The FTC made it clear this year that they were not going to take crap, according to confidential insiders in the industry, it was made clear to clickbank that they needed to take notice of the FTC and make changes. We reported last month that Clickbank was under pressure from the FTC for the “make money” crowd of offers, and because of that changes their Clickbank Guidelines. Since then many affiliates and executives in the industry have taken notice and been talking about the issues with Clickbank in general, and what issues they have been facing.
[pullquote]What are the Issues with Clickbank?
Scammy Offers
Terrible Refund Rate
Horrible Customer Service[/pullquote]
One DigitalPoint poster recently wrote about clickbank, “I am starting to dislike Clickbank because most of the products are just useless….affiliates are out there learning how to lie and cheat people…” Users replied with comments like ” Yup, most digital products promising money are hyped up scams,” and “Always promote products you believe in. If affiliates take a strong stand against those low quality products, they will disappear automatically. Unfortunately that is not happening.” Other message boards on the net and blog articles have started to pop up, posing the same questions and problems. This got me thinking, so I asked affiliates what issues they had with ClickBank and why they stopped working with Clickbank.
1) Scammy Offers. More and more affiliates are realizing that they could be held liable for the Scammy offers, and worse when it comes to the “affiliate business” or “make money” offers they do not like scamming their fellow affiliates. More and more affiliates see that long term commitment to affiliates will generate better business.
2) Terrible Chargeback and Refund Rates. While it’s great that Clickbank offers a refund policy on all offers, many affiliates said this was becoming a huge issue. As more and more of these offers were being promoted, more and more of the people who purchase these products know that they can test the product out for 30 days and if they don’t like it, or can’t figure how to use it, they can get a full refund. This created issues where they would promote a product for 30 days, seem to generate significant money, and then suddenly get refunds coming in on the last few days of the period.
3) Horrible Customer Service. Perhaps one the biggest complaints from Affiliates were that Clickbank customer service is horrendous. They do not really answer questions well, and often it takes days to get an answer. On the chargeback side, they will not reveal any information about the refunds or chargebacks, and why there were refunds. In some cases, vendors stopped supporting a product, then chargebacks were through the roof – affiliates felt that they should have some recourse against the vendor for costing them money. Clickbank’s policy is not to reveal the name of the vendor, or contact information.
Is Clickbank losing its Mojo, or is this just another cycle in any business with up and downs? What are your experiences with Clickbank lately?
