Darkside of ClickBank

The Darkside of ClickBank

ClickBank claims that it is the biggest affiliate bazaar for digital products. It also claims to have paid over 2.08 billion dollars (at the time of writing this article) in commissions to affiliates since 1998. While the company is fortunate to have serious devotees, some people have openly labeled it as a “scam”.

ClickBank’s Benefits:

You do not need to own a website or possess a history of sales before ClickBank accepts you. The registration process is not complicated. There are tens of thousands of products to promote and you are open to promote them all, to earn commissions on the products you sell.  Both One-off and Recurring commissions are supported by ClickBank. There are very few boundaries as far as promotion goes. You may adopt e-mail marketing or website reviews or even pay for advertisement traffic.

ClickBank’s Drawbacks:

As an affiliate, you are both permitted and even persuaded to buy with your own affiliate link, which means that a lot of your commission never makes it into your account. Affiliates end up paying a part of the fee.

Among the large number of products, most of them are the get-rich-quick kind. The amusing part is that many of these products talk about how to make money from ClickBank itself. Moreover, there is an obscenely large number of merchants that are not active.

Websites of the merchants are not being tracked by ClickBank for compliance after the preliminary process of approval is accomplished. As a consequence, unknowingly,  you could be promoting a ClickBank product that no longer exists.  In view of the fact that ClickBank does not track which offer you were accepted to, there is no way for them to tip you off about the removal of a merchant. For ClickBank super affiliates, this can make the housekeeping and administration of your product promotions a chore.

ClickBank might never have to pay you at all:

Here is why:

You have to make no less than 5 sales (PayPal sales not included)  in order to qualify for receiving your firstpayment .  ClickBank also adds that they will withhold your payment until you have made sales with at least 5 different credit card numbers and with at least two different payment methods.

If you have more than $0 in your ClickBank account, and then make no sales for 3 months, you are forced to pay a daily fee.  ClickBank says that accounts with no earnings for three months are charged $1 per day. This increases to $5 per day of inactivity after six months … and it gets worse.

I urge you to read the  ClickBank Accounting Policy  for more details.

All that said, ClickBank is still the Marketplace of choice for affiliates and digital product makers today.

 

From BeInternetRich – Helping You Achieve Your First $500 Online.