Clickbank Marketing Hangups - How to Avoid Them

At one time or another, just about every internet marketer, or would be marketer, gets involved with marketing ClickBank products. This is the largest clearing house for on line information products on the web and informative materials encompassing a wide variety of subjects can be found here.

So it's only natural that everyone involved in this industry will eventually, at one time or another, find himself involved with the sale of a product offered in this venue. For the most part, this is good and the wide variety of quality information products offered here bring along with them temptations very similar to those experienced by a child surrounded by counters, shelves, and baskets loaded with sugary treats.

The products offered at ClickBank can be real moneymakers if they are presented correctly. That means careful and thoughtful marketing and strict adherence to the ClickBank terms and conditions. Some people have achieved substantial wealth by selling these products exclusively.

Unfortunately, only about 3% of those who try, manage to earn any significant income from their efforts. The failure and dropout rate, especially for newbies, is enormous. Adding to the difficulties of marketing the ClickBank products, is to no small degree, the arguably draconian terms for dealing in this venue.

One of the most consistent complaints we hear from marketers, and especially from newbies, is that they don't get paid, even after having made sales. And that may well be a legitimate complaint, but on the other hand, a look at the ClickBank Terms and Conditions will quickly reveal the cause.

So if you're experiencing problems with your payouts, it's most probably because you're running head on into the ClickBank Accounting Policy. You see, this venue doesn't like affiliates buying products for their own accounts for the sole purpose of receiving the discounts on these products. If you've been dealing with these products, you know those discounts can be very substantial. So ClickBank has devised this sneaky way of stopping you from doing this.

So ClickBank will withhold payments until their payout criteria have been met. In a nutshell, here they are:

The threshold amount must be met. That's the easy part. Purchases on your account need to have been made with at least two different payment methods. That means, in general, PayPal and credit cards. That satisfies the requirement. But now comes the rub. Five different credit cards must have been used! PayPal doesn't count as a credit card.

They hope that this will keep affiliates from making purchases for themselves, simply to get the discounts.

There is another problem.

After 90 days of inactivity, your account becomes dormant. Accounts that have reached the dormant stage are docked $1.00 per pay period. That goes up to $5.00 per pay period after six months, and then jumps to $50.00 per pay period after a year of inactivity.

Over 90% of ClickBank accounts are inactive. So if you're going to work in this venue, it's best to put some vigorous effort into selling the products. Marketing on the web is never easy. It takes a lot of work to get it right. Working with ClickBank products can be a big moneymaker if you put in the required effort and follow the rules. How to best go about doing this is the subject of another article.

This article first appeared on Ezine Articles in October 2012.  Since it still holds true today, I thought a repeat might be a good thing.