ClickBank Blog » recurring billing

ClickBank Recommends Best Practices for Continuity Program Merchants

Beau Blackwell, ClickBank — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:37:10 +0000

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.”

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ClickBank Analytics Improvements

Beau Blackwell, ClickBank — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:00:37 +0000

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.

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Recurring Billing Product Ideas

Blog Admin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:46:55 +0000

Posted by Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

If you’re a ClickBank publisher who wants to generate residual income from one of your products, or an affiliate who wants to promote products that will keep paying you commissions every month, ClickBank Recurring Billing products open up a huge range of possibilities for you.

Although you can sell or promote almost any type of product that involves repeating payments, we’ve put together a list of some of the most common types of recurring billing products:

* Memberships and subscriptions – There’s almost no limit to the kinds of membership sites you can create, but some ideas include stock photography or ringtone download sites.

* Software updates – Allow your customers to stay up to date with the latest releases of your software products, like spyware and virus removal.

* Higher-priced items with installment payments – Increase conversions on more expensive products by letting people make several smaller payments. You define the payment schedule and amounts.

* Newsletters and online news sites – Provide customers access to the latest news, rumors and strategies in your area of expertise, such as stock trading, fitness or online marketing.

* “Exclusive content” – Provide access to white papers, special reports, or any other kind of high-value content that’s just too good to give away for free.

* Web hosting/domain services – Now that establishing an online presence is easier than ever, selling web hosting services and domain names to people who want to get their name or product out there can be extremely profitable.

* Online communities/forums – Let people with similar interests, like small business owners or day traders, congregate and share ideas in a moderated online community.

Like any product innovation, there are many other creative new ways to use the ClickBank Recurring Billing service, so take a look at our recurring billing page and see how you can make it work for your business!

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It is Great to See Results

Blog Admin — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:29:51 +0000

Posted by: Monty Sooter, CTO

We continue to make enhancements to the ClickBank applications and it is great to see the results. Overall sales continue to grow at a rapid pace. Sales for ClickBank Recurring Billing products in July were 57 percent higher than any previous month. Sales for Spanish products in July were 33 percent higher than any previous month. Recurring billing products has been in place for about a year and Spanish products have been available for about 6 months.

Improved performance in a business is always a nice achievement. When you can tie improved performance back to planned projects you develop confidence in your management of the business. As a result, we will continue to listen to our clients and research our industry to set our enhancement priorities. We will also go as fast as we can to implement the new enhancements — just not so fast that we cause disruption to the business.

We understand our clients want to get their money as soon as they can. As Michael wrote last week in “Weekly Payments, Anyone?” we plan to release weekly direct deposit payments in the next few weeks. Based on the number of sign ups for our recently released direct deposit capability we also expect good results from weekly direct deposits.

Also, we have heard that you want us to open additional markets to sell your products. The next phase of Platform Globalization will be released later in the fall and will expand markets for current products and provide markets for new products.

We believe we are getting better at hearing and understanding our clients’ needs. We have many projects planned and will continue to implement changes that drive results for all of us.

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Recurring Billing = Regular Profits

Beau Blackwell, ClickBank — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:21:30 +0000

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.

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ClickBank Offers PayPal for Recurring Billing

Beau Blackwell, ClickBank — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:00:01 +0000

Service provides more convenience when paying for online subscriptions

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – June 24, 2008 – ClickBank, a privately held online retailer for buyers and sellers of digitally delivered products and services, today announced it is offering PayPal for recurring billing – yet another strategic option for product publishers seeking to increase business and meet customer needs.

ClickBank is using PayPal’s recurring billing solution to give product publishers an easy way to sell subscription-based content and services, such as online newsletters or annual software licenses. It has proven to be very popular with customers, growing rapidly each month since its introduction.

“Currently, nearly 20 percent of ClickBank’s total business transactions are conducted using PayPal,” said Bob King, ClickBank CEO. “Allowing customers to use PayPal for recurring billing will further fuel demand for our popular subscription-based products and services and, by providing a new payment option, enhance the ClickBank experience for publishers, affiliates and customers.”

“We are excited to have ClickBank on board using PayPal,” said Jim Hunt, director of merchant relations at PayPal. “Using our recurring billing functionality gives customers security and convenience when shopping online.”

ClickBank is a world leader in online commerce systems with more than 100,000 active affiliates, 35,000 unique digitally downloadable products, such as e-books and software, and over 12,000 product publishers from around the globe that register more than 25,000 daily transactions.

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