ClickBank question

[KimDushinski]

We are planning on selling an info-based product on ClickBank but first want to know whether or not our customer information is provided to us after a sale is made?

Is it like sending someone to Amazon where all we know is that someone bought a product and get a check or does it work more like a shopping cart whereby we then have a record of each individual customer and can market other products to them, include them on our email list, etc?

Are there any cautions when using ClickBank that we should be made aware of before getting too far into the process?

Thanks.

Kim Dushinski

[Rosalind Gardner]

Great question Kim!

I use Clickbank to sell the Super Affiliate Handbook and the Affiliate Business Blueprint, and PayPal for hard goods, like my Watchcraft dropshipping site, WindingWay.com.

I like Clickbank a lot, especially for its ease of use, and the fact that you don't need a merchant account. It costs $50 to set up an account with them as a merchant, which is cheap!!

It definitely has its disadvantages, not least of which is the difficulty with building a customer database.

All you get from Clickbank when you make a sale is an email like this:

[asr_guy]

Kim,
First of all the question re Amazon and ClickBank is comparing apples and oranges since in the former you are suggesting being an affiliate and the latter is in terms of you selling a product as a merchant. Unless you meant selling a product via Amazon as a merchant.

So if you are planning to sell a digital product, then you need to look at either selling from your own site or using a hosted service. There are shopping carts and some are ok with digital products.

Re hosted services dedicated to digital products, ClickBank is one of them but there are others like PayDotCom, PayLoadz, and RegNow (Digital River).

If you want to have affiliates, most of these support affiliate tracking. Decide on your affiliate strategy that before you dive in so you don't have to change services later on.

Regards,
Peter

[Ingela Berger]

Hello,
I have another question about ClickBank. I have noticed they do not allow any guarantees other than their own 60 day refund policy, which only applies if there is something wrong with the product. I even emailed them to ask if I had misunderstood, but unfortunately I had not. I wanted to offer a one year 100% guarantee no questions asked, and I can almost swear I have seen ClickBank publishers use such a quarantee, in conflickt with ClickBank rules. Wouldn't it be time for ClickBank to change their policy in favour of many marketers who sees this quarantee as an important way of increasing sales?
I am not sure if I want to use ClickBank since I found out about this. Anyone have ideas on what to do instead? I am trying to sell my e-book.
Best regards,
Ingela

[asr_guy]

If you just need to sell and not have affiliates you don't need clickbank. You can use paypal (accepts credit cards too) and tie it in with something like dlguard for the delivery.

If you want affiliates then you can either go with your own in-house solution or use clickbank, paydotcom, payloadz, etc. who all have affiliate networks. Lately I haven't been too impressed with paydotcom for several reasons outlined on my blog.

Clickbank is archaic, but I don't see why offering a better guarantee is in conflict with them. You might just have to do the refund outside of clickbank.

-Peter

[Ingela Berger]

Thank you, Peter. I will have a look at your blog to see what you have to say about PayDotCom. I was just checking out their site and thought it seemed good. I need an affiliate program but it would be great to have a solution which takes care of much of the job, like ClickBank and PayDotCom. I only have one product and it is electronic, so a in-house solution seems unnecessary right now.

In my email to ClickBank I really pointed out that I was prepared to personally pay the customer back and that ClickBank wouldn't have to do anything. Still, they didn't allow me to have that guarantee in my sales letter.

Ingela