Posts Tagged ‘publishers’

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!

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Posted by: Michael Poston, Product Manager

Now more than ever, users are accessing the Internet with high speed connections, which invites the use of rich media. SOHO (Small Office Home Office) businesses have discovered the following sure-fire ways Internet video can improve their customer experience:

Product Demonstration
For years, publishers have looked for ways to clearly demonstrate their product and articulate its value proposition. This exciting new media allows you to quickly go through the whole process, screen-by-screen, showing the product “in action,” overcoming some of the limitations of words and pictures. Creating a video to demonstrate your product can be the tipping point that convinces a visitor to buy. For example, if you can show a technology-averse visitor that your product is easy enough for even a beginner to use, you’ll overcome one of their biggest objections to buying.

Confidence Building
Since the early days, when Internet purchasing was a new idea, customers have sided with companies they trust when making their purchases. Much of this decision is based on confidence, credibility, and being able to identify with the creator of the product/service. Video allows you to remove barriers by inspiring confidence and putting a personable face on the product, ultimately winning customer trust and closing more sales.

Problem Solving
Not only is it a good idea to use video to sell your product, but it will also pay dividends with customer service. For example, creating a video that walks customers through resolving a very common customer service request could save your organization money and time. Things that are difficult to describe with words and pictures are much easier to express in video format!

Marketing Materials
Lastly, if you upload product demonstration videos to YouTube or other video sites, affiliate marketers can use them to help promote your products by embedding them in their site, which will save you money on marketing. Publishers with products that can be easily demonstrated by video should start making videos available to their affiliate partners!

The time to wonder if video will change your business has passed; it is time to leverage this powerful new media!

Happy selling, friends!

Posted by: Dush Ramachandran, VP of Business Development

Every time I go to a large department store, I think the seasons are coming earlier and earlier. The weather outside is a balmy 90°F and the fall fashions are already on the shelf. Almost before the ghouls and goblins of Halloween displays are put away, holiday music seems to flood the stores.

But when you think about it, seasonal marketing makes a lot of sense. Even on ClickBank, where a number of products have year-round appeal, there are products whose appeal is definitely seasonal. Capitalizing on these seasonal trends can be a very lucrative approach for both affiliates and publishers.

For instance, looking up searches on Google Trends for specific seasonal terms like ‘Halloween costumes’ or ‘Christmas ornaments’ shows not only the time of year when these searches peak, but also the top 10 geographic areas from which these searches originate. This knowledge allows affiliates to not only plan their spending on AdWords and SEO efforts, but also to geo-target their advertising by having their ads shown in specific geographical markets.

Just as an example, I looked up ‘ski fitness’ on Google Trends and found that, predictably, the searches started in middle of the last quarter of the year, peaked from around the end of the year to the middle of the first quarter of the following year, and remained flat at zero volume for the remainder of the year. The top four countries these searches came from were UK, Australia, Canada and Switzerland. Doing a search on the ClickBank Marketplace for ‘ski fitness’ yielded a number of fitness products, including one that is specifically aimed at ski fitness.

So with a little forethought and planning, you could have a series of different promotions for each season, geographical area and topic of interest.

‘Tis the season to promote, it would seem.

Posted by: Jen Johannsen, VP of Operations

Early in August, I posted a blog entry about using some of the tools we provide that allow us to provide better customer service to your customers (”Help Us Help You”). Well, here I am again to announce the newest tool that we have added that will allow us to help you assist your customers more quickly.

Yesterday, our release included the addition of a field that will allow you to enter a Customer Service Web site. Input this information, and we will provide it to customers in notifications and via the order locator on the CLKBank.com page as an alternate source for technical support.

We envision this being used in different ways by different publishers. We know some publishers have a helpdesk URL that can be listed as the Customer Service Web site. Others may want to add their FAQ page that answers their customers’ most commonly-asked questions. Some may add a page that has a script that will allow customers to generate a new password, in case they lose the original password that was generated at the time of the purchase. I’m sure there are other ways it can be used, as well.

Just remember that if you list a Customer Service Web site under the “My Account” section of your ClickBank account, the URL will be sent to the customer in the email notifications that are sent out by ClickBank.

Our hope is that you can use this to help your customers as quickly as possible – and hopefully keep more sales!

Service provides greater flexibility for ClickBank users

BROOMFIELD, Colo.- Sept. 9, 2008 – ClickBank, a privately held online retailer for buyers and sellers of digitally delivered products and services, today announced the ability for ClickBank clients to receive payments for affiliate commission and sales via weekly direct deposit (ACH & XACH).

“During the past two years in our efforts to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction, we have made a number of critical improvements to our services and offerings,” said Bob King, ClickBank CEO. “The latest improvement is weekly payments. With this offering our clients will have greater flexibility to manage their cash flow and reinvest into their businesses.”

In July, ClickBank introduced direct deposit into both domestic and international bank accounts. Now, direct deposit users can choose to be paid weekly, cutting the wait time to receive electronic payments and providing ClickBank clients faster access to capital.

“Direct deposit and shorter payment cycles will help many Internet marketers manage their cash flow and reinvest their ClickBank profits,” said ClickBank client Michael Rasmussen. “It’s not only a good business move for existing clients, it will bring in a lot of new ClickBank affiliates as well.”

To be eligible for weekly payments and direct deposit, a ClickBank user must have first received three paper checks within any 90-day period. Also, only accounts in the following countries qualify at this time: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States. The company is expecting to expand direct deposit to other countries in the future.

Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager – Client Account Management

There is a saying that goes, “You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” I don’t know who originally spoke those words, but I believe they could have been in reference to ClickBank’s refund policy.

In my 8 years with ClickBank, one of our most controversial policies has always been the refund policy. Our clients tend to love it or hate it. If they hate it, they hate it for one of two reasons: either (1) they think the refund period is too long or (2) they think it’s too short. We have a refund policy that allows for returns within 60 days to protect both our clients and our customers, but we hear from both publishers who think this is way too long, and those that want the refund policy to last 6 months, a year, or more! Obviously, there are different opinions about what is a “fair” refund policy length.

While not everyone agrees on what the refund policy should be, the one common denominator we all share is that we want to reduce refunds as much as possible. With that in mind, this post is dedicated to sharing a few tips to help you in that endeavor.

1) Be easy to contact

• Prominently display your customer service email address on your Thank You page.
• Provide your customer service hours and a time frame in which customers can expect to receive a reply from you.
• Realize that email is not 100% reliable, and take advantage of the area within your ClickBank account where you can add a customer service phone number. This number is not provided to customers after the purchase or on their sales receipt; it is only provided to them by our customer service staff if the customer calls or emails stating that they are having trouble reaching you by email.
• Coming soon- as of September 9^th, you will be able to list a customer service/help desk URL in your ClickBank account. This URL will be provided to customers on the order confirmation page and on their sales receipt.

2) Provide an honest description of your product on your sales page

• Set your customers’ expectations appropriately. Many people are still skeptical of digital products and of buying products through the internet. Make sure you tell them what they’re going to get as thoroughly and honestly as possible, so they feel they got their money’s worth and walk away satisfied.
• Explain which programs or software applications the customer will need in order to download your product. For example, keep in mind that not everyone has MS Word.

3) Provide impeccable customer service

• Autoresponders are efficient, but they are extremely impersonal, and they do not and cannot address each individual issue that a customer may have. While it’s a good idea to use autoresponders to provide customers with answers to frequently asked questions, you should also make sure to provide customers with a way to get answers from a real person if the FAQ doesn’t help them.
• Offer courteous, professional, easy-to-follow answers to customer service inquiries. You may answer all of your customer service email, but if the instructions are not written in a way that the customer can understand, they will say, “Forget it,” and ask for a refund.

Despite our best efforts, it’s highly unlikely that any of us will be able to please all of our customers all of the time. However, following these tips will help you help you please some of the people all of the time, and save a significant percentage of your sales from unnecessary refunds.

Posted by: Dush Ramachandran, VP of Business Development

If you sell or promote digital products through ClickBank, wouldn’t you like to know where your customers are, and what days of the week and times of day they buy your products? With ClickBank’s introduction of the Instant Notification API, whether you’re a publisher or an affiliate you can do all that and more.

The Instant Notification API, or application program interface, provides a way by which information captured at the time of purchase can be provided by the ClickBank system to another computer. If you are signed up to receive instant notifications, you can set up a program on your computer to receive the information that ClickBank sends as soon as a transaction takes place.

Ordinarily, this transaction information is sent to publishers by means of a notification email, which needs to be parsed in order to collect this data. With the API, all of this same information can be collected instantaneously, as each transaction occurs. Additionally, now affiliates can also gather this transaction data as the sale occurs, which was previously only possible for publishers.

With the API and a corresponding data collection program in place on your computer, you can easily determine from which country or zip code most of your sales originate and direct your advertising efforts to media in those markets. You can analyze the times of day that are most popular with your customers and use day part bidding, or Ad Scheduling as Google refers to it (covered in an earlier post by Beau Blackwell), to show your ads at the times when your customers are most likely to see them and make a purchase.

Publishers with multiple accounts can take instant notifications from all their accounts and have the day’s sales aggregated and displayed, showing sales for all of their products across various geographical locations and time zones. Since the API will output information on all transactions, including sales, refunds and chargebacks, this capability can give you a minute-to-minute update on the status of your business through ClickBank.

Please be aware that this service is intended for use by experienced programmers. If you don’t have extensive programming skills, you should consider enlisting the services of a programmer to help you take advantage of the Instant Notification API.

Be sure to check out details on the Instant Notification API and explore how it can give you a better handle on your business.

Posted by: Jen Johannsen, VP of Operations

In April of this year, ClickBank added some new enhancements that – when appropriate for your business model and when used properly – can help our customer service team prevent refunds on your products! The new enhancements include additional fields for publishers to add a customer service phone number, a customer service email address, and product titles and images for all of the products listed in their account. Information on all of these additions can be found in the 2008-04-15 ClickBank Release Summary.

Recently, I asked our customer service representatives to name the number one thing they felt publishers could do to help them save sales when customers call in. Unanimously the response was that the addition of a customer service phone number would be the most helpful! They said they hear from customers all the time that are discouraged by not being able to contact the publisher by phone. Often, they are frustrated by not receiving a response by email, so they decide to just have the purchase refunded instead.

We understand that a customer service phone number doesn’t work for all online businesses, and that helping customers by email is sometimes more streamlined and efficient. However, keep in mind that the customer service phone number that you provide in your ClickBank account is only given out to customers that contact ClickBank directly for assistance (typically when the customer states that they have been unable to get a response from the publisher by email). It is not provided to the customer during the order process, and you do not have to list the phone number on your Web site. However, when a customer calls ClickBank, and we are able to provide them another avenue to get the help they need, that gives your customers confidence that you are committed to their satisfaction!

You should also be sure to add product titles for each of the products that you offer in each account. The product title not only offers the opportunity for you to provide clear information about the products your customers are purchasing before they buy, it also gives our customer service team the information they need to clearly describe the purchase that was made if customers call in and are unsure why ClickBank appears on their statement. If you don’t include a product title by listing one in your account or by passing a title through your sales link, the default “title” is [CB-nickname-item#], for example CB-test1-1. Think about how much more effective a conversation with a confused customer is when our customer service team can immediately provide them with the title of the item that was purchased, compared to the customer service person trying to figure out what the item is by looking at your Marketplace Title or Description.

Every little thing you do to lower your return rates can have a big impact on your profits! Take a few minutes to check your account and make sure you have as much information in place as possible to help us help you.

Posted by: Kristen M., Marketing Communications Manager

Recurring Billing is a well-established practice in the brick and mortar business community and is growing in popularity at ClickBank. Why? Recurring Billing means regular, reliable commissions for affiliates and product publishers.

If you’re not familiar with Recurring Billing, it’s the practice of receiving automated payments for scheduled bills or product installments. Recurring Billing is proving popular because it means a steady income stream to augment one-off product sales. A great example of a publisher successfully using Recurring Billing is Andrew Fox, whose story you can read here.

This presents a great opportunity for affiliates to find recurring products that fit their niche and for product publishers that have a product that lends itself to weekly, monthly, quarterly or other regular installments.

For detailed instructions about implementing ClickBank Recurring Billing, visit the 2007-06-19 Release Summary and the 2007-11-13 Release Summary. These documents will help you start increasing your revenues through Recurring Billing.

Posted by: Greg Lems, Director of Application Development

If you ran a brick-and-mortar store, would you leave it unlocked at night when nobody was around? Of course not! Unfortunately, some ClickBank publishers do just that by not protecting their download URLs.

The download URL (also called the “Thank You Page”) is how paying customers download their digital product from a ClickBank publisher. Publishers configure this URL in the “My Products” section of their ClickBank account. It is important to realize that when ClickBank accepts a payment and sends the customer to the publisher download URL, we also pass along important encrypted information that only the publisher can decipher. The deciphering of this information allows publishers to quickly determine whether the person attempting to download the product has actually paid or not.

If you’re a Web site owner with programming knowledge, or if you have access to a programmer for your site, details on how to implement this feature can be found here:

http://www.clickbank.com/publisher_tools.html#Publisher_Tools_7

If you’re not comfortable with performing programming tasks on your site, there are numerous commercial products available that provide protection for your downloadable digital goods. Some examples of these products for sale on ClickBank include DLGuard, easyClickGuard, and Lock-It-Now, although more can be found in the ClickBank Marketplace.

ClickBank is dedicated to protecting our publishers’ content and helping publishers achieve proper levels of security. Be sure to take advantage of available tools to avoid the undesirable realization that you left your store unlocked overnight!