If you're ready to stop throwing your PPC money and your hard work down a rat hole (i.e. Clickbank,) there are some great alternatives out there. Now, I think part of the reason why people have their blinders on about Clickbank is that they're intimidated about selling physical products vs. downloadable ones. Physical products always convert better. Sometimes the commissions are lower, but you can often make up for this in volume. Compare that to making $15 - $50 on alternate Fridays in March, when the moon is full, and the stars align perfectly so that Clickbank's tracking is working - well, you get my meaning. These days sales are more consistent and lucrative when you're selling on other networks. Period. Now I know some of you will never sell physical goods. And all those "Make millions on Clickbank!" ebooks have programmed you to just sell downloadable products. Fine. if this is the case, you NEED to check out Paydot.com and also e-junkie.com. And you also need to look into something called Rapid Action Profits. Paydot.com is talked about a lot here, and although the merchants have to pay you themselves, they will often pay you just as quickly as Clickbank would. I've found merchants that would pay you as quickly as the start of the following month in which your sales occurred. (So you're paid January 1 for sales you made in December.) Clickbank holds on to your commissions longer. They pay every two weeks, but it's for sales you made some time ago, plus they make you wait to receive payments from four different credit cards or whatever. There's none of that bull on Paydot.com. It's all about building a relationship with the vendor. Email the person whose product you want to promote. Ask them a few things, and also ask them when they pay. Get to know them, introduce yourself, tell them you're hyped about promoting their product. It all goes back to old-fashioned relationship building. You do that and 99.9% of the time the vendor is not going to screw with your commissions. Your odds of receiving commissions you've earned are always going to be higher at Paydot.com because they don't have the tracking problems Clickbank does. I switched out a Conduit style site that was promoting Clickbank products to all Paydot.com and e-junkie products and also some instant cash products (more on those in a moment) and conversions returned to where they should be. Screw Clickbank, guys. Seriously. Do you want a lucrative business that's reliable or one that works every alternate Tuesday in March during leap years? Because that's when your Clickbank tracking will work - rarely. E-junkie is a great download service - great place to sell your ebooks and reports from because your files are stored on their server. Only costs $5 a month to host your ebooks there and you can use Google checkout, 2co or Paypal as your payment processor. But what many people dont' realize is if you go into the E-junkie marketplace and see what's for sale, many vendors also have affiliates through e-junkie. You sign up for their affiliate program through e-junkie and like Paydot.com the vendor is responsible for paying your commissions. Again, I recommend checking with the vendor about when payment is sent and trying to build a relationship with them so you stay on their good side. And lastly, type "powered by rapid action profits" into Google and you'll start finding ebook authors who are using the $7 report script to instantly pay their affiliates. Only usually the commissions are a higher than $7. I've found some that pay as much as $65 per sale - instantly to your Paypal account. Rapid action profits is the script they use. What happens is that technically you're making your commission on every second sale, usually - so you make a sale and get instantly paid via Paypal, the next sale goes to the vendor, then the next sale goes to you. It's a nice way to get fast commissions and a lot of these guys are hardcore marketers with great products that convert like crazy. So if you still want to promote downloadable goods and you're not happy with the products you see at Paydot.com, check out e-junkie's vendors and also look for rapid action profits products. Most of those are IM products, not all of them though. If you want to make money and KEEP it this year, you need to ditch Clickbank. Stop worrying about "Well I don't know if that vendor is going to pay me!" Clickbank certainly isn't. Anybody else is a better alternative. And if you treat your business like a business and network with the vendors, get to know them, introduce them, etc., you'll increase the likelihood that you get paid. And also it's a good way of screening out losers who don't communicate with their affiliates BEFORE you get screwed with no-payment. If they can't be bothered to respond to an email they're probably not that interested in paying you either - so just move on to the next product and promote that one. Dan PS: In regards to Clickbank's future - can you say, Class action lawsuit? I know for a fact that some of the biggie CB earners are gearing up for one. Don't put your eggs in the Clickbank basket. It's a company with a limited shelf life.
Just a quick note - Clickbank is starting to officially announce some of their down times....they've had maintenance outages today and yesterday they admitted to some downtimes.....what's happening is that their outages and tracking problems are becoming so obvious they have to start 'fessing up about some it. The problem is, they aren't helping PPC advertisers much because you don't always know in advance when the outage is going to be, or on which accounts, or which servers. etc. It's really a waste of time dealing with them until (or unless) they get their act together. Be careful using them. I'm both a publisher and an affiliate and weird stuff has been happening with both my accounts since the end of October so I'm not using them now. Dan
CB's problems have been written to death but most still see it as a temporary one -- something that will magically fix itself and we'll all be making merry again. The fact that they've been having these problems for years seems besides the point. It's fine that you quote PDC as one the alternatives, but that's something I've done and discarded for good. I'm looking at a few independent publishers right now to shore up my CB losses since November. Hopefully I can find something to make a stable income out of.
Despite CB's problems, they've remained the #1 affiliate network by a long shot(commission junction would probably be in second place but it isn't even in the same league). While it's true that cb has had serious tracking problems the past few months, the chances of them being able to overcome them are very good. I understand that a lot of affiliates can become annoyed at cb and, to a point, I am also. However at the same time I know that those who wait for the storm to pass & stick to cb will make money, because cb's is the best place to do it.
Good post Dangregory. I've always felt like CB was messing with my sales. A lot of times things just don't ad up, although I still promote 2 products. I think 09' is the year I start promoting my own product. I'm tired of relying on others to get paid. Good Luck raycer
yes i heard about this a whole bunch of people was saying that they noticed that there sales was mysterious low and people started to figure out that there was a glitch in the clickbank tracking system i don't know if its been fixed or not but that was a great post thanks so much i never heard of ejunkie got to check it out
They are good alternatives but still it's hard to beat clickbank. Most of these aff networks would do great if they had more affiliates selling products for publishers.
Dan you echoed my thoughts exactly. I have started using PDC because of CB's problems and just because they are so cluttered in general. I have to agree with the above poster though that their affiliate population is almost non-existent at times. I REALLY like PDC's system and layout and everything...but I am starting to discouraged just because of the lack of an active affiliate population. I addressed this issue in the PDC forum as well. You would think with all of the vendors listed at PDC, their forum would be a pretty active. WOW...active could not be farther from the truth. It is a literally a GHOST TOWN. It's a shame too because their system is really nice. Perhaps it does cater to the vendor a little better than then the affiliates, especially with being able to get paid instantly to PayPal. But as the OP mentioned, all it takes is some simple communication to make things work between vendor and affiliate. Some of the common posts in the forum are "PLEASE CANCEL ME" and "I don't know what I am doing, I signed up for a data-entry program and paid $99 and it told me to use this site, I think I have been scammed, etc etc" For every one GOOD vendor with a LEGIT PROGRAM or eBook, I guess there is still like 20 scams. This is not PDC's fault by any means, it is just a shame because then their name starts getting thrown around and bashed by people that are new to internet marketing. I just wish they could attract a more promising affiliate population I guess. They have an awesome system, I am just afraid I might leave it soon for eJunkie. Jim
Longest post ever. I'm sorry but clickbank has earnt me alot of money and really I cant be bothered to read it.
I think the guys at CB are thinking seriously about improving the whole CB system.. They can clearly see the emergence of a few serious CB competitors.
Hi Jacky, Is that just a guess, or do you have some evidence for such a claim? Or a link, perhaps? If CB really are planning to improve their system - the basic system, that is, not just all the recent add-ons - they've kept very quiet about it, as far as I can tell. Iain
I just think so... My conversions have improved. And the serious affiliates are not complaining a lot like they did a few months back... CB has to keep improving. Believe me, CB will soon lose its publishers and affiliates to other "Better" networks if it doesnt keep improving.. Though there is no network as big as CB, still there are a lot of choices for publishers..
I love that. Spot on friend. A real business cannot survive with these types of problems. A $500 day to a $0 day is just not realistic, for any business. Almost any other network right now is better than clickbank. Try Pepperjamnetwork.com Neverblue.com ConnectCommerce.com - Google's affiliate network or even Click2Sell.eu Or try TradeBit.com for hosting your info products, I hear they have an affiliates sales setup too. PDC sucks too, sorry, it does. Hope a lawsuit comes Clickbank's way soon.
What could be the problem with clickbank tracking? How better are other networks in terms of tracking affiliate sales?
Build a stunning website, build links to it and use Amazon.. An LCD eshop with Amazon integrated shop can make lots of cash. That if you don't trust Clickbank 100%. (Not that I do, weird stuff happens with Clickbank all the time and I will surely think of putting my eggs in more than one basket, actually I'm already earnings some decent cash with cpalead.com and graboid.com) Al/