Do You Do Clickbank?

I feel a rant coming on, so strap yourself in, this could be a BIG one!

I heard from a coaching client about a week ago, with a problem she didn’t know how to solve.

Seems that Clickbank was holding her check and refusing to release it.

A little background…

Awhile back, she wanted to start doing niche sites to market affiliate products, so we started working on the usual stuff…

Brainstorming what she was interested in,

Research on which of those niches might be profitable,

keyword research,

Setting up blogs,

Submitting articles,

etc.

You know the drill.

She put up her first site and very quickly got some sales from a Clickbank product that was a good fit to her niche.

She was VERY happy!

The hardest thing for anyone who is trying to getting started in this business is to get over that hump of not making any money. Most people NEVER make any. And after a while they just give up shouting to the rooftops that “This Internet Marketing Thing is a SCAM”!

But those who make ANYTHING in the first few months, usually go on to make a LOT down the line. They get the “FEVER” and just never look back.

Well, needless to say, she was ecstatic! She got the bug and started working on more sites.

But her new endeavors didn’t include Clickbank products.

She was building Adsense sites, and selling CPA and other affilaite products, and quite happily moving along building her future empire.

She forgot about the Clickbank sales she’d made in the beginning, and moved on to bigger and better things.

A couple months later, it dawned on her that she had never gotten a check from them, so she went in and looked at her acct only to find that not only had they been sitting on the money all that time, but that they were making bi-weekly deductions from her balance!

So she nicely inquired as to what was going on…That’s when things started to get ugly!

She was told that although she had certainly made enough money to get paid, Clickbank was holding her check until she met their “Basic Qualifying Payment Criteria”.

Now get this…

Clickbank requires that you make at least 5 sales, from 5 different credit cards, and at least one of those must be from a MasterCard, and one from a Visa. And apparently, Paypal sales don’t count!

So…no matter HOW much they owe you, if you haven’t met their ridiculous criteria, you will never see your money!

And the kicker is, after 6 weeks, they start deducting $1 from your account every two weeks for not meeting it, and then up the anti incrementally, until they are taking $50 every two weeks! And VIOLA! Before you know it…They don’t owe you anything at all!

Now you may think that although this is nothing short of extortion, it would not be so hard to satisfy for anyone who is serious about their business. But here are the facts.

Most people in today’s world (even NON Marketers) have and USE a Paypal account. So a lot of your sales (and in many cases, the majority) can come through Paypal.

BUT THEY DON’T COUNT!

Amex and Discover are HUGE players in the credit card market, and MILLIONS of people use them exclusively, because they accrue points that can be used to buy real stuff, just by using those cards.

BUT THEY DON’T COUNT EITHER!

Here my client was, sitting on a decent sized check, that they refused to pay her, because her customers used payment sources that Clickbank takes, but…

THEY DON’T FRIGGIN COUNT!

So I advised her to run another sale to a list she was building to get over that hump. She was pissed about the whole thing, but I convinced her that the easiest way out was to just satisfy their ridiculous rip-off criteria, and move on.

So, she put up a quick campaign and made almost $2000!

But guess what?

“ALL” of the sales were with Visa, Amex, and (Mostly) Paypal! Not a MasterCard in the Bunch.

She STILL hadn’t met their larcenous demands!

At this point I PERSONALLY got mad. It wasn’t my money, and was probably not even any of my business. But I HATE it when I see people being taken advantage of!

So I crafted a rather long (and a bit nasty) letter and gave it to her to send to Clickbank Support.

“Dear Clickbank,

In answer to your last email to me, I ran a campaign for another one of your products and generated another 12 sales, but because the majority of people in today’s world use paypal for such things, you are telling me that you are still not going to pay me!

I understand matters of fraud. I can even understand that you want to see more than one sale before you pay out the commissions that are OWED us. But surely you can see that I have not used my own cards just to get commissions.

And why in God’s name would ANYONE spend $97, over and over again, just to get back $40? No matter HOW they paid for it!

Does that even sound feasible?

Am I to continue to be penalized just because the people buying YOUR products through me, are not using your preferred credit cards? What if they used Discover or Amex? Am I to be penalized because they don’t use MC or Visa as well?

You certainly don’t seem have any problem taking THEIR money from those sources. But you won’t pay ME because they used them?

It seems to me that this is nothing more than a way for YOU to not have to pay out your commissions! Are you only there to serve the Big boys who generate enough sales to make you happy?

If so, you should let your prospective sales force know that you don’t want our business unless we can immediately generate enough sales to make YOU happy!

You are a BILLION dollar company! Do you REALLY need to keep the hard earned commissions of the little guys?

In today’s world, every penny counts. Most marketers are struggling as it is to make ends meet. And yet you are compounding the problem by making it so hard to get paid for the work we do!

How can that be fair? How can you even justify such a practice?

It’s no wonder Clickbank has developed such a bad reputation in this industry of late. I have spoken about this to several well known players in the Internet Marketing field that categorically refuse to use your service, for just such reasons as this.

I would appreciate your looking into this and releasing my payment please.

It’s only fair, and you KNOW it!

Sincerely,”

And guess what?

THEY IGNORED THE TICKET!

This Billion dollar corporation didn’t even have the decency to REPLY!

So she put in another ticket, and another, and another, until finally after about a week of this Bull&$%@, they replied, saying they had taken a look at her account and decided to make an “exception” to their rules and pay her. They told her she could expect a check in about 3 weeks.

OVER THREE MONTHS from when she initially made MORE than enough sales to get paid!

THIS IS A WARNING!

There are a lot of Clickbank “Courses” out there, telling you how to make your fortune using Clickbank products.

I sell them myself, and have been for over ten years now.

But apparently, I started long before they got so full of themselves that they thought they could steal from the hard working people like my client, who built their company, and who are trying so hard to get started in the Marketing world.

So I didn’t know anything about these new “Rules”. I guess I “MISSED ” the memo!

It’s in the “Fine Print” somewhere, so there is little anyone can do about it but complain.

But be warned! if you are planning to open a new account with Clickbank, and sell their products, unless you become a Super Affiliate right out of the gate…

It could be a LONG time before you get paid!

If my Client hadn’t looked into it, and realized she had never gotten her first check, they would have continued to “QUIETLY” (she never got ANY kind of notices) take more and more out of her account until it was all gone!

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest!

I fell better now!

Please pass this on to anyone who is considering taking this path to get started. At the very least, they will be Forewarned.

Len Thurmond

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