I will also say that usually I admire your antics and tactics - but mate - you just about told every affiliate and up/coming publisher that they should lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top. You just called your customers idiots and said 'fuck you thanks for the bucks'. While there is a big difference in for-profit and non-profit organizations, the way each goes about retention is different, and frankly exilus - I'm rather floored by your comments. Maybe I have too big a heart, and that affects my business and aff's, maybe I should try to retain my aff's sales a little stronger, however by no means am I ever going to resort to these levels of retention or straight out lie in my emails or contact with customers. Do the right fucking thing mate - someone asks for a refund, give it to them! One of these days karma is going to bite you in the ass. Yes salespages are meant to play on emotions and you do stretch truth, fine. However being greedy and retaining your family of greedy cheating and lying aff's by virtue of more cheating and lying is not admirable mate. NO this industry is NOT about one big lie and scam - and you are actually feeding the fire here instead of being an honest businessman making 'fair' earnings. You just admitted that your product is a sham 2 page manual with some free links they can find elsewhere. You just proved that you will stop at nothing to try to refuse a refund or version their intelligence on how to get a refund. Is this how you would operate a big brick/mortar too? You seem to have the snake oil salesman approach instead of the business owner mentality when it comes to refunds and how to go about retention. Sorry Ex but this gets a big thumbs down for me mate. I would never partner with you on a project knowing you tell customers to fuck off and thanks for the bucks, tough luck I ain't giving you your damn refund if you're too stupid to know where to get it... wow man you went right to the edge with this one. Check your core desires bro, getting teh moniez should not be more important than being a good business person. Coming out with a product that may or may not be liked post purchase is one thing, aiming your whole agenda to steal/scam/lie/refuse refunds in the sake of a low refund rate and happier aff's is only going to get you so far. I will at least commend that your balls were big enough to come out and say what you are doing in black and white. Kudos to that and you'll see that one day karma will eat you for this. Especially with your type of product, 1 or 2 emails to the right authorities and you could have a heap of trouble on your hands, you're playing with fire imo. N.
I'm test The Magic Of Making Up now .just made 3 sales but all sales get refund 100% refund rate. didn't know what's wrong with it .
I didnt say fuck you thanks for your bucks. this guy's named himself fuck you and flamed me, so i just say "fuck you (as a name), thanks for your bucks.) I was already contacted by authorities and had them review my site. In fact, some products do the same thing as me and have 300 gravity and have been online for the last 3 years.....I guess its not as dangerous as that, is it?.... Karma might bite me in the ass, but like i explained earlier, if i don't do it, my competitor will. The outcome to customers is the same. Thanks for giving me your opinion NC, i appreciate it as usual, but if you don't like some of my marketing tactics, i can't help it. You can't put yourself in my position because you always had top-notch products, and most of them designed FOR online marketers. MY first product is in the category of crap products, which means its either go black, or die.
Hello hornetss, It can be annoying cant it. I hate making the money and then finding out that someone has got a refund, it is business after all. Clickbanks refund policy like blackman says does have its pros and cons. Nothing feels worse though than watching your hard earned cash being taken away from you. Yours, Laura_D
No worries, we all have our own way of doing things, I simply wanted to highlight the opposite of you to illustrate that even in a competitive shady area of product, you DO NOT have to resort to lying/cheating/stealing/refusing refunds... I want people to at least see both sides of the spectrum, and I def. want n00bs and n00b pubs to see both sides, and NOT think that they have to resort to immoral tactics to be successful. Sorry if I ruffled you mate, just wish you were preaching a more positive way of doing biz is all. N.
Im quite positive when i do business, but not for refunds when it comes to my anime downloads product. of coruse i will get more products up in the future and hopefully they will be valuable and worth the money i will ask for, then maybe i can think about giving refunds. I didn't mean to incitate noobs to do like me. But as you may know it NC, noobs often dont have a solid marketing background to absorb the fails in their marketing and will often use free or black background marketing such as spam or lies in an attempt to get themselves started. my anime download is at the moment my principal source of income, if i fail it, i lose most of my budget and if i lose my budget, my whole business crumbles. I don't have enough back-up to start thinking about moral values, especially when it comes to refunds. Well at least not now, ask me in 2 years.
I have to agree with NC on Ex's business style. Sure there are ways to be shady in this business, stretching the truth, playin on emotions etc, but Ex's style is basically stealing candy from a 5 year old and swindling grandmother's out of their welfare cheques. Although I'm all for a reduced refund rate, I'm not into screwing people over like that. I do think CB's refund policy is dumb though. Make the refund period 14 days, not 3 fuckin months. I mean we're selling digital products here, not a tangible item that has to be returned in order to get the refund. Most people that figure out the system will just buy something and then request a refund right away. If I buy a new digital camera, and then I decide later I don't want it, I can't just go to the store and get my money back and keep the camera! How do other digital download companies offer refunds? I mean if I purchase Adobe CS3 online, and download the version right away and apply the key, can I request a refund immediately after without any recourse? If so, then I've been doing things all wrong. I really think CB needs to tighten up on their refund policy, because it is so easy to abuse. I know people say it's the great for conversions because it offers the buyer a sense of mind, but c'mon 60 days?
Consider this scenario. Can I go to my local Best Buy (electronics store), buy a 50" LCD TV, then get a full refund--yet still have that LCD TV in my home? No. In the off-line world, when you return something, you return something. The problem with infoproducts is that savvy (or sneaky) consumers can "have their cake and eat it too." They can return the product, get the money back, yet still keep the product.
man, i leave this thread for a day and it has 32 post! So refunds is a hot topic I guess! I have to almost agree with exilius, because i bet 50% of people got the product and liked it, but just wants there money back. So I believe you should make it hard to give them a refund. Well Im averaging a 40% refund rate now. I had a -100 dollar day today due to refunds! Does anyone know how I can reduce refunds? Do you think the product im promoting gives them direct access to the clickbank refund forum? Because there is no way 40 percent of the people im selling to could find the refund forum
That is theft, plain and simple. You can rationalize it all you want and tell yourself that someone else will stick it to them, so it's ok for you, but it's still theft. Just because you cant afford to be honest, does not mean it is OK. Get a job to pay your bills and build your business the right way. If you know what you are selling is going to surprise your customer since it is really crap, then you are doing it wrong.
I had a guy buy forex funnel last nite, didn't even have time to use it cause the markets were closed, then I woke up to a refund at 6am this morning. Is clickbank that retarted? This guy had refund in his head before he even typed in his cc info...
They can't do anything about it. If people want a refund, they'll get it with the permission of clickbank or not. Cost to clickbank to refund money = $0 Cost of a charge back = $18-$32
Looks like it's time to start promoting another product that has a lower refund rate. 40% is unacceptable, especially if you're doing PPC.
Exilus, So you make a crappy product, which you are fully aware it is crappy and you would never buy it yourself, hype up the sales page and give false claims, you know that the customer gets something that sucks, and you make it so difficult for the customer to get a refund. I think that this is a typical example of scam. Your Excuse 'because everyone else is doing it' sucks. So what, so many people are robbing houses for money, should I do it too? It's okay to hype up the product a bit, but blatantly lie to the customer in the sales page, and then when he asks for a refund lie more isn't right. You can reason it all you want, but if you think about it, you will realize that you're scamming people. I know that it must be hard to struggle to keep the business going, however there are many people that struggle and are still honest and don't resort to scamming. I guess it depends whether you have moral values or not, I could never do what you're doing.
Actually 80% of my customers don't complain about my site because, incase you didn't know, the massive part of the population doesn't know about torrents so for them, the outcome is the same they got what they wanted: anime downloads. however, i am worried about the 20% who DOES know about torrents. but i mean cmon...if you know how to get it via torrent, why would you pay for a direct download site membership anyway? I do what everyone else does on CB: I make people pay for information freely available on the internet. I redirect my users to torrent sites or to free direct download sites which are just as good as the one i claim to have. Take something that is there for free and present it to a customer that is ready to pay for it. The "scam" of my business is just less "hidden" than yours. Its all down to how you see it.