When you are determining whether the product you see in clickbank is good in quality, you should try to calculate the refund rate. Following is Clickbank Refund Rate Calculation. Take one example: Product X price: $49.95 Affiliates earn $33.96 Earned per Sale : $23.73 When you calculate your commission,which is 75%, your calculator should show you 37.46, instead it says affiliates earn $33,96 only, why? You have to pay attention to is the clickbank commission, which is 7,5% + $1. calculate it with the product price: it takes you to approximately $4.75. Now the actually accumulative profit for affiliates and the merchant is $45.2. Affiliates earn : 75% from $45.2, which results approximately $33.96 Earned per sale is only $23.73, which affiliates will earn for each sale, where has the rest $10.23 gone? it goes to the refund. Calculate the refund rate: $10.23/ $33.96 X 100% = 30.1% refund rate. It means that this product is not very good in quality. Let's take a look at a product named Beating Adwords, which created by Kyle & Carson about secret Adwords formula that will allow you to promote any product you want, under any keywords, for lower than any other advertiser. Beating Adwords sold for $97, which has an earned per sale of $44.42. When you do the math it means virtually no one refunds the product. Conclusion Refund rate formula : full commission = product price - $1 - (7.5%*product price) affiliate earning = full commission x commission percentage refund rate = (affiliate earning - earned per sale) / affiliate Clickbank Refund Rate Calculation is merely an easy math, so make sure you are doing it before deciding which product to promote for the sake of your customers.
Your math is way off buddy. That's not how it works. The earned per sale stat calculates the average amount of money earned from a SINGLE item of a specific product. This means that, if the main product is $100, there is a downsell of $50 which the customer also buys, the "earned per sale" would be $75, i.e the average between the two items. Even though the real amount should be $150 So if you had a product that sold for 50$, and you were offering a downsell at $30, it will show that you earned $40 per sale. Your math might only work for products that sell only a single item with no other additional offers. Since most products have some kind of upsells/downsells/backend offers , the only real way to calculate the refund rate is by trying the product out. Good news is that clickbank announces that they will fix their "earned per sale" stat, and calculate it properly.
Ripped. Correct. but not only that, some products have more then one price point. example 49.95 for 3 years 39.95 for 2 years 29.95 for one year. in which case this math attempt in the first post goes down the drain. Actually it's the same example given by ripped but just with a slightly different angle. Besides , reality is a lot more complicated then this. a product can have high refund rates from some affiliates doing false advertising while other affiliates may have low refund rates for the same product. the product can be good but affiliates advertising false information regarding it may cause the refund rate to go up. some products are more vulnerable to false advertising then others. P.S (and off topic) did anyone else notice that clickbank removed customer details for affiliate accounts recently? affiliate sales on affiliate accounts no longer show customer information.
I wish calculating refund rates was that easy mate But sorry, there is NOTHING out there that can give you proper refund rates, not based on certain dates, lengths, over all, or on any given day. There are simply way too many variables to scrape and calculate. Only the vendor will know the real refund rate at any given moment or for any period(s) of time. The few not mentioned yet = I have two 1-click-upsells, a downsell, and 50+ products in my backend = That changes the payout $ shown on the charts, has nothing to do with refunds, and every day that $ fluctuates based on how many of each price point were bought. The more upsells at the highest pricepoint = the higher my payout shows. If everyone keeps buying nothing but the downsell and it's considerably lower in price than the original - you'll show a much lower payout than what you actually do payout... [EDIT: I notice Ripped covered this above sorry] Another is the various recur elements, the shipping and handling functions, no way to separate transactions or sales paths or customer journeys and pull refund rates on the fly. Even for vendors, I'd like to pull certain data and even with the vast amount that clickbank let's you mine there is still certain customization I would love to have/know without having to guesstimate or do complex trend analysis on certain products/upsells/down/members area/recurs/etc... DarkerAlice brings up a good point too re affiliates mis-respresenting the product and over hyping it, letting the customer down once they get their product. I can't out them but I have affiliates that just MOTOR with sales AND upsells, they know how to prep their customers with real, authorative, and beneficial reads that entice them to buy, upsell, keep the product and be happy with it just based on the foundational pre-sell they followed. My best advice if you're going to promote ANYTHING remotely heavily, is to contact the vendor directly first, feel them out, see if they bullshit you anywhere with your questions, let them know you have a good sized budget or resources and if they are smart they'll help you maximize a campaign. If they are shady they will HOPE you come on board, trickle in some sales, bump their gravity, and move on to your next nickel chase... Don't worry about refunds as much as you yourself knowing how to spot good products, or better, how to filter bad products AND bad vendors. Be proactive vs. reactive or try to figure out the ultimate low refund rate product before pushing it - it's a false positive just looking at any charting alone without doing further analysis of the offer/vendor/your potential ROI. FunFact: The most money I ever made in a month had a 45% < YES 45% refund rate on it - yet - it was STILL my most profitable month of my life. Should your refund rate matter more or your end of day/week/month/years bottom line...? Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm