Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

On Monday night, after the first full day of the show, ClickBank hosted an exclusive invite-only cocktail party at the famous 21 Club in midtown Manhattan. Some of our biggest clients attended and got a chance to meet with ClickBank staff members and network with each other. One of the highlights of the party, outside of the great venue, was the Clickbank Moneymaker, a custom cocktail co-invented by our own Dush Ramachandran and Terra Goeres. It was a delicious hit with the crowd, and we’re pretty sure that some big moneymaking deals were made over Moneymakers!

The crowd at the party included extremely successful vendors and affiliates from all over the world, including Israel, Poland, France, Switzerland, and more. One of the best parts of the event for us at ClickBank was hearing what features and services we should introduce to help make our clients even more successful. We got some great ideas for new features and shared some upcoming features we’ll be rolling out soon that were very popular with the crowd. All in all, the party was a huge success, and when it finally wrapped up, some great ideas had been shared and plans and partnerships made for the future. We look forward to our next party at Affiliate Summit West in a few months!

Below are some pictures from the event. You can see more pics from the event at our Flickr album.

ClickBank Team Members Kylee and Terra

ClickBank Account Specialist Ashley Adamson with several clients

A crowd of top-earning ClickBank clients listen to Terra Goeres speak

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

Today we unveiled our brand-new booth, and it was a big hit on the show floor. We got a lot of great comments about the look, which stood out from the crowd quite a bit. Here are a few pictures:

Our booth before the show started

Showing off our cool backlighting

Terra, Kylee, and Ashley getting ready to meet the public

The show floor was packed by mid-morning, and we met with many current and future clients. It was great to finally put a face to the names we’ve been working with for years. Many of the people we met with were very excited to see us exhibiting at the event, and to hear that our participation at these shows will just get bigger and bigger in the future! For more pictures from the day, check out our Flickr album.

After the trade show floor closed for the day, we geared up for our exclusive VIP Cocktail Party at the 21 Club later in the evening. More details and pictures from the party are coming 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.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

The first day of Affiliate Summit East 2009 was a big success! The Meet Market was packed from before it opened at noon until after it was scheduled to end at 6pm. The ClickBank staff was kept very busy meeting many affiliates and vendors and discussing how we can help them grow their businesses and add ClickBank to their mix of promotional efforts.

Affiliate Summit East is bigger and better than ever this year, and it really shows. The Meet Market room was jam-packed with people meeting and networking, and the main event, which starts today, promises to be just as busy and eventful. ClickBank’s booth is set up and looking great (photos coming soon!) We’re excited to meet even more people at our booth today, and have members of the Clickbank staff ranging from client support to marketing to IT ready to answer questions and help affiliates work with ClickBank more effectively. We hope to see you on the floor today! Below are just a few pictures from yesterday’s Meet Market, but to see even more, visit our Flickr album.

Terra Goeres, ClickBank's Manager of Client Development, meets with a visitor during the Meet Market.

Ashley and Kylee of ClickBank's Premier and Apex client support team chat with visitors at the Meet Market.

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.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

Earlier this week, we released several major improvements to our system that will help both vendors and affiliates grow and improve their businesses. In case you missed them, here’s a recap of what we released.

Help Center

You’ve probably already seen the new Help Center tab on the right-hand side of our navigation bar, but if not, be sure to check it out! The Help Center contains many new articles for both affiliates and vendors, covering everything from creating a ClickBank account to attracting more affiliates and learning about common ways to promote products. It’s a great place to look for any information you need about being more successful as a ClickBank client.

New & Improved Client Analytics

We’ve made major improvements to our Client Analytics, allowing you to see more detail than ever about your sales and promotions. Our improved Client Analytics lets you look at trends, order form impressions data, reporting by various dimensions like geographic location, and more.

To view the new Client Analytics, log in to your account and click the Reporting tab. Then click Analytics NEW! on the right side of the subnav:

To read more about all the features Client Analytics has to offer, and how to use it, see our Help Center article.

Integrated Sales Reporting

Clients can now track successful orders (conversions) by linking the ClickBank order process to Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Yahoo Search Marketing, giving you more information about sales and the effectiveness of promotional efforts than ever before.

Read more about Integrated Sales Reporting in the Help Center.

ClickBank API

The ClickBank API makes it possible for a wide range of computer programs to securely access ClickBank account information on behalf of ClickBank account owners. Some of the functions available to users of the API include the ability to:

• Request a refund for a customer’s purchase
• Request a cancelation for a customer’s subscription
• Retrieve a list of transactions in a ClickBank account for a given timeframe

Read more about the ClickBank API in the Help Center.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

In a few weeks, ClickBank will participate in Affiliate Summit East 2009. At past Affiliate Summit events, we’ve only attended the show and participated in the Meet Market. However, at this year’s event, we will attend, participate in the Meet Market, exhibit on the trade show floor with our beautiful new booth, and Dush Ramachandran, our vice president of sales, marketing, and business development, will present a session on microniche marketing.

Meet Market

ClickBank will be at Meet Market Table 63 on Sunday, August 9, from noon to 6 p.m. We’ll have staff from multiple departments on hand to meet with affiliates and vendors to talk about their marketing efforts and upcoming ClickBank features, answer questions, offer advice, and more! If you’re interested in learning more about ClickBank or just want to say hello, be sure to stop by and see us.

Trade Show Exhibit

For the first time, we will also exhibit on the trade show floor in our sleek new trade show booth! The booth will give us a great opportunity to meet and mingle with current and future ClickBank clients and show off our new features on the multiple flat screen monitors. Members of the ClickBank team from various departments ranging from client support to IT will be on hand to answer questions and offer advice and assistance. You can also enter to win an iPod Touch! Come find us at booth 2004!

Presentation by Dush Ramachandran of ClickBank

On Sunday, August 9, at noon, ClickBank VP Dush Ramachandran will present a session entitled “Microniches – the Way to Mega Profits.” He will demonstrate how affiliate marketers can promote products in a wide variety of small and focused niches that have little competition, and where marketing costs are inexpensive. This session is available only to platinum and gold pass holders.

We hope to see many of you there! This promises to be a great event for networking and learning effective affiliate marketing techniques, as well as getting to spend some valuable face-to-face time with ClickBank. If you’re not able to make it, we hope to see you at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas in January!

Affiliate Summit has announced that the Affiliate Summit East show in August has officially sold out. We hope you got your pass already and will be able to attend, because it promises to be a great show.

Clickbank has some big plans for the show, and we hope to meet many affiliates and vendors at our Meet Market table and trade show booth. We’ll post more details soon about all of the events we’ll be participating in, and how to meet some of our team members and get advice on being a successful ClickBank client straight from the source!

We hope to see you there.

ClickBank is developing a new upsell feature that will allow certain ClickBank vendors to attempt to sell additional products to a customer after an initial purchase. After a sale occurs, vendors will be able to show a sequence of Pitch Pages for other products in their account, and if a customer opts to buy any of these products, they will not be required to reenter their payment information.

For example, when a customer completes an order, ClickBank will display the vendor’s first selected upsell Pitch Page. The customer may accept or decline the product, after which the vendor can show another offer in a sequence they’ve specified, or proceed directly to a confirmation page showing all of the items purchased and their corresponding download links. Regardless of how many upsell offers the customer purchases, they won’t be required to enter their payment information again.

To ensure this exciting new feature meets your needs, we would like your feedback for the following:

• Are you interested in this feature?
• Do you think you’ll use it?
• Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for ways to improve this feature?

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.