank are listed. You can browse as both a potential customer (looking to buy) or as an affiliate (looking to promote).