Hi everyone, I am curious to know what's the average refund rate you experienced on clickbank. I know every product is different, I am asking in general. The reason for my asking this is that I have only been at this game for 3 months, have sold 20 products and 4 were refunded (20%!!!). Currently I am at a loss of about 30$ all together from ppc. So what's been your experience?
Less than 10% on average. Probably more like 5-10%, but that is just from the top of my head. If you are getting too many refunds it may be the product/s you're promoting. 20% seems a bit high, although as you sell more you might see the rate go down i.e. it is hard to gauge an accurate refund rate from 20 sales, you might make another 20 and see no refunds with those.
Ah yes the old refund rate My experience is the refund rate varies for every product. Some products have higher and some lower than others. I find that one of the main causes of refund rates begins with : 1. The promises made on the sales page and how well the product stands up to those promises. Example - make $45,000 a month easy. We all know that if this were the case everyone would be doing it lol. Also if it says free and then there is a catch. 2. Then there is the average person who buys and downloads an e-book and then just gets the refund so they can get the product for free That’s like stealing. 3. Then the honest refund. The product just wasn't what they expected. Those are the 3 main causes of a refund. I always try to keep my refund rate as low as possible. Out of 100 sales I have on average of 3 refunds, It use to be higher. Why? Here is some things I do to lower the rate. I always use a blog review article and give my thoughts of what the product offers. I do not try to over sell the product. Most people would say that more sales by over selling with more refunds = more net profit. Maybe but I hate refunds and want people to happy. So maybe buy the product or ask if you can get a free review of it from the publisher. Then right a review and post it to a keyword driven blog. You still want to let the sales page do the ultimate sales pitches. So in the review, stick to just a summery highlighting the main points of the product. In Case #1 allot of times the publisher is giving their gross profit not net so people are misled to thinking that they will in the end making 40k but don’t realize it will cots them 35k to 40 k to make that. In case #2 Products that include a memberships or a members page will help to keep the one the who just buys, downloads and gets a refund from doing that if it is a good product. This shouldn't keep you from selling a good downloadable e-book, but consider the quality before you spend allot of money promoting it, test the waters out first. As with my Cash Fusion Success Videos I state how I made $1930 in just two weeks that was maybe a mistake because that was only the total for two of my best performing blogs and not the grand total for all of my blogs. However I figured that not every one would create 30 blogs to get the total results I am getting. Therefore I wanted what I thought would be a realistic number for the average person. My sales may not be as high if had I said I was making 24k every month, but I have not yet received a single refund for my videos yet Hope this helps, To your success. Paul
Paul has some great insights here. I'd also add that you usually find a correlation between value and refund. For example, I've had notably fewer refunds from products that were well priced and delivered on what they said, vs those that make a lot of claims but may not spend enough time covering all their bases in the product itself. Some products I've had a <2% refund rate, others about 15%. Generally, unless it's truly unique, the sort of "Secrets of how to" kind of information doesn't really sell or stick well because people expect to find a lot of that info on the web for free, even if it means hunting around a bit. On the other hand, if it's a straightforward software product that's targetted specifically towards people looking to achieve the results it's designed to produce, you will likely see a better acceptance/lower refund rate - it all really depends on the product. -T
There was a paid survey merchant I promoted that had on average a 10% refund! I figured it wasn't able to deliver what was promised and sent several emails to the admin. And not surprisingly I never hear from them. The problem is, this site converts pretty well based on the sales page, all flashy graphics and look professionally designed. Anyways I've stopped promoting them.
Well I've sold loads of ebooks and only had 1 refund. That amounts to less than 1% refund rate... Guess I have a good product
Good one Paul. Our product has seen four refunds so far in the last 1 3/4 years we have been online. 3 from CB and 1 from PayPal. When we started out (to ebooks from printed ones), we were told that CB refund rate on Entertainment products and ebooks were extremely high. But, now, we believe it is everything to do with the content and the way sales page is written (not promising too much and over-delivering on content). Choose your merchants. Author, HowToBeFunny.net
while I was promoting some music, movies, games, psp, ipod downloads sites in clickbank, I experienced high refunds almost around 30% to 40% later I stopped promoting them and started promoting general products in the cb and refunds are very few now. So, it all depends on the type of products you are promoting
My refund rate is lower than 20%, but is much higher than other programs like shareasale, linkshare, etc. It depends on what you promote through Clickbank though.
Make sure the e-book author doesn't exaggerate his claims too much in his pitch to the readers. If the book is mediocre and he claims a lot, then people are more likely to ask for a refund than if he is more humble and the book is mediocre.
These days we see a lot of refunds in CB. The sales letter puts high claims but in reality they don't solve the purpose.
Yea that market sucks. I didn't even get a single sale in the first place. Too many free games, movies, music(both legal and illegal) floating around. I cut my losses early so only lost $30. I have been told many times that the traffic is poor, mostly broke teens looking for a freebie. I only got one refund so far and it was on a $97 product. But the ROI is favorable enough for me to keep promoting it for the time being. If the other customers request a refund, I am done promoting it. None of my other products have gotten refunds but they are inexpensive and arent "get rich quick" I don't even promote those types because everyone thinks it's a scam and either don't buy or just refund. Heard the refund rate was like 75%!
Over time the refun rate has dropped. In August when I sold over 5,000$ on CB alone, I had about 3.5% refund rate
I cover a wide range of products. I do not just follow a certain niche. So, altogether I have a return rate of 6.2%. Some products have a zero return rate, while others have a high return rate. Also, to note, products that have been sold using echecks, have the highest return rate compared to paypal or credit card. If you use CPC advertising, then your return rate calculation is of high importance. But, if you use bum marketing, then it is nothing to worry about.
I was just thinking about starting a thread like this. My 30 day rolling average refund rate (as a publisher) varies from 2%-5%. A few of these are affiliates buying and refunding (0 hops 1 sale). The rest are the people who can't read that it's an ebook and get mad at us for not telling them in big bold red lol.