Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Posted by: Che Horder, Manager of Business Intelligence

ClickBank will soon be releasing major improvements to our reporting analytics capabilities. We understand that our vendors and affiliates rely on timely information from ClickBank to effectively manage their business. In that spirit, we are pleased to be introducing several new and exciting features:

• Interactive Trend Charting
• Order Form Impressions Data
• Expanded Dimensions with Drilldown Capability
• Expanded Date Range
• Improved Performance
  

Interactive Trend Charting
Imagine being able to see daily sales trended graphically at the click of a button. Now imagine being able to view that same trend for a particular geographic location…or product…or tracking ID. Quickly compare those sales to the number of Hops or order form impressions during the same time period. All this and much more will be at your fingertips when the new reporting analytics interactive trend charting capabilities are released. Enjoy the freedom of exploring and learning from the intricacies of your sales and sales funnel data.

Order Form Impressions Data
Further understand the sales funnel of your business as potential customers navigate from HopLinks to pitch pages to order forms to order completion. Also manage your sales retention efforts on the other side of the funnel by viewing refund and chargeback rates.

Expanded Dimensions with Drilldown Capability
Find new ways to slice and dice your business with the introduction of several new dimensions. New dimensions include customer country, customer province, product, category, currency, language, and billing type. Also, you can further explore each dimension. For example, you will be capable of seeing trends on your sales in Australia, France, or any other country where your product has sold.

Expanded Date Range
Explore your data in time frames you define, whether that be for the last 3 days or the last 3 months. Data is available for up to the last 120 days.

Improved Performance
We understand that interacting with your business information requires a smooth and timely experience, and our technical team has paid great attention to building a tool that responds quickly.

ClickBank will soon release a new feature that allows clients to track successful orders (conversions) by linking the ClickBank order process to Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Yahoo Search Marketing. This additional reporting gives ClickBank clients more information about their sales and the effectiveness of their promotional efforts than ever before. For example, vendors can insert tracking scripts on order conversion pages, allowing them to monitor drop-off rates at every stage of the sales process including the ClickBank order form.

We would like to invite you to participate in the pilot of this exciting new feature. To participate, you must use at least one of the following programs:

- Google Analytics

- Google AdWords

- Yahoo Search Marketing

If you use one of these programs and would like to participate, simply fill out the form below with your name, ClickBank nickname, email address, and which of the three programs you use.

Please note that only a limited number of respondents will secure a spot in the pilot, so apply quickly!

If you are chosen to participate, ClickBank will contact you via email with additional information regarding the pilot.

Posted by: Kristen M., Marketing Communications Manager

As part of our recent update to the look and feel of the ClickBank website, we are making visual changes to our order form. A brief but statistically significant split test was recently conducted, and the modified order form outperformed the current order form. Due to these positive results, we will begin using a modified version of our order form on Wednesday, June 17th.

In anticipation of this change, please update your payment link images. New payment button images that reflect our new colors can be found here.

Posted by: Kristen M., Marketing Communications Manager

By now I suspect most of you have seen the updated look and feel of the ClickBank website. We’re very excited about these changes as they not only make the site more attractive, but also easier to understand for prospective clients. Our new colors of red, green, yellow, and taupe give us a bold, fresh look that differentiates us from the competition.

To further assist prospective clients we also updated our vendor and affiliate pages. The 5-step slideshows show beginners how ClickBank works.

The changes to these pages are not aimed at our current clients, but rather at prospective clients who aren’t familiar with what ClickBank can do for them.  If you’re a current ClickBank client, though, don’t feel left out. We have some additional changes planned to make the site easier to use and navigate. No need to worry, though, we won’t change anything substantial, including the order form, without testing it first.

Oh, and one last thing – the ticker is real and accurate. Pretty cool, eh?

As you’ve probably noticed by now, ClickBank has a new look! In the spirit of the many improvements we’ve made so far this year, we’ve made significant changes to our company colors, as well as the look and feel of the navigation bar and the layout of several pages on the website.

This is the first phase of making the ClickBank website more attractive and easier to understand for new clients.

Please note that these changes do not affect existing functionality or page locations, so you can continue to use the ClickBank system in the same way you always have.

Broomfield, Colo. – (April 22, 2009) – Dush Ramachandran, vice president of sales, marketing and business development for ClickBank, has been appointed to the advisory boards of Affiliate Summit and Affilicon, further strengthening Ramachandran’s ties to affiliate marketing circles in domestic and international arenas.

Both advisory boards work to provide thought leadership and industry expertise to Internet and affiliate marketers. Board members leverage their connections and standing within the industry for the betterment of the business and all of those associated with it.

“I look forward to working with Affiliate Summit and Affilicon to help ensure the success of Internet and affiliate marketers worldwide,” said Ramachandran. “Working with ClickBank’s community of 100,000-plus marketing affiliates, I can offer a well-informed, global perspective of the industry and what is needed to move it forward.”

In addition to being considered the source for thought leadership and industry expertise, Affiliate Summit and Affilicon hold several annual marketing conferences that are considered to be the premier must-attend events for marketing affiliates, exhibitors and online merchants. Conferences and events are held in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Asia, drawing marketing affiliates, exhibitors and merchants on an annual and semi-annual basis. As an advisory board member, Ramachandran will assist with the selection of speakers and topics at upcoming Affiliate Summit and Affilicon conferences.

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.

We are very pleased to announce that we now support vendors and affiliates from 30 new countries around the world! ClickBank is now more global than ever before.

The new countries are:

• Albania
• Armenia
• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Cambodia
• Colombia
• Comoros
• Falkland Islands
• Georgia
• Honduras
• Haiti
• Indonesia
• Kyrgyzstan
• Lebanon
• Montenegro
• Macedonia
• Mali
• Nicaragua
• Peru
• Philippines
• Pakistan
• Paraguay
• Russian Federation
• Swaziland
• Ukraine
• Uzbekistan
• Venezuela
• Vietnam
• Yemen

Welcome to all of our new client countries!

Earlier this week, we updated our Client Contract with a number of changes, so in this post we’ll summarize what these changes were.

Almost all of the changes we made to the contract were merely changes to legal language, and didn’t change the existing meaning of the policies we had in place. For example, we added several of our existing policies to the Client Contract, as opposed to having them in separate places on our website. We also added a new policy which did not exist before, which is the Return and Cancellation Policy. The items in this policy, such as ClickBank’s 60-day return policy, were stated elsewhere, but were not previously included in the Client Contract.

We strengthened the legal language of certain parts of the contract, including Intellectual Property (IP) rights, the DMCA Policy, and confidentiality rights to protect ClickBank, our clients, and IP owners. We also updated wording about spamming and sending unsolicited messages to be consistent with current laws.

In addition to the legal language changes, we made a few policy changes you should be aware of.

1. ClickBank now no longer allows the sale of any product that, in ClickBank’s sole judgment, encourages the unlawful transfer of copyrighted media, such as music, movies, video, and games.
2. We now allow the sale and promotion of website templates, which were previously prohibited.
3. In the past, we required a $50 fee to transfer an account to a new owner. This fee is no longer required, so you can transfer an account to a new owner at no charge. The new owner will need to accept the Client Contract in order to use the account.

Due to changes in legal language, we have received questions about offering non-cash bonuses, such as ebooks, as incentives for customers to purchase a product. ClickBank’s policy regarding affiliates giving “bonuses” to customers for purchasing a product has not changed with the new contract. Affiliates and vendors cannot offer cash or cash equivalents (e.g., “Buy now and receive a $15 rebate to your Paypal account”), but it is acceptable to offer bonuses such as ebooks or audio programs as an incentive to buy.

Additionally, some clients believed that they could no longer transfer their account to another person. However, this practice is still allowed, and in fact has been made easier, since it no longer requires a $50 transfer fee, as it did previously.

If you have any questions about specific changes to the Client Contract, please leave a comment below and we’ll answer as quickly as possible.

Please be aware that ClickBank introduced a new Client Contract yesterday, updating some of our policies and terms. By creating a new account or logging in to your existing account, you agree to the new contract, so please take a few minutes to read over it and familiarize yourself with it.

ClickBank Client Contract

Over the past few months, ClickBank has been developing an innovative advertising platform that will help ClickBank affiliates make more money from their Web site or blog traffic, while at the same time generating more exposure and sales for ClickBank publishers.

Here’s why you should participate:

• Because of generous commissions, placing ClickBank ads on your site means you can receive much larger payouts than from traditional pay-per-click or display ads
• Quick and easy ad creation and insertion process
• Ad filtering lets you only display ads that are relevant and appropriate to your Web site’s audience
• Highly customizable ad layouts and formats can be easily integrated into all kinds of sites, including blogs, forums and more

Update: The ClickBank HopAd Builder is now available to everyone! To learn how to use it, see our Help Center article: http://www.clickbank.com/help/affiliate-help/affiliate-tools/hopad-builder/