Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Mar. 16, 2010 – While Amazon.com moved swiftly last week to halt its business relationships with affiliate marketers in Colorado, ClickBank officials vowed to continue to work with affiliate marketers located in the company’s home state despite a new law that taxes affiliates’ sales.

Amazon terminated its marketing affiliate program in Colorado just eight days after a new law took effect that will tax affiliate sales. In what was viewed as a surprise move by some of the estimated 4,000 online affiliate marketers in the state, Amazon distributed a letter to affiliates saying the company would immediately cease doing business with them because of the new tax law.

But ClickBank, a global online retailer headquartered in Broomfield, Colo., says it has no intention of terminating relationships with affiliates or discontinuing its longstanding policy of collecting and remitting taxes to the appropriate tax authorities in various domestic and international jurisdictions.

“We will continue to honor our agreements with affiliates in Colorado and all other states in the U.S., and will continue collecting and remitting taxes in compliance with the new laws affecting affiliate sales,” said Dush Ramachandran, ClickBank vice president of sales and business development.

Dush Ramachandran to lend international affiliate marketing expertise to a4uexpo board as plans solidify for Munich conference this May

Feb. 11, 2010 – ClickBank Vice President Dush Ramachandran has been appointed to the advisory board of a4uexpo, a European conference focused on bringing together top affiliate marketing specialists to discuss global industry trends and business opportunities.

Ramachandran joins other leading affiliate marketing experts on the a4uexpo advisory board including Sabine Haase, director of marketing & performance technology at affilinet GmbH; Alison Guise, general manager at ValueClick; and Missy Ward, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

“Dush gives the board an added dimension,” said Matthew Wood, founder and managing director of Existem Events Ltd, the company which coordinates the highly-successful series of a4uexpo conference events. “He has a considerable amount of practical experience and industry knowledge, not to mention a network of more than 100,000 affiliates to tap into. This is complementary to the many resources that existing advisory board members bring to the table.”

Wood said affiliate marketing opportunities in Europe are numerous and extremely diverse. The advisory board, he said, helps ensure that conference agendas, presentations and panel debates remain current and relevant.

“I look forward to working with the extremely talented and knowledgeable members of this board, and to helping ensure that a4uexpo remains Europe’s premiere affiliate marketing event,” said Ramachandran.

Starting early next week, ClickBank will improve the way vendors place test orders for their products.

Currently, each specific product is placed in Test Mode using the My Products menu. In the new testing method, vendors can generate a test credit card number that is usable only for their products, and which expires after 24 hours for security purposes. This card information is generated using the My Site page, and can be used to place test purchases for any product in the vendor’s account, whether it has been approved or not.

This new testing method will allow vendors to place test purchases of their products while they are still available for sale, which was not possible before. In addition, we will now send Instant Notifications for test purchases, allowing vendors to verify that Instant Notifications are working properly.

We will include more detailed information in your account once the test mode process changes.

Jan. 27, 2010 - In the wake of several merchant account closures due to what major credit card companies consider ambiguous continuity program terms, ClickBank, a global online retailer, is offering several guidelines regarding best business practices for continuity program merchants.

Dush Ramachandran, ClickBank vice president of sales and business development, says clarity is key.

“If you are engaged in a practice in which goods or services are provided automatically, and the customer must either pay for the service or specifically decline it in advance of billing, you must be very clear and upfront about it,” he said. “This type of practice is not unethical unless buyers do not fully understand the terms or sellers do not accept the consumer’s decision to discontinue the service or return the product.”

Ramachandran said the need for transparency and a willingness to accept cancellations also hold true for offers with confusing terms or delayed charges. “Credit card companies are no longer going to support merchants engaging in ‘free’ offers that are not actually free.”

Finally, he said, customers must receive goods or services in exchange for a credit card payment and, for any offer, must provide an affirmative consent such as a mandatory “I agree” statement checkbox where the customer acknowledges the terms and conditions of the offer and consents to be entered into a continuity program.

“At ClickBank, we’ve found that the best way to avoid compliance issues and keep our client’s continuity programs up and running without interruption is to be completely transparent with consumers regarding the terms of continuity programs.”

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission continues to make internet commerce a top priority. The FTC recent issued new regulations that govern the use of “endorsements” to promote products. Those regulations can be found at 16 C.F.R. § 255 or here. Note, the new regulations are effective December 1, 2009.

The new regulations cover all sorts of third party testimonials and endorsements—by consumers, experts and celebrities. If your promotions use customer or consumer endorsements, the FTC requires that the results described must be typical or, if not, you should “clearly and conspicuously” disclose that the results presented are not typical. Also, such customers should be “bona fide” buyers of your product, and not, for example, a fictitious person or your cousin who is doing you a favor. For expert endorsements, the person involved should have special knowledge that qualifies him or her to make the endorsement, e.g., if you use a doctor to sell a diet plan, that doctor shouldn’t be an eye doctor, but have special knowledge in the area of nutrition.

Also, the FTC requires all endorsements to disclose any “material connection” between the vendor and the advertiser. For example, if an affiliate runs a website offering an “independent review” of two products and gives a favorable review of one, they should disclose the fact that they are receiving a commission from the sale of that product. These rules also apply to third parties, such as bloggers, who receive a free product and are asked to do a review. Under the new FTC rules, not only should the blogger disclose he got the product for free but the vendor who gave him the product should make some effort to make sure that the blogger makes that disclosure.

Please review these new rules yourself and if you have questions, please ask your own legal counsel. ClickBank cannot and does not give legal advice to our vendors or affiliates, and our approval of your product does not constitute an approval of any specific marketing, promotion or endorsement used to sell the product.

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – (Oct. 27, 2009) – Serving more than 114 countries on 6 continents, ClickBank announced today that the company has taken great strides toward globalization of its platform in a continued effort to expand services offered to the company’s international markets.

ClickBank officials say they’ve taken a phased approach to this endeavor, starting with the translation of the order form and all customer related material such as receipt emails and customer service content into German, Spanish and French. Having completed that phase last year, the company moved onto phase two—translation of the entire ClickBank site outside the login into the same three languages. Work on this phase has just been finished and the new pages are live as of today.

“More than one third of the 26,000 transactions ClickBank processes each day are made from outside the U.S.,” said Dush Ramachandran, ClickBank vice president of sales, marketing and business development. “It is important that we continue to cater to international markets. The globalization of our platform is just one of the many benefits we offer our global vendors and affiliates.”

In addition to offering content in multiple languages, ClickBank has made significant improvements to its payment processing and accepts 13 international currencies including the Euro, the British Pound, and the Swedish and Danish Kroner

Posted by: Che Horder, Business Intelligence Manager

Recurring Billing

You have spoken and we listened.  We’ve made changes to our analytics tool that will help vendors and affiliates who promote recurring billing products.  Previously, it was not possible for you to differentiate between sales made through the ClickBank Order Form and rebills on recurring billing products you sell or promote.  This made the conversion statistics (Hops Per Order, Earnings Per Hop, and Order Form Sale Conversion) difficult to work with when reporting on recurring billing products.

With our release on October 26, 2009, you will now be able to differentiate rebills from sales that occur on the ClickBank Order Form.  We have added two new fields in analytics called Initial Sales Count and Initial Sale Amount.  These fields represent sales made on a standard product and the initial sale of a recurring billing product.  These fields also replace Gross Sales in the conversion statistics (Hops Per Order, Earnings Per Hop, and Order Form Sale Conversion).

Coming in the near future, we will also introduce new analytics reports designed to further inform our clients on their recurring billing promotions.

Vendor Tracking ID

Our October 26, 2009 release will also be the introduction of reporting by Tracking ID for our Vendors.  This feature has been, and will remain, available for our affiliates.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

ClickBank VP Dush Ramachandran recently wrote an article for DMNews.com discussing the possibility of upcoming Federal Trade Commission regulations on the affiliate marketing and blogging industries, and gives some thoughts about the possible outcomes. Be sure to check it out, as this topic is likely to affect everyone involved in affiliate marketing and blogging very soon.

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – (Aug. 10, 2009) – ClickBank officials will continue to work with affiliate marketers in states that are enacting new laws to tax the marketers’ sales, while Amazon and Overstock.com, among others, have been moving swiftly to halt its business relationships with affiliate marketers in various states because of the new tax implications.

In late June, Amazon terminated its marketing affiliate program in North Carolina after a new law took effect that will tax affiliate sales, and on July 1, Overstock.com notified affiliates in Hawaii, North Carolina and Rhode Island that it would immediately cease doing business with them because of similar new tax laws.

But ClickBank, a major online retailer, says it has no intention of terminating relationships with affiliates in certain locations or discontinuing its longstanding policy of collecting and remitting taxes to the appropriate tax authorities in various domestic and international jurisdictions.

“We will continue to honor sales agreements with affiliates in the U.S. and abroad, despite new taxes that are being levied against them for sales and marketing efforts,” said Dush Ramachandran, vice president of sales, marketing and business development for ClickBank.

“One of the benefits of being a ClickBank affiliate is that you can operate wherever you live,” said Ramachandran. “We don’t want to place limits on that now. Our affiliates deserve the opportunity to earn income regardless of where they live, and ClickBank will continue to support them in their efforts to do so.”

New state tax laws aim to collect sales tax revenues from affiliates whose marketing activities lead to ecommerce sales. The key issue is whether the affiliates have a physical presence in a state that taxes ecommerce activities. The state of New York was the first to enact such tax laws, and more states are following suit.

New ClickBank booth to be unveiled at this month’s sold-out affiliate marketing conference

ClickBank VP Dush Ramachandran

Broomfield, Colo. – (August 6, 2009) – Dush Ramachandran, vice president of sales, marketing  and business development for ClickBank, a major online retail outlet, will share advice and industry insight on microniche marketing at Affiliate Summit East Aug. 9-11 in New York City.

ClickBank is widely considered to be an international leader in affiliate marketing with more than 100,000 active affiliate marketers working with the company to market its products and drive sales to a level of more than 26,000 transactions per day.

Ramachandran’s presentation is titled “Microniches – the Way to Mega Profits.” It will be available to only platinum and gold pass holders at Affiliate Summit East, which is now sold out with more than 2,000 affiliate marketers registered to attend.

“Using real-life case studies, I’ll demonstrate how affiliate marketers can promote products in a wide variety of small and focused niches, where there is little competition and marketing and advertising costs are inexpensive,” Ramachandran said.

Click for full-size image

ClickBank also will unveil its newly designed trade show booth at Affiliate Summit East. The booth features a sleek new look, two oversized flat screen monitors, Astroturf flooring and an electronic ticker that displays ClickBank client payouts in real-time.

Ramachandran serves on the advisory board of Affiliate Summit and Affilicon, the international counterpart to Affiliate Summit, and helps plan content for both organizations’ affiliate marketing conferences. The conferences are widely considered a key source for affiliate marketing thought leadership and industry expertise.

Ramachandran joined ClickBank in 2005. He is responsible for ClickBank’s sales and marketing activities and alliances with affiliate and vendor organizations worldwide. Ramachandran has held executive leadership positions with domestic and international firms such as Requisite Technology, Conceptual Technologies, Computervision Corp., Prime Computer, Inc. and Datapoint Corp. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore University, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management.