Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Posted by Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

If you’re a ClickBank publisher who wants to generate residual income from one of your products, or an affiliate who wants to promote products that will keep paying you commissions every month, ClickBank Recurring Billing products open up a huge range of possibilities for you.

Although you can sell or promote almost any type of product that involves repeating payments, we’ve put together a list of some of the most common types of recurring billing products:

* Memberships and subscriptions – There’s almost no limit to the kinds of membership sites you can create, but some ideas include stock photography or ringtone download sites.

* Software updates – Allow your customers to stay up to date with the latest releases of your software products, like spyware and virus removal.

* Higher-priced items with installment payments – Increase conversions on more expensive products by letting people make several smaller payments. You define the payment schedule and amounts.

* Newsletters and online news sites – Provide customers access to the latest news, rumors and strategies in your area of expertise, such as stock trading, fitness or online marketing.

* “Exclusive content” – Provide access to white papers, special reports, or any other kind of high-value content that’s just too good to give away for free.

* Web hosting/domain services – Now that establishing an online presence is easier than ever, selling web hosting services and domain names to people who want to get their name or product out there can be extremely profitable.

* Online communities/forums – Let people with similar interests, like small business owners or day traders, congregate and share ideas in a moderated online community.

Like any product innovation, there are many other creative new ways to use the ClickBank Recurring Billing service, so take a look at our recurring billing page and see how you can make it work for your business!

Posted by: Bob King, CEO

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Affiliate Summit East in Boston. I was on a panel discussing the State of Ad Networks, but that is not what I’m going to write about today. While reviewing the agenda for Affiliate Summit, I noticed a breakout session related to affiliate marketing and social networking. I attended the session with great anticipation that I’d learn something to help me “crack the code” on how ClickBank could participate in social networks and drive our business to even greater heights.

I was sorely disappointed, not because the speaker didn’t do a good job, but because he presented a lot of really good tactical ideas for individual affiliates to tap into social networks, but nothing to spark my awareness for ClickBank’s opportunity. (Maybe that’s my problem.)

Now I’m not totally ignorant of how social networking works, even though I’m the oldest guy in the company. I realize we probably aren’t going to be successful with a full frontal attack of advertising or calling the CEO of a social networking site and trying to cut a deal. I realize we have to participate for awhile and build our credibility with users. I know that blatant commercialization is a big no-no.

So here’s my dilemma. I’ve got to run a grassroots effort to spread the word about the virtues of ClickBank, but we run a pretty lean operation here. I can ask our employees to do their part, but there aren’t many of us. However, there are thousands of you out there; can you help spread the word about the benefits of ClickBank? I’m not asking people to spam the social networking sites, I just know that ClickBank can be a great help to the kinds of people who participate in social networks, just like it’s helped you and many others.

If you have any other ideas on how we could “crack the social code,” leave a comment and let me know. I’m always looking for great ideas on how to spread the word about ClickBank, and who knows better than people like you, who are out there being successful online on a daily basis? I look forward to hearing your ideas.

Posted by: Greg Lems, Director of Application Development

Have you heard of a Wordle before? A Wordle is a visual representation of words contained within Web content. Words used more often appear larger. When you create a Wordle of Clickbank’s Blog, here’s what you get (click to view the full-sized image):

We’ve been doing our company blog for several months now and I think this Wordle tells us some interesting things about what we’re trying to accomplish at Clickbank. Some of the words that jump out at me (besides the obvious “Clickbank”):

Products and Business – Of course we’re in the business of selling products, but a quick look at other words nearby show “information,” “computer,” and “digitally,” which highlight the unique nature of the products we sell compared to other affiliate networks. “Sales,” “purchase,” “publisher,” and “affiliate” are also critical components of ClickBank’s business, so it was good to see that we address them frequently.

Can – I like that “can” is a big word here. If you’ve got an idea-any idea-for a digital product that you want to sell on the Internet, we say “YES YOU CAN” (to paraphrase a currently popular politician and/or Bob the Builder). As long as it complies with the ClickBank client contract, of course.

Data and Transaction – We’ve spent a lot of time and effort over the past couple of years enhancing our systems and infrastructure to be more reliable and dependable. We want our publishers and affiliates to know that the technology infrastructure at ClickBank is rock solid, and that each and every order transaction is of the utmost importance to ClickBank.

While realizing that the Wordle is just a fun little widget, we had a good time at the ClickBank offices analyzing its contents. Since ClickBank is a pretty unusual business model and can be difficult to explain to outsiders, it was interesting to see how we describe ourselves to the outside world. At the very least, it was a good way to make sure we’re talking about the topics that are most important to us. Try running Wordle on your blog, and see what message you’re sending to the world!

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

One of the best things about working at ClickBank is looking through our huge catalog of products and seeing thousands of examples of people who are making their lives, and the lives of others, a little better by sharing their expertise. What makes ClickBank so special, even among affiliate networks, is that you don’t have to be a huge company or have a big inventory of products to participate. You just have to be an expert, and be willing to share that expertise with others.

You may be saying to yourself, “I’m not an expert at anything! If I was, I’d be out lecturing or already have a book written.” OK, so you might not be a whiz at financial planning or be able to write a 300-page book on car repair, but if you start thinking about your hobbies and interests, I’m confident that you can find your expertise. Do your friends go crazy over your special chocolate chip cookies and beg you for the recipe? Is your garden the pride of the neighborhood? Have you walked a family member through setting up a secure wireless network in their home, or removing spyware from their PC? Then you’re an expert!

The beauty of ClickBank is that we have many product publishers who make a nice modest income from sharing their expertise in areas like these, even when they’re selling their products for $20 or $30. Sure, they’re not necessarily going to retire on the money they make from them, but wouldn’t it be nice to make a little bit of extra cash by sharing knowledge you would normally give away for free? It’s especially nice when you know that your expertise is helping others and making their lives a little better.

Take a little time and think about what makes you an expert, and then take a crack at creating a product and selling it through ClickBank. With your knowledge and a huge group of affiliates looking to promote great products, you’ll never know how successful you can be unless you try!

Posted by: Monty Sooter, CTO

We continue to make enhancements to the ClickBank applications and it is great to see the results. Overall sales continue to grow at a rapid pace. Sales for ClickBank Recurring Billing products in July were 57 percent higher than any previous month. Sales for Spanish products in July were 33 percent higher than any previous month. Recurring billing products has been in place for about a year and Spanish products have been available for about 6 months.

Improved performance in a business is always a nice achievement. When you can tie improved performance back to planned projects you develop confidence in your management of the business. As a result, we will continue to listen to our clients and research our industry to set our enhancement priorities. We will also go as fast as we can to implement the new enhancements — just not so fast that we cause disruption to the business.

We understand our clients want to get their money as soon as they can. As Michael wrote last week in “Weekly Payments, Anyone?” we plan to release weekly direct deposit payments in the next few weeks. Based on the number of sign ups for our recently released direct deposit capability we also expect good results from weekly direct deposits.

Also, we have heard that you want us to open additional markets to sell your products. The next phase of Platform Globalization will be released later in the fall and will expand markets for current products and provide markets for new products.

We believe we are getting better at hearing and understanding our clients’ needs. We have many projects planned and will continue to implement changes that drive results for all of us.

Posted by: Jeff Leget, Director of Operations

With high gas prices, there is more talk than ever about green companies and renewable energy.  And that got me thinking about how “green” ClickBank and its vendors really are.

In the typical ClickBank transaction, the consumer simply downloads the e-book or software from a publisher’s Web site. No goods are shipped. No trees are destroyed to produce paper for books. It’s a nearly carbon-neutral transaction. Sure, some consumers may choose to print their e-books, but most will likely use their computer’s document reader. Outside of the electricity required to operate ClickBank’s systems, the vendor’s pitch page, and the customer’s personal computer, very little energy is spent delivering the product. In addition, a large number of ClickBank’s products address current energy issues. A simple search of ClickBank’s Marketplace reveals a number of vendors who have already developed or tailored their products toward energy-conscious consumers.

But let me share even more about ClickBank’s own portion of this energy equation. One of ClickBank’s data centers, along with its headquarters, is located in Idaho. The state of Idaho is rich in renewable energy. According to official energy statistics from the U.S. government, nearly 80% of Idaho’s electricity is generated from hydroelectric plants. The state also has substantial geothermal and wind power potential.

We design ClickBank’s systems to operate efficiently on reusable, commodity hardware. That means the company can scale to meet future business needs without having to procure expensive supercomputing platforms. ClickBank’s offices are located in regions that are rich in technical talent and active lifestyles. Quite a few ClickBank employees bike to work or commute less than 10 miles. And all of our offices, like most of yours, make efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

So the next time someone starts to tell you about companies making drastic changes to adjust to the “green” economy, tell them you already know and do business with a company that’s been green from the start: ClickBank!

ClickBank executives to attend Affiliate Summit

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – Aug 5, 2008 – Bob King, CEO of ClickBank, a privately held online retailer for buyers and sellers of digitally delivered products and services, will be offering his unique insights into the affiliate marketing industry on Monday, August 11, during the Affiliate Summit. The widely-respected industry conference takes place in Boston, at the Sea Port Hotel, between August 10-12.

Bob will be participating in the panel discussion, “The State of Ad Networks.” The panel will explore the trend within ad networks of moving from “cost per thousand” as the preferred method of gauging the price of advertising to a performance based model, where you get paid for what the ad produces in sales. ClickBank was founded on a pay-for-performance business model – affiliates and product publishers only get paid when a sale is made.

“Businesses are starting to realize something ClickBank has known for a decade — pay for performance is a better way to do business” said King. “With Internet advertising, it makes sense to seek those advertising models, and pricing structures, that can be tied directly to sales.”

Attending the Affiliate Summit with King are ClickBank executives Dush Ramachandran, vice president business development; Bob Dunlap, director of marketing; and Terra Goeres, manager of client account management. The four will be available to meet current and potential ClickBank affiliates and anyone interested in the company at table 23 during the “Meet Market” at the Affiliate Summit on Aug. 10, between noon to 6:00 p.m.

Posted by: Bob Dunlap, Director of Marketing

Virtually all mature markets have at least two strong, if not dominant, competitors.  Right now, Internet search has only one, named Google.  While Google is clearly the 800lb gorilla, competitors like Yahoo and MSN are always working on their algorithms, tools, and partnerships in an effort to take some of Google’s market share.

Now, Google may have yet another competitor. Former employees of the Mountain View, CA firm have launched Cuil (pronounced “cool”), a new search portal. They say it delivers more relevant results than any other search engine (yeah, I know, we’ve heard that before…). Will it be as good as or better than Google? Will it deliver the results that surfers and affiliate marketers are looking for? It’s way too early to tell.

Putting a dent in Google’s search dominance has proven to be a very tall task. Is this finally the one to watch? We’ll all stay tuned to see if “cool” lives up to its name.

Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager – Client Account Management

Bob Dylan’s classic 1964 song may have been a bit before my time, but when I look back on my years with ClickBank, his catchy hook always pops into my head.

I started with ClickBank on May 11, 2000, shortly after the owners moved the company from San Diego, CA, to Boise, ID. I was the fourth full-time employee hired. We rented a small office which had five rooms: offices for the owners and for our VP of Sales; a larger room for me, Jennifer, and Sommar, the other two customer service representatives at the time (both of whom are still with ClickBank today in other roles!); a small conference room, and a small lobby area which was decorated in kitschy furniture from the ‘70s that we borrowed from one of our board members. We had a single phone, which rarely rang, and twice a month we would all gather in the conference room to stamp our President’s signature on our clients’ checks and stuff them into envelopes. Clearly, it was an impressive, high-tech process!

There were no bells and whistles at that time (those of you who remember our original website can attest to that)! Instead, we focused on one simple concept, which we did better than anyone else: providing reliable commission tracking and on-time payments to our publishers and affiliates.

Fast forward 8 years, and I can proudly say that our commitment to serving our clients’ needs has never changed. Instead, like a fine wine, we’ve only gotten better with age! Our staff of 7 has grown to over 50, which includes a new Executive Team (as of 2005), a beefed up IT and Development staff, and many other key additions in our Customer Service, Security, Marketing, and Accounting departments. This has given us the resources to provide you with better communication, to seek out your feedback, and to fulfill many of your requests for new features and enhancements. The additional staff also means that we’ve long outgrown our little 5 room office.  Over time, we’ve expanded into two offices:  one still in Boise, Idaho, and another in Broomfield, Colorado.

Even my own career at ClickBank has gone through several changes. After spending the last 8 years in our Boise office doing everything from customer service to product approvals to managing people, I have recently moved to our Broomfield office and taken on the position of Manager – Client Account Management in our Business Development Department.

In my new position, my responsibility is to drive the success of our clients. My job is to act as the voice of our clients within the company, to manage and develop programs that foster the growth of our clients’ businesses, and to generate new business by reaching out to the greater Internet marketing world. On that note, if you have comments on any of our past changes or suggestions for future enhancements, please reply to this post. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Yes, “the times they are a-changin’” at ClickBank, but in my estimation it’s the best kind of change- we just keep getting better!

Posted by: Bob King, CEO

I have to laugh as I follow along with all the debate and controversy regarding the Long Tail Theory of marketing and retailing. For those of you unfamiliar with the Long Tail Theory, several years ago Chris Anderson from Wired magazine wrote a book advancing the theory that the Internet is going to fundamentally change consumer buying habits. His theory was that online commerce will allow larger, basically unlimited, assortments of product to be made available. This would be a big shift from the limitations of brick and mortar stores, where space constraints limit the number of products to just the top-selling items. Now the consumer is free to buy whatever niche product they want via Internet commerce, without being limited to only what is stocked in the store.

I have to admit, when I first saw this theory, I was new to ClickBank and the Internet business and I said, “Wow, this is great!” Every time I talked about ClickBank to my friends or anyone else, I somehow worked Long Tail into the conversation.

Now a Harvard Business Professor, Anita Elberse, has come along and said, “Hey, wait a minute, this Long Tail isn’t really that revolutionary.” Her argument is that even though more product assortment is available, we are creatures of habit and we still mostly just buy the most popular items. She uses movies and music examples to support her argument.

So maybe it’s time to drop the Long Tail from my conversations, so I don’t have to get into a senseless argument.

But when I think about ClickBank in the context of the Long Tail, we are the Ultimate Long Tail. Not many businesses could be as niche-oriented as ClickBank. If you have information or advice on virtually any subject that you can put in digital form, you can find out if anybody wants to buy it by using ClickBank.

Granted, we have a modest number of products that are our best sellers, just like any other business. But we have a vast amount of product out there on the “ClickBank Long Tail.” Because of that Long Tail, it can still be profitable to create and promote an e-book or software program that doesn’t sell millions, or even thousands, of copies.

All it takes to get started is a little work on your part to get it ready and $49.95 to list it. It exists in digital form, so there are no warehouses, no trucks, and no further expense until it sells. Then you just pay the commission to the affiliate that promoted it and a small transaction fee to ClickBank for processing the order.

So, the Long Tail, with the blockbusters and thousands of other products, is alive and working here at ClickBank. That’s good news for everyone.