I had lunch with the VP and COO of clickbank yesterday. I meet with them about once per month and they GRILL ME (usually over 2 hours per meeting) with a ton of questions. They want to know what affiliates and vendors want and how to improve clickbank. They share with me upcoming plans, beta tests (I'm apart of 6 different beta tests right now) and the overall direction of the company. Many people have criticized clickbank for being slow to move and non-responsive to affiliates and vendors.... that is about to change over the next 3-12 months. You'll see clickbank releasing many great features for both affiliates and vendors. Is there anything YOU would want to ask or suggest to clickbank? Post it here and I’ll bring the different ideas with me during my next meeting with clickbank. Byron Walker
Walker, Thanks for this opportunity! As an beginning affiliate I would like to see: Flexibility to link to any page on vendors site, or link direct to their order form Option of flexible email alerts for sales More information on traffic source, like you get in Google Analytics
As an affiliate: - Want to see a metric on sales volume. Can understand if they don't want to release hard numbers, but I want to know what's moving based on units sold. - Info on refund %. -Change the refund/cancellation form. Refunds and cancellations should be on separate pages. I won't send anyone to that form as is, because it's an automatic refund. I'm just referring them to vendor when asked for cancel info. Sometimes the vendor helps them, sometimes they don't. -Either update new analytics more frequently or leave old analytics active permanently. Old version updates faster. New version goes 6-8 hours without updates on some days. Which is bullshit. -Why don't they have a representative posting on this message board like other networks? Hope you can update what was discussed in meeting...
A direct debit card, PLimus has it on their program... I think it would be great to have on CB too....
As an affiliate, 1) Traffic source is a major concern, adding third party tool like analytics will really help. 2) Affiliate ranking based on total sales - Believe me, if you guys introduce this feature soon you will see affiliates will push them self more to grab higher ranking. This is a winner's physiology/attitude that they always like to play with numbers and invest lot of time to improve their stats. Its not only about money, but it is more than that. 3) Vendors those who use payment processor beside clickbank should not be a part of clickbank. Because such vendors actually do cookie stuffing and we affiliates lose our money. 4) If cookie duration can be extended to 6 months or for life this will inspire affiliates to work more harder. 5) Beside cookie tracking there must be another method to track sales. because day by day people are being more tech savvy and running cookie cleaning scripts on regular basis. If we look at future then there must be a solution for this. I hope there will be more valuable inputs coming from DP peoples.
A little while back, I saw a thread on here about a new looking order page that was customizable by the vendor. A vendors order page was different for a short time and then it went back to normal. Do you know anything about this?
I'd like them to respond to important emails that get sent to them. Just personally I've sent a couple of emails over the time (not relating to common faq questions) on a few issues and never got a response. The latest being an affiliate using spam to promote my site. I get a first and final warning from Public Domain Register that I'll get my domain cancelled, if there's anymore spam. I sent an email to Clickbank with proof of spam from this affiliate and if they are doing any investigation, and I get no response. (Ok that's a bit of a personal rant with my own problems) But in summary: RESPOND to emails
Include in the marketplace feed: price %refund web url author name As an affiliate I would also like to see the converting keywords if my user came from a search engine. This could be achieved I guess by passing the keyword in with the hoplink as a variable, like an additional variable similar to tid, but this could be called kw for example
I want clickbank to include more countries into the lists that can promote their product. I am from nigeria and i can not sign up with clickbank and i also see a lot of my nigerian friends complaining that the mastercard and visa card they got from a bank here in nigeria is not accepted by clickbank but other sites accept it. Clickbank should add nigeria into the list of people that can promote their product.
I hate the colors, It makes clickbank look like a kids website. The old Blue Clickbank is better and more professional.
I agree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyone making money with affiliate marketing (especially PPC) knows that cash flow is a MAJOR issue when you're trying to scale. If they want to see people doing bigger numbers every month they've got to come out of the stone ages with their paper payment system.
I know especially if you are not in the US. I earned some $100s on CB, waiting a few weeks for the CDR to be sorted, then another few weeks for the cheque, followed by a few more weeks for it to clear. Will probably be 6 months from earning to seeing it in my account . Hopefully the exchange rate will flow in my favour at the right point! I have read that if you earn big $ then they will wire you the money. Not sure if that is only in the US though.
Email alerts for affiliates. The system right now is stupid. Give vendors the ability to contact their affiliates through some sort of messaging system.
Remove the refund option from the support form its crap! No vendor in his right mind will send to this page which is an automatic refund regardless of the reason the user is sent there.
The refund thing is hard - they have to make it easy to reduce chargebacks, and indirectly force vendors to improve the quality of their products (or suffer the consequences), but I'd like to see it made a little harder to carry out. At least require them to provide a good and real reason. As for what I'd ask: as an affiliate, I need more data about the product. Sales volume, refund rates, conversion rates. These don't need to be actual numbers, but could easily be relative aggregated numbers like gravity. As a vendor, I want a way for affiliates to get in touch with me via the marketplace. And a way for me to get in touch with specific affiliates, again through Clickbank. Oh, and a way to block certain affiliates from promoting my products.
Depending on the country you are in, if you receive three checks in 90 days, you can sign up for direct deposit. I have weekly deposit and I receive my deposit, on time - every time - once a week. PayPal or Plimus card would be a nice alternative but weekly deposits are awesome! Check their FAQ to find out if they offer Direct Deposit (or XACH) in your country. http://www.clickbank.com/accounting.html#A4
If not already mentioned, allow more than one Adwords conversion tracking ID per account to be active. Currently have to open new CB accounts for every new Adwords account.