Generosity as Business Strategy
April 17th, 2008 | 
Author: Posted by: Bob Dunlap, Director of Marketing
Ever wonder why some products are wildly successful while others struggle? Not an easy question to answer, but successful products do share a number of characteristics. First and foremost, they all meet a specific need or solve a current problem for the prospective consumer. Additionally, they all deliver real value, are well positioned and marketed, and are priced right.
With ClickBank products, there is one other critical consideration — will affiliates promote the product?
Virtually all best-selling ClickBank products benefit from a significant number of affiliates actively promoting them. These affiliates risk their own resources, both time and money, to drive qualified traffic to products that convert and return a profit. These affiliates have a huge variety of products to choose from, so make sure yours gets their attention. Remember, affiliates are looking for products that sell to a specific niche, offer good quality and value for the consumer, convert well, and, last but not least, pay enough commission to earn the return on investment they require.
When you are new to ClickBank, you may be thinking “I can’t afford to offer 50% or higher commission to affiliates.” The real question you should ask is, can you afford NOT to? Here are some statistics that deserve careful consideration. Listed below are the average commission percentages for ClickBank accounts with affiliate-referred sales in 2007:
Top 10 selling accounts- 74% commission
Top 100 selling accounts- 69%
Top 1000 selling accounts- 60%
Average for all accounts- 55%
Commission offered to affiliates is not a singular determinant for product success. With that said, I believe this data speaks for itself. So remember, if you’re a ClickBank product publisher just starting out, or if you’re looking for ways to improve existing sales, take a second look at the commission rate you offer affiliates. Generosity is often rewarded.
Posted in Strategies for Success | 
Tags: affiliates, business, clickbank, commission, marketing, products, publishers, sales, strategy, traffic
I pay 60% on all my offerings, and would like to add that along with giving generous commissions, whenever possible the vendor should also create a free version of their product or service and allow their affiliates to give it away. A lot of marketers do this already with free ebooks.
My sites for example don’t charge a fee upfront, but the referrals are permanently tied to their sponsors clickbank id.
Everytime they attempt to place an order, the pre-order link redirects them through their sponsors clickbank id before displaying the actual order page,
so they always get a fresh tracking cookie.
The name of the game is affiliates, as far as I understand it. That’s why we offer a 75% commission. And you should also offer a BIG upsell to make even more money for your affiliates.
Yes with rising costs of PPC and marketing product owners on clickbank need to pay min 75% or even 100% after all we all know that the product owner always builds a email list for free that they get to cross sell other items too free of cost with no ad costs.
I have stopped pushing affliate offers that pay 50%
either cause the product owner doesnt get it or just plain arrogant. Today as an affliate we tons of choices
who we push.
I agree that commissions are key. We have a range of products in price and would like to be able to set different commission % for different products. Right now only global commission % is possible. Any chance this may come in the future? Anyone else agree?
It’s not just the commission I look at.
You need to provide us with advertising material. If I go to a publisher’s affiliate resource and see nothing but a couple of banners I’m not likely to spend the time creating my own sales copy.
Give us something to work with.
Thank you very useful blog!
Hi Bob
Just wondering why new sellers on clickbank do not go straight into the market place. I ask this because without getting seen in the market place how are those wishing to sell your product going to actually find it in the first place?
Thanks, have a great day, Linda Corby
I have to say this in reply to Joe Richey. Some people are selling items very cheaply in the first place. The ebook I am selling is to keep my word to my daughter who I lost at the age of 12 to cancer. There are some items people are selling for personal reasons, not everyone sells or affiliates to things purely for the financial factor, I haven’t actually been collecting email leads with my autobiography page, it is a one off item, that took me a long time to produce, and is actually worth a lot more than I have been selling it for.
I would be interested to know if anyone else on clickbank is doing the same type of thing? Because this is the type of thing that I would like to affiliate to myself.
Feel free to contact me with your details if you have? Take care, Linda Corby
In our business there is a limited number of potential affiliates. What we’re really working hard on right now is to increase conversion rate because it will increase the bottom line for everybody.
I didn’t think that providing promotional material to affiliates was so important but I see now that it is so I will be adding a lot. I just need to work on my copy writing skills.
I would pay people 75% only if they made a great effort at promoting OUR product. I think giving the same level of reward to everybody is just plain stupid.
Take care!
Why do you have the percentages from 1-75%? Why so low? And why max it out at 75%? There are over 1300 products at 75%.
The reason I ask is because most affiliates want to see a $20.00+ commission when they sell a product. If a publisher has a product under $30.00 and the affiliate commission is 75%, they would be offering a commission of under $20.00.
By capping the affiliate commissions at 75% would push publishers with cheaper products to increase their sale price to meet the $20.00 commission rate, thus jeopardizing their sales and increasing the return rate.
Lastly, some publishers are looking at back-end sales and would not mind giving a 100% commission with their initial product sale.
Another suggestion for publishers.
Put your order button at the top of your page. My tracking tells me that in most cases I have to send 100 people to a site to make 1 or 2 sales.
The button at the top and through out the sales copy can’t hurt can it? It may increase your conversion rate.
Good information for publishers..Thanks clickbank for acknowledging that affiliates like to make a decent earning too…
I second the request to give affiliates a better %, I am happy to give affiliates 100% or more commission, depending on performance.
Other affiliate networks allow you to do this, the problem is non of them have the affiliate base that CB has, not even close.
Hi guys, great info. I’m a newbie and I was wondering if you have run into your product geting buried in the marketplace if you weren’t giving a high enough commission? Example my product is $29.95 and I’m offering 50%, should it just simply be higher?
Thanks and good luck.
As an affiliate, one of the most important things I DON’T want to see on the pitch page is an Affiliate link. I don’t want to go thru all the work of getting people there just to have them sign up as affiliates instead of purchasing. I wish more sellers would NOT put an Affiliate link on their sites. I greatly applaud those sellers who don’t do this! Those are the ones I advertise most heavily.
Thanks for the feedback for vendors.
The traffic that my affiliates send to my site don’t even know what the word affiliate means, maybe one in 5000 might sign as an affiliate and then probably won’t get any sales.
So I’m saying in response to your feedback that it does depend on the niche you are selling to.
I would like to say here, you CAN afford to offer 75% commission! Have you priced your product correctly? Do you value it highly? Then charge more. As a consumer, if I particularly desire a product or the solution a product offers me then I WILL PAY the asking price, whatever that is.
You ideally need to be focussing your attentions to creating products to promote at Clickbank which act primarily as lead generators for the backend potential of your online business. In other words, what else can you offer your customers later on to solve further problems for them? Have a good long look at what your company strategy really is. What are you supplying and to whom? What do they want? What solutions do they seek?
Provide those solutions and your business will go from strength to strength. Yes, I believe in high commission percentage as a real incentive to top affiliates. Reward and you shall be be rewarded is my marketing motto!
Greeting All;
I am a new affiliate, and have found that there are several questions that have not yet been asked. Although, the ones posted here are great, but some security concerns have come to play.
As I set things up for my webmall of products, I noted in looking over the links, that the link itself is exposed for corruption. This can and probably has caused a great loss to many affiliates.
Is Clickbank working on getting these issues worked out? The sites themselves cannot be modified by the affiliate, so security for the affiliate is imediatley compromised.
I think there are also some issues in meta-tag and description tags editing. As most of you know, just placing these pages on the internet is not enough. Posting the links is not enough, as the search engines have no way to reference the page itself, therefore, it has not way to index it.
One could create and host his/her own website, and link across. So, lets look at that. A customer does not want to spend allot of time clicking his/her way to the product. They want the ability to navigate quickly, and without going through a maze of clicks. This in itself has probably sent quite a few customers back to Wal-Mart.
Just some thoughts
Be Safe and Have Fun !!!
Tom Nickols
Thomas.Nickols@gmail.com
Hi,
I’m new to CB (2 days already)initially working as an affiliate in order to get a good feel for it… wish me luck!
Later I plan to publish some unique work and intend providing no less than 75% commission together with promotional video, free stuff etc. for affiliates to give away.
I also realize not everyone can persuade or write good articles worthy of persuasion; so I plan on providing advertising material, sales copy literature etc. including a personalized private login for affiliates to discuss tactics.
It seems to me that I have to really believe in the vendors product for me to spend time & resources promoting it – the high % commission is secondary in consideration for me, but at the same time I also understand that the more I can offer my affiliates – the more popular my product will be and the more everyone will benefit!
Hi,
In reply to Joe Richey, you are right about the free list building, and i agree with high commissions. Remember that it is not completely risk free for product owners, they have put the time, cost and dedication into building the product, testing the niche etc, plus site creation/paying someone to do it! Remember that it is a win win situation here, both product owners and affiliates have capital on the line. Perhaps those offering 50% are ignorant, not arrogant.
All the best
Aliece