Hi Guys Im launching my product using both clickbank and paydotcom, it should be interestng seeing the results and posting in this thread - the product is here PhotoPixPro - business in a box launced in paydotcom now and launching in clickbank next month -
already a certain breath of air from paydotcom being free for sign up - however eager to get on to cb for its large no. affilates. Does any body know how many affiliates are on paydotcom?
It wont show in the marketplace until you make a sale. So if your not doing a big launch, you may want to purchase your own product just to get it showing up there.
I was looking into it as a platform for a JV offer, but the two tier stuff has been taken down. That was it's major advantage. Fee's are less from a selling point of view. Really depends if you want to be in the clickbank marketplace or not.
looking that way, clickbank site 98% ready, about too go in the market place, fresh new product - no competition lol
Hello, I have a unique digital product I am about to sell and I am wondering if you have had any success selling your product through clickbank or paydotcom yet? Thanks, AspDotNetGuy
My 2 cents worth for anyone considering Clickbank or Paydotcom... I have my product in both Clickbank and Paydotcom - I use Clickbank as my main affiliate resource - I duplicated the page in Paydotcom for special JV deals and running PPC campaigns and if I want to test something new that I am doing specifically with the product. I prefer CB for affiliates but Paydot com when promoting for myself because I can get the income from the product immediately into my Paypal account, plus they don't hold 10% for 6 pay periods before releasing the funds like Clickbank does. If someone wants to promote through Paydotcom, that is fine with me as I don't mind handling the payouts to affiliates but my experience has been that more than 90% of my affiliates want to go through Clickbank because Clickbank is an entity they trust as far as getting paid. Now that CB can also take Paypal payments, going through Paypal isn't an issue any longer for people not wanting to use CB. This has been my experience so if anyone has a product - I would say to use both but to do as I am doing above. If you are an affiliate - it all depends on if you trust the merchants in Paydotcom to pay you on time if at all. There seems to be many complaints of this occurrence with PDC merchants. Even though I understand there are many negative comments about CB that I've read in differing forums - and being aware of the downsides (nothing is perfect) they are still hands down one of the most respected digital programs out there to run an ebook campaign through or to promote products as an affiliate - PDC not yet really being able to compete on the same level as CB - at least not at this time. In summary - use both but use them differently.
so far pay dot com are sending more traffic. I am a little disappointed in the traffic generated from clickbank.
Pros and cons.... Payodotcom - get paid immediately into your paypal account - makes a big difference if (like me) you are not US based... Always find paydotcom very slow to navigate.... as an affiliate that a major turn off...
Interesting Topic: Just going through this myself, my .02: I did a very detailed assessment of Paydotcom for like 3 hours when I signed up: I copied and pasted Q/A here: Affiliate Links: PDC: https://paydotcom.com/r/41165/your_pdc_username/2949539/ CB: would be http://affiliate.vendor.hop.clickbank.net The pid works pretty much the same too Questions: What if I don't put an account number and just leave PDC: https://paydotcom.com/r/41165/your_pdc_username/ Does This Happen Here>>oes someone own an account name 'your_pdc_username' and maybe an account names 'pdcusername' or 'yournamehere'? MANY hops/links and affiliates forget to change them and or don't understand yet, and I KNOW they make sales on them. It happens with every network. As a vendor this upsets me to know that most networks keep that money or allow internal teams/leaks get those usernames... With CB and others you simply make up whatever nick you want, I like this method because you can have a numeric value like 23531 which doesn't look like an ugly affiliate link, or you can be sneaky and make your nickname 'secure_page' or 'front_page' so the link looks more legit. Also side note: Can I hide the aff link as a merchant? I know I can redirect my home page so it won't show the ?=.... however is there other methods for affiliates? I don't mean cloaking your aff link, I mean so I can promote xx.com and only see xx.com not xx.com?=affid? I don't want to cookie stuff the surfer either, nor would i employ my aff's to do that so is there a legal and easy PDC way to hide it? Purchase links:Also pretty simple, plugging the PDC paypal buttons CB: A little different, the whole checkout process happens via ClickBank branded pages. Questions: So if I'm with PDC, I obviously cannot connect another aff program to this as it require the PDC payment gateway. I dislike this for both PDC and CB. Why? Because now if I want to offer my site via another network to reach other affiliate pools, I have to duplicate the site. Some networks do this to make your site exclusive to them, others simply give you code to plug in on thank you page and you can use your own payment gateway(s), thus enabling using the same site with multiple networks. A few of my clients are multi-networked, and now that I'm here (luckily I build all my own sites) I will be duplicating and offering both aff pools the same products to two seperate versions of the site just to enable the separate payment and tracking gateways... ugh. Management & Tools: I gotta say, even though its free, the management tools here are quite vast (re adding your promo tools and marketing assets for aff's to use, love the {command} shortcuts. Affiliates: Haven't done much research yet to know what the affiliate base is like here, can anyone (merchants) enlighten me? CB Has TONS of affiliates and TONS coming on board daily, however don't let this fool you. I'd rather have 10 super affiliates than 100 CB newbies to my products and my clients products. Now, for recruitment, I don't mind utilizing the page that PDC puts in the marketplace, but I'd much rather the option to point them to my own affiliate recruitment site - i.e. I set this up for my program with PDC http://www.nichechoppers.com/niche-product-websocials.html - Now all is fine however I cannot seem to get a 'PDC affiliates login here' button working, I can only send them to my PDC made page and instruct them to scroll to the bottom (very looong scroll too) and login there. That should be optimized, put that button above the fold as well as where it sits, the more merchants add assets, the longer that scroll is. So: How can I let my affiliates login to PDC directly from my own page in the above link? Buying with your own link: PDC Seems to frown on it CB: Allows you to do it a few times, the TOS is grey, they say you cannot continually abuse it, but a few times is ok. In fact this is a tactic many merchants use to both 'up' their listings quality score, get their affiliates to do the same and reimburse them on the side, and it is somewhat of a win/win for both vendors and aff's. Personally, I wouldn't mind one bit if 1000 affiliates wanted to buy my product with their own links, i'm still making money, affiliates are happy customers, and PDC is making more money. Simply regulate it and throw a script together that checks for transaction intervals, or perhaps allow 'up to 5' purchases with your own ID - smart marketing and business if you ask me. Seems the programmer here knows what h/she is doing so this should be easy technically speaking... Landing Pages: Since I'm not how the rules are set for landing pages, Scenarios are: 1. I build 5 landing pages, I .zip them and offer my affiliates to download and unzip, change aff id and SEO tactics, h/she uploads to their server and sends the traffic from the lander to my main site with aff id link. This is the standard however there is also this method: I upload the landers to MY server with my affiliates links embedded, the landers have BUY NOW buttons, the affiliate sends traffic to the lander, and customer can buy without having to go to the main site, purchase right from the lander. Is the latter method possible here? And if so can I also give my affiliates that standalone lander for them to use on their own? Conversion tracking: Since I have no data here yet, and nothing to quantify: Can anyone tell me the perks and weaknesses of the PDC tracking vs. others? No tracking is perfect but I'm sure some of you experienced folks can enlighten me on what some of the odd scenarios are or fake conversions or or or... Affiliate Pools: I'm on 20 or so forums and see PDC here and there, however can you all please tell me where the popular hangouts are for you guys? Where the big players make their announcements? In fact if there are any big players that see value in my slate so far, please reach out I'm always up to learn more and connect with others when entering a new network. Thank you in advance for this one. ***Conversions ON PDC payment pages: I'm sorry if this hurts, but your payment pages MUST MUST MUST be upgraded. Merchants spend so much time and effort on mastering their pages and websites to be beautiful through and through, to then take the customer to a very outdated and poorly made payment page - i almost got suspicious myself looking at it for the first time. If the developer or designer is here - PLEASE GET IN TOUCH AND LET ME HELP! I thinks THIS is the most important part of the customer journey and your whole operation could drastically improve conversion ratios if you make your payment pages look more professional and secure/safe/easy/branded to the end user. Please let me know if you would consider my help with this. Compared to the other networks not just CB, I think this one is the poorest quality so far (hey I'm still here and wil use the system, however please consider this request I'm sure other experienced merchants will agree). In fact, do you have an advisory board with some of your top earners/members yet? Would love to discuss... To Add to the above: Customizing your checkout page is of no use - you're on an SSL (https) and if you plug and HTML i.e. Pictures on anything other than text, you get a nasty error/popup message "This page has both secure and non secure items..." User must pick yes or no, I can guarantee that at least half of our shoppers don't have a clue what that means, they just know something is unsafe - and they are on a payment page so this is bad, so they click 'no', when they click no all the images on the page do not show up, instead missing image icons show up... so let's review, customer comes from your beautiful site, to an ugly unsecure looking checkpoint, it's customized/branded to some degree but errors popup and images are missing - the average user is GONE and won't return... Can you not have that as an i-frame or include file that won't affect your SSL? Or perhaps just build in a little tool with a few wysiwyg features for users to upload their own pics/text and you host it? I think allowing your merchants to customize the checkout process is a huge mistake - keeping continuity in your design/branding and eliminating your customers fear for their credit card safety should be priority #1. I would eliminate the HTML branding options, and really let me () or another experienced guru help you create a beautiful Conversion Mastered checkpoint that is strict with style guide and no customization past text... This is essentially a large part of your marketing going to waste as well by not having that page PROUDLY branded (unless there are political or other unknown reasons why something so obvious is not optimized/done professionaly like the rest of the site)... Paying Affiliates: Can someone with over 250 orders to their product or service please contact me or post here if you feel ok with disclosing this: Due to PDC being on a paypal structure, their refund policy is 56 days and or 8 weeks. Since you pay affiliates on your own here, and you need to pay them in a much shorter time period as I read 30 days or middle of the following month? If that is correct, that leaves a lot of room for mass fraud and refunds once you've paid your affiliates, what do you do in this case? is there an allowance set somewhere to buffer you? I think that even though there is mass payment, it wasn't thought out well, feel a little uneasy for volume sales with this intel. Your thoughts/stories would be greatly appreciated with this one. On CB and others, they take a 7%-30% commission from either you the aff or from the merchant or sometimes both - I truly think it is A WONDERFUL sacrifice to make - i.e. CB is 7% from either party+$1 per transaction. They look after everything from refunds to allowance to sending you and your affiliates checks every 2 weeks, and they've thought of every crack and protected every weakness re timing/credit cards to sales (you need 5 orders on 5 different cards, at least 3 different cards i.e. one Visa one Mastercard one Amex, paypal/echeck don't count... Anyway, when you make 100+ sales a day and have to payout 100's of affiliates a month - THIS becomes a real hassle (however good problem to have to begin with ). Multiple Products: This one seems to be in PDC's favor - I can have as many products and sites and payment emails as I want as a VIP/paid member? Really? Up to how many products/sites? CB is 500 under one account - BUT to have different marketplace listings it's $50 per listing/product. Ok I think that will be all for me for now. If you can decipher the questions in my book above and get back to me it would be greatly appreciated. PS - I have a forum too, and have started a PDC Category, I wouldn't mind some of you announcing your programs there to recruit and inform people about PDC - found at http://forums.nichechoppers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40 Thank you all and I look forward to meeting and greeting all of you! Norb. _________________ To Your Success This Year! Norb Czufis NCmedia.ca MerchantAllies.com Back to top steven Joined: 22 Jan 2007 Posts: 1758 Location: Oklahoma Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:21 am Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello Norb, I will try to touch on most of what you said... Questions: What if I don't put an account number and just leave PDC: https://paydotcom.com/r/41165/your_pdc_username/ yes, that will work. As a vendor this upsets me to know that most networks keep that money or allow internal teams/leaks get those usernames... It can't happen like that with PDC...If I understand your question correctly. I mean so I can promote xx.com and only see xx.com not xx.com?=affid? This is a configuration on your own server. I don't know how the different settings work, but I know that some vendors' servers strip off the parts after .com I upload the landers to MY server with my affiliates links embedded, the landers have BUY NOW buttons, the affiliate sends traffic to the lander, and customer can buy without having to go to the main site, purchase right from the lander. Is the latter method possible here? And if so can I also give my affiliates that standalone lander for them to use on their own? Yes, that will both work as long as you have your PDC buy button on it and the visitor arrives to the page via an affiliate URL. but your payment pages MUST MUST MUST be upgraded. You can modify that payment page with your own HTML. You will need a secure server (pretty cheap now days) to store the pics (just like you would have to do with a custom header image for PP checkout.) I think this option is better for vendors than to just have a "canned" semi-custom check out page as with something like 1shoppingcart. Sure, you don't need a secure server for 1shoppingcart to just have your image there, but you are very limited in how it is presented. Refunds: You must pay your vendors 30 days after the close of the month the sale was made. Honestly, and I have to brag here I guess, I have almost no experience with refunds. I would tell you what my refund rate is but you wouldn't believe me probably. Multiple products: Yes, for the 29 dollars (one time fee) you can list unlimited products. Ok, I think I covered it; if you have more questions, just let me know. Best Regards, _________________ Steve Weber ------------------ So far, as above - I feel it can be utilized better as a standalone than comparing it to the vast resources to CB overall. As a Merchant your focus is either targeting customers and hoping existing network aff's jump on board like at CB, or your manually recruiting for the network with new connections/websites/jv's, and the trust factor is not as strong going through merchants accounts directly. The same problem exists when running a full in-house aff program, recruitment is hard - in CB, recruitment is actually quite easy if you know how. Although I have not done a full out call/search for paydotcom affiliates, the little poking i did do doesn't come close re communities or dedicated awareness like CB has. Hope this helps others, NC.