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?

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Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager- Client Account Management

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to look forward to report cards coming out each quarter. If we did well, my parents would recognize and reward us for our efforts. We would get dressed up, go out to a fancy restaurant, and spend a leisurely 2-3 hour dinner as a family. Even today, I still have great memories of those reward dinners. While they weren’t the reason I worked hard in school, they sure were a nice bonus, and I appreciated the recognition of my efforts.

Being recognized and rewarded for loyalty, hard work, and success is a universal desire that manifests itself in several different forms throughout our society. Whether it’s a family celebration, a frequent flyer program, a punch card for your favorite coffee shop, or an invitation to join an elite club, we all like to feel valued by the people with whom we associate most. It is in that spirit that ClickBank’s business development department created the Premier and Apex programs.

We started the ClickBank Premier program in 2008 as a way to recognize our top vendors and reward them for their loyalty, ingenuity, and hard work. The program was so successful that we extended the idea to ClickBank affiliates and started the Apex program in 2009. We also increased the number of benefits awarded, and we’re in the process of dedicating more resources to each program.

The programs have also delivered huge benefits to us, as we’ve been able to build closer relationships with our top clients and work with them to make sure ClickBank remains the best solution for selling and promoting digital goods. In fact, we’ve got some exciting new features and enhancements coming out this year that are a direct result of our communications with Premier and Apex clients!

As with status levels in frequent flyer programs, members of the Premier and Apex programs must requalify each year. Every fall, we look at our sales for the previous 12 months and invite the top 100 vendors and the top 100 affiliates to participate in the programs. Current members who did not requalify are notified of this fact, while new qualifiers are invited to join.

If you’re reading this post and you’re not a current member of either program, I hope this inspires you grow your business with us and achieve Premier or Apex status. ClickBank will reward you for your loyalty, your hard work, and your ultimate success!

Take a look at these related posts:

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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!

Take a look at these related posts:

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2. ClickBank Offers Weekly Payments

Here at ClickBank, we’re always trying to recruit great new publishers and affiliates, since having more products and people to promote them benefits everyone. And there’s no better way to show prospective ClickBank members how successful they can be than for them to hear about the experiences of our existing clients. If you’ve been successful using ClickBank, whether that means making millions, getting your product in front of a wider audience, or just having a little extra money each month, we’d love to hear from you!

Just fill out the form below and share your thoughts about working with ClickBank, along with your name, location and company name (if you have one). Please note that by leaving a testimonial, you give us your permission to use your name and your testimonial in our marketing materials. If you prefer, we can use your first name and last initial only.

Thank you for working with ClickBank!

cforms contact form by delicious:days

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Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager- Client Account Management

Today is my first day back in the office after attending the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas on January 11-13, and I’m excited! The conference was extremely productive and was a lot of fun, too!

We spent most of Sunday at our table at the Affiliate Meet Market. We had the opportunity to meet and speak with a myriad of people, whose knowledge of ClickBank ranged from “I’ve never heard of ClickBank. What do you do?” to “ClickBank!  I’ve been waiting for years to see you at one of these conferences!” We also thoroughly enjoyed meeting many of our current clients, several of whom we had corresponded with via email and phone calls but had never met face-to-face. How wonderful it is to finally be able to put a face with those names!

Monday was spent walking the show floor, talking with potential partners, and learning about other networks. We were blown away by how much the Affiliate Summit had grown since our first trip there last winter.

On Monday night, we hosted a VIP party at The House of Blues Foundation Room, an exclusive club at the top of the Mandalay Bay hotel with a fabulous view of the Las Vegas Strip. About 25 people attended and we had a wonderful time getting to know our clients on a social level, while listening to their ideas on what they like best about ClickBank and how we can improve our business. Thank you to all who attended-we had a great time with you!

We wrapped up the trip on Tuesday with a couple of meetings and another walk of the show floor, and then headed off to the airport for the return trip.

We would like to thank everyone who took the opportunity to introduce themselves to us at the Meet Market or while we were walking the show floor. We left with great memories and a boost of enthusiasm for the year ahead!

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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!

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Posted by: Kristen M., Marketing Communications Manager

We’re in the process of planning this year’s European general client meeting. The event is tentatively scheduled for June 5, 2008 in London.

Attendance is limited to approximately the first 150 people who register. We will handle registration via a specific form on the blog that will be posted soon (please do not attempt to register by leaving a comment). Be sure to check back frequently for more information about when registration is open. (Or subscribe to our RSS feed, so you will be notified as soon as we post.)

The meeting will have two components: a training session and a general client meeting. The training will include information for both publishers and affiliates. The general client meeting will feature an overview of our plans for the next year, as well as an interactive discussion of ClickBank features.

Stay tuned for more information!

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Posted by: Jen Johannsen, VP of Operations

Hello friends! I say that because I have been with ClickBank for a long time, and have developed relationships with so many of you. For those of you that I haven’t had the chance to work with – I hope that we also have an opportunity at some point!

In my “previous life” (pre-ClickBank), most of my experience was in restaurants and restaurant management, which I really enjoyed. I always loved trying to make certain each customer had a great experience after they walked through the door. That is what we expect at ClickBank, as well. I recognize, however, that we still have improvements to make to reach this goal.

As you may have noticed, we have made a significant effort to improve our outbound communications with our clients. We also have plans to improve our inbound customer service communications this year. Some of the ideas that we are working on include building a ticket system for handling incoming inquiries from our clients, offering online chat as a way for clients to ask questions and get answers more quickly, and further extending our customer service hours.

It is important to me that while we work on these projects, we are still addressing the questions and needs clients have right now. With that in mind, here are my best suggestions for getting the responses that you need from ClickBank as quickly as possible:

• First, be sure to always use the form on our Contact Us page. The emails that are sent through the form are guaranteed to get to us, whereas emails sent to a particular email address always have a possibility of getting improperly categorized or filtered along the way.

• When possible, ask all of your questions in one email and be as thorough with your questions as possible. This will allow one Customer Service Representative to answer all of your questions at one time. This is much more efficient than having multiple different Customer Service Representatives answer one question at a time.

• Only send one email for each inquiry. Until we have a ticket system, we are unable to tie two matching emails together. As a result, we spend time responding to each email that arrives, even if it’s already been answered, which slows us down for answering other unique emails.

• If you have a confusing question, or if you are having a difficult time understanding the information our team sends back, feel free to ask us for our phone number or send your phone number to us. The number is not currently published on the website because we literally get thousands of new sign ups a day. For every one phone call, we can handle ten to twenty emails… so for us, the best first shot at answering a question is by email. Not only can we handle more emails at a time than we can phone calls, but then you also have a written answer that you can refer back to. But when that doesn’t work, we are more than happy to help by phone. Just ask!

• If you are still having problems getting a response (and you’ve tried my recommendations above), I want to know about it! Leave a comment and we’ll try to track down why you didn’t receive your email or why you haven’t received a response.

I hope you find the information above helpful. I’m looking forward to implementing our improvements this year! Keep your eyes out for great things from ClickBank’s customer service team!

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