Here is an email that I received regarding my affiliate policy for the Super Affiliate Handbook…
Hi, I promote a lot of ClickBank products, but when I clicked on your affiliate signup area on the Super Affiliate Handbook website, I came across something I've never seen before:
“Customers who purchase products and services through the Affiliate Program will be deemed to be customers of SuperAffiliateHandbook.com.”
ClickBank provides all affiliates with the name and e-mail address of the individual who buys through our affiliate link.
I've typically imported people who have bought through my affiliate links into a database and have treated them as “my” customers and as legitimate leads for similar offers in the future. The truth is, aren't these people *CLICKBANK* customers?
I already wrote to ClickBank to ask them about this, but also though I'd ask you where you're coming from in saying that ClickBank affiliates can't legitimately make use of the information that ClickBank (not you) provide us regarding people who buy through our affiliate links.
I look forward to your response,
Max
Here is my take / response on the matter for Max and all other Clickbank affiliates…
Yup, that's legal-speak to mean that if you, as my affiliate, use the email addresses of customers who purchase the Super Affiliate Handbook, that you are in violation of both Can-Spam and Clickbank's Client Contract.
Although Clickbank may provide affiliates with email addresses, it certainly does NOT condone or support affiliates that spam, which is what you are doing if you are sending email to those addresses.
Here is a portion of Part 7 of Clickbank's Client Contract:
“If You send (or cause to be sent) messages by electronic means (including but not limited to email and instant messages) in connection with the direct or indirect promotion of ClickBank products, then You represent and warrant the following:
No such message will be sent to any individual who has not explicitly requested to receive such messages specifically from You or your company.”
The policy can't be any clearer than that.
Think about it… if you buy a product and you suddenly start receiving email from someone OTHER THAN the seller of that product, you would consider that spam.
Remember, most people have no idea that they purchased through an affiliate link — they have no idea what an affiliate is or does.
Moreover, to determine where spam originates, many online customers create unique email addresses for each product that they buy or for any merchant from whom they buy, ie. superaffiliatehandbook@theirdomain.com.
So, for example, if an affiliate starts sending offers and promotions to superaffiliatehandbook@theirdomain.com, the customer may ASSUME that the email originates with the merchant.
This becomes a huge problem when affiliate spammers put the address on multiple lists – or worse, SELL the address – and the customer gets deluged with all sorts of unwanted and unsolicited offers.
In that case, it is the merchant's business that is compromised and it is the merchant who takes the heat.
As a merchant, having your domain registration re-instated after it has been revoked due to affiliate spammers is a HUGE pain in the butt, as I know from firsthand experience.
As a matter of fact, Clickbank has on a number of occassions, cancelled accounts of Super Affiliate Handbook affiliates when those affiliates have spammed my customers.
Regardless of Clickbank's practice of providing affiliates with my customers' email addresses, my affiliate agreement is therefore written to prevent affiliates from using those addresses spamming my customers.
Besides, MOST (bad) affiliates will never read Clickbank's terms of agreement. I can only HOPE that my (good) affiliates will read mine. π
As to the question of ‘Whose Customer is She Anyway?“, that's easy.
They are customers of the company from which they bought the product. It is the MERCHANT, not the affiliate OR Clickbank, that handles product delivery and customer support. Clickbank is simply a third-party payment processor.
If you've ever bought a product from a merchant that uses Clickbank to process payments, you know that other than sending an email to confirm the order, Clickbank does NOT use those addresses to further promote its own interests.
And neither should you as an affiliate.
That's why I ALWAYS emphasise how important it is for affiliates to set up autoresponders and capture email addresses to build their OWN opt-in lists BEFORE visitors leave their sites.
Place the capture form on every page of your site and give your visitors some incentive, such as a free report, to sign up. Aweber's autoresponder service costs a mere $17.95 per month (plus $10.00 for each additional 10,000 subscribers) and when you use their double opt-in option, you will never be accused of spamming, OR put yourself in jeopardy of losing your business for spamming.
I hope that clears things up!
Cheers,
Ros
What are YOUR thoughts? Please post your comments below.
Stella says
How can international player residing out of USA and Canada participate and collect payment from Clickbank? It seems like most of these payment are made within USA and Canada, anyway people residing out of these two countries can earn US$ or Can$?
Hi Stella – I don’t know which country you are located in, but you might wish to try opening an an account with PayDotCom if Clickbank won’t let you join their network. Ros
Larry Crosson says
Hi Rosalind,
I’m reading all these letters and am impressed with what everyone seems to know, since I don’t seem to know anything. At this time I’m trying to set up a website with Site Build It! and am probably taking waaaaay too long, and all I’m really trying to do is set up an affiliate site promoting your Super Affiliate Handbook.
Now, I know you mentioned that all we really need to do is copy & paste, but I always seem to make things much more difficult than that. I probably wouldn’t have written this letter, except that in a recent letter that person mentioned he/she was denied by google due to pop-ups, which you mentioned is their policy, and because your site has pop-ups. Would you refer me to the portion of your book that addresses that? Noboby, nobody can possibly be slower at this than I am.
Thanks in advance for any help or advice.
Larry
Hi Larry,
The folks who are slow than you are those who never ask the question and never get started – so give yourself credit where credit is due. π
I’m not sure if I specifically mention that Google doesn’t allow pop ups in the Super Affiliate Handbook — it’s important to read the terms of services with all the companies with whom you do business. Tedious, yes, I know — but it’ll help build your income in the long run.
Cheers,
Ros
James Riddett says
Hi Ros – I find it baffling that Clickbank reveals the email address of the customer to the affiliate. Why do you think they do that?
Hi James – I honestly don’t know why they do that. Ros
Chris says
Interesting article and comments, but please point out what the CAN-SPAM violations would be if an affiliate sent offers in this situation. It sounds as if you haven’t read the law, since it doesn’t prohibit this type of emails. (I’m not saying people should do it, just disagreeing that it would violate the law.)
I see a lot of people who seem to think any email practice they personally disagree with is a violation of CAN-SPAM, and that’s simply not necessarily true.
Hi Chris – Clickbank is specific about how those addresses are not to be used and I think that’s backed up pretty well by the following section of the The CAN-SPAM Act:
“Additional fines are provided for commercial emailers who not only violate the rules described above, but also:
“harvest” email addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of email addresses for the purpose of sending email”
Cheers,
Ros
Syed Ashiq Elahi says
I found your article very interesting regarding Click Bank affiliate policy, in any way what Click Bank does to protect its merchants from mishandling but what my problem is regarding Click Bank is that while signing up for any affiliate program Click Bank does not support some countries so it is not possible for people to sign in for Click Bank as affiliates to promote some of the best products like “Super Affiliate Handbook” I even tried to convince Click Bank about it that it should include other countries as well in their drop down list but they denied by saying that they simply can’t do any thing about it. So I request you if you can convince Click Bank to include some more countries like Pakistan to promote some of the best affiliate programs available on the net.
Hello Syed – I wish I had that much ‘pull’ with Clickbank! Have you looked at StormPay and PayDotCom? π Ros
Ben Cunningham says
Unfortunately, I agree with some of the other posters that the customers actually belong to ClickBank. If I bought an ebook from ClickBank and had an issue with the purchase, I would request a refund from ClickBank and not from the ebook maker? If I bought something at Walmart and wanted a refund or to return it, I would get the refund or return it to Walmart. If I had questions about the product, I would contact the product’s MANUFACTURER which is different than a being a product’s MERCHANT. Due to this arrangement, a lot of companies include product registration forms in the product’s packaging in hopes of getting information about the customers who bought their product. When looking at online issues such as this, it often helps to look at similar situations in the offline world.
Hi Ben – Actually, Clickbank requires that you contact the merchant first when making a refund request. However, if you look above, you will see that I agree that in this case Clickbank is considered the vendor — and why. π Ros
kthomas says
[Spam is bad, ok? – We all agree on that.] What if I had an existing customer list and mentioned your book in my normal contacting. Someone buys the book and becomes a clickbank customer. Are they no longer my customer? Does your list and Clickbanks list supersede my list? What if this buyer is a regular visitor or reader of my web site and I have the link at the site? Is a READER of my web site NOT my customer?
Having worked at a free newspaper 15+ years, we consider our free readers our customers, yet we do not have contact info on all of our readers. We also consider our online readers our customers. (build your list… sell to the list… don’t you teach that? You clearly practice that. ) Thus, if I have a reader of my published material who purchases from you, I should have the right to contact that reader. It seems that part of the relationship with ClickBank _IS_ clearly to share that readership/purchaser contact info and the affiliate has a right to contact that person.
Should we determine if a client comes directly from an AdWord campaign or a genuine “content driven source”? When does content become too small to be not considered a valuable referral?
I presume that your statement simply means that YOU ALSO reserve the right to contact someone buying your goods. I presume that someone working as a sales person as an independent contractor for click bank would have the right to contact the clickbank customers in a responsible way. (Image a sales person (may are independent contractors) who brings a buyer into a “non-big box” computer store and an in-house person helps them gather their specific items and make payment. Would it be a good idea for the store owner to say, “OK sales person, never contact this client again, they are now our customer. Thanks for the assist, don’t let the door hit you in the a**.”
Great question!
/kt
Hi Kim – If a subscriber on your list buys a merchant’s product, they are still on your list – so of course you have the right to contact them. I didn’t / wouldn’t suggest otherwise. – Ros
Stephen Pope says
Hi Rosalind!
David wrote:
“They have checked my links repeatedly, assured me that both themselves (ClickBank) and the Merchant are genuine traders, can see no reason whey I am making no sales, are very sorry, and wonder can they help me in some other way. If Sales had dropped or were periodic, I would suspect trade conditions but a sudden complete cut-off makes me thing that I am being denied commissions which statistically I must have made.”
“I suspect they are a fraud (if they were genuine they would find the fault). I would very much appreciate any help you could offer on this unfortunate situation which means that I can trade NO ClickBank products.”
In testing some of the affiliate links on my own website, I would click the purchase button and find, horror of horrors, that “affiliate=none”.
I did some research and found that others were complaining that they were losing commissions and were having the same problem.
If I used Mozilla Firefox, my affiliate id would show up. In IE7, it didn’t. I suspect upgrading to IE7 enhances security and privacy (including the blocking of cookies that might give you credit for commissions).
I also found out that Spybot Search and Destroy was reporting Clickbank as a threat.
Here is what Clickbank has to say about this:
“Hoplink tracking
2007-02-06 –
We have received reports of affiliates’ hoplinks not being tracked on sales, and affiliates not receiving credit for sales they have promoted. We are continuing to investigate these reports, but our findings to-date point to customers that have Spybot Search & Destroy, with ?Immunize? enabled on their computers.
While we are making every effort to understand and address these reports, in looking at our sales statistics, we find that affiliate-driven sales as a percentage of total sales has been increasing from the beginning of 2006, and that rate of increase has remained steady.
We are also researching alternative methods to improve tracking of affiliate identification.”
I went to the trouble of tweaking my machine to overcome this problem. However, why should your customers spend hours trying to do the same just so you can get a commission? Most users won’t even be aware that there is a problem.
Regards,
Stephen π
Hey Stephen – Obviously they wouldn’t go to that trouble. I however installed IE7 when it first came out, checked to make sure my links were being tracked and saw absolutely no problem. Moreover, there has been no variation in my usual earnings. How else to explain that some are having a problem and others are not? I don’t know. Perhaps those folks are setting parameters for increased security? – Ros
Franck Silvestre says
I’ve just asked the same question on various forums, and I got the same answer. I am happy that I didn’t contact any of the buyers in my clickbank account.
Thank you.
Hi Franck – My pleasure.
Stephen Pope says
Hi Rosalind!
I would just like to correct my earlier comment:
‘That is why you and I put this notice on our websites: β2CheckOut.com Inc. (Ohio, USA) is an authorized retailer for goods and services provided by Such-and-Such Company Inc.β ‘
Of course, that is NOT the notice you would put with your Clickbank products. DUH! π
However, 2Checkout.com is similar to clickbank.com in that they both take the position that they are the retailer of your products.
This results in the same tax administration advantages.
Regards,
Stephen π
John says
With respect, Roz, ClickBank quite clearly states that THEY are buying the product from you and RESELLING it to the custoomer. It’s built into the commission structure.
From the Publisher FAQ:
https://www.clickbank.com/publisher_faq.html#pub_question_1
1. How much will I receive for products sold through ClickBank?
ClickBank charges a one-time $49.95 activation charge that must be paid upon approval of your product. ClickBank purchases product from publishers at a wholesale price equal to 92.5% of retail, less a $1 stocking charge. For example: If ClickBank sells your product for $50 to the customer, you would get $50 x .925 – $1 = $45.25. Then for affiliate directed sales, the commission percentage is subtracted from this net sale price. There are no monthly charges, but there is a $2.50 check processing fee for every check that ClickBank issues to you.
These are noit your customers afterall. I would question whether even the publisher has the right to copy and use customers’ addresses without their specific agreement.
John
Hi John – Yup, the point has certainly been raised already… please see above. However, if that is TRULY the case, then CLICKBANK can start answering my customer’s questions about downloads etc. π
Jen says
Rosalind,
I agree that affiliates should not be sending SPAM to people who buy through their affiliate link unless they opt-in to a list. BUT. . . You go on to say:
As to the question of Whose Customer is She Anyway?, thats easy. They are customers of the company from which they bought the product.
In the case of the SAH, people are buying it from ClickBank, and not Webvista Inc – right? Just think, what do people see on their credit card statement? ClickBank!
But I also thought that people were buying from the merchant for a long time until I decided to sell my own product on ClickBank.
I was told by Sheri (sdt[at]clickbank.com) that people who buy stuff on ClickBank are buying those products from ClickBank, not you and me as merchants. They even made me change the words on my pitch page to explicitly state that ClickBank was the product VENDOR, not just the payment processor.
So according to Sheri, at least, these people are ClickBank customers. According to you, their your customers and not ClickBank customers. Who is right?
That still leaves open the question of why in the world ClickBank gives affiliates the name and e-mail address of those who have bought something⦠it is an invitation for SPAM!
Jen
Hey Jen – You are absolutely right. In this case, Clickbank is technically the vendor. That’s how we as merchants get their payment processing services without having to have merchant accounts.
But I’ll say this again. WHO takes care of customer support? The product seller. They are therefore customers of the merchant from whom they purchased the product.
Ros
Ruth says
Hi Ros,
You know I’ve often wondered about that, so thanks for clearing it up for me.
Also, this might be a little of topic, but I know you use PPC often, because I’ve heard you mention it in many of your interviews I’ve attended.
I get really frustrated with Google as far as Adwords is concerned. Seem like every time I think I know what I’m doing, they go and make more changes. This monster is so hard to keep up with. Received an email from Perry Marshall today about the latest Google Slap.
I’m getting really frustrated with it all and was wondering do you honestly think a person can be successful online without the use of Google Adwords or PPC advertising period? The reason I ask is because most gurus lead you to believe that you can’t.
If so, can you shed a little light on the subject.
By the way, the Blog Classroom course was excellent!!
Many Blessings,
Ruth
Hi Ruth – Thanks kindly for the compliment re BlogClassroom.
Although I think one may be able to achieve moderate success online without the use of PPC and with a lot MORE effort to market one’s site, PPC is still very much the way to go. Just gotta move with the punches. I know that may not offer a lot of comfort, however, it is easier to amend a few pages and PPC campaigns than it is to write and distribute 100 articles that will end up getting lost in the directory’s constant shuffle. Ros π
David Farrell says
Hi Rosalind
I must reply (in a slightly negative tone, I’m afraid) to your comments re. ClickBank.
I feel I have been cheated by them. I have sent them 1000’s of clicks for various products from various sources (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and GoClick). One product sold at a rate of about 1:20 when I was with Google AdWords but over 700 Clicks from Yahoo Search Marketing yielded no result.
They have checked my links repeatedly, assured me that both themselves (ClickBank) and the Merchant are genuine traders, can see no reason whey I am making no sales, are very sorry, and wonder can they help me in some other way. If Sales had dropped or were periodic, I would suspect trade conditions but a sudden complete cut-off makes me thing that I am being denied commissions which statistically I must have made.
I suspect they are a fraud (if they were genuine they would find the fault). I would very much appreciate any help you could offer on this unfortunate situation which means that I can trade NO ClickBank products.
Do enjoy your Newsletters and you do sound convincing, and I wonder why it just doesn’t work for me?
Best wishes
David
Hello David – I’m a little confused. You were making sales through Adwords, but not with Yahoo! and then you mention being cut-off. By whom?
If it were just the former, I would have to assume that you were running different ads, or that the traffic from Yahoo! wasn’t targetted the same way.
Too, different PPC / search engines have different demographics, which is why we are seeing really nice conversions nowadays on many Microsoft Adcenter ads as compared to Adwords.
Without knowing which product you were promoting, or how you were promoting it, I’m afraid that question is nigh impossible to answer. Sorry!
Ros
Stephen Pope says
Hi Rosalind!
Thanks for your well-written article.
I would just like to clarify one point.
You wrote: “They are customers of the company from which they bought the product. It is the MERCHANT, not the affiliate OR Clickbank, that handles product delivery and customer support. Clickbank is simply a third-party payment processor.”
I am not disagreeing with you. I, too, view those who bought my product as my customers.
We may both view Clickbank as simply a third-party credit card processor. However, technically and legally, Clickbank is NOT a third-party processor and the customers are actually Clickbank’s customers.
That is why you and I put this notice on our websites: “2CheckOut.com Inc. (Ohio, USA) is an authorized retailer for goods and services provided by Such-and-Such Company Inc.”
Clickbank charges value added tax (VAT) for European Union (EU) customers.
Why do you and I not have to charge Goods and Services Tax (GST) on Canadian sales? The reason is that those Canadian sales were made by Clickbank –not us.
Acknowledging this works no hardship on us. It actually simplifies our tax administration.
Regards,
Stephen π
Hey Stephen – Really good point. I know I appreciate not having to deal with charging GST or provincial sales taxes (where applicable). π However, although we acknowledge Clickbank as the retailer for our products (for that purpose), their principle function to us as merchants is to provide us with third-party payment processing services. Ros
Sherryl Masterman says
I love this post! Very detailed answer about such an important issue we all need to remember. While I totally support the merchant’s viewpoint here, I think it’s helpful to remember how important the merchant-affiliate relationship is.
Affiliates would feel less pressure to market to merchant’s customers if merchants would take better care of their affiliates. In other words, if more merchants would allow for phone sales (like IMC does) and pay commissions on recurring purchases customers they referred make, affiliates wouldn’t feel as much pressure to cling to that customer. Hope that makes sense.
Hi Sherryl – I agree with you to a point. I personally hate phone sales for which you rarely get credit for the referal. Recurring (and lifetime) commissions on the other hand are always the best way to go. π Ros
joseph says
I only read the question from my e-mail, so now I understand the question, but I still standby my statement “with in the borders of the laws”. Can’t you see I’m tring to back paddle?
Hi Joseph – Glad to see that you got the full-meal-deal on that one. π Ros
joseph says
I can’t make sense of the question, but if I can guess, I would say that if I were an affiliate of yours and click bank’s then I could do whatever I wanted, within the confines of the borders of both you and clickbank. I have this thing about people telling me I can do things. Thanks for the Chance to express myself.
Glenn Grundberg says
Absolutely Killer answer, Roz!
I have had this same argument with my affiliates before and tried to explain this same position, although not as well as you did. Affiliates take note!
Gman
Sam Meilach says
Thanks for this timely post! As a Clickbank affiliate I was going to contact the purchasers to tell them I’m an affiliate and tothank them for their purchase. Now that I know this is not allowed I won’t do that.
FYI: I remember reading in Project Affiliate X, where he recommends that we should contact them in this manner. This is not only misleading but also dangerous in that our Clickbank account can be shut down.
Hi Sam – I actually see NO problem with your thank-you note plan, provided you refer to the name of the product and the merchant by name. In doing so, you heighten your own brand awareness and can thus invite folks back to your site to sign up for your newsletter.
It’s using that email address to contact customers with other offers without getting to them to sign up for your list that poses a problem as far as I, Clickbank and Can-Spam may be concerned. – Ros
Roy Carter says
Wow Ros! That is the best and most descriptive answer i’ve ever seen to this question and it’s a question that does seem to come up a lot.
When one my subscribers next asks about that I will just go ahead and send them here to get what looks to be the definitive answer on the subject.
Respect!
regards
Roy
Hi Roy – Thanks! and Respect right back atcha! π Ros
Edward says
So if we’re not supposed to use them, why does Clickbank provide us affiliates with those email addresses then?! Seems like they’re just asking for trouble with this.
Anyway, it’s good that Ros point this out, cuz I think a lot of newbies could overlook this policy.
By the way, I have to disagree with Ros about never being accused of spamming when using AWeber’s double opt-in service. Even when you send out quality information on a regular basis, there’s an increasing potential for people to dispose of your messages with an increasingly convenient spam button in their email system. Has happened to me more than once. Fortunately AWeber knows this will happen, but boy is that frustrating.
Hi Edward – When I say ‘accused of spamming’, I mean by the ISP’s who can block your address to all of their customers for good. Sure, you’ll lose customers through that ‘this is spam’ button, but if you can prove to the ISP that you have a double opt-in and that their customers are idiots who can’t find an unsubscribe link, then the ISP won’t block your address, which is what really matters.
Michael says
Ros
I couldn’t agree with you more. Coming into the web world via the world of the food broker (which is nothing more than an affiliate) we used to have this argument all the time about the companies we represented. When I was on that side of the fence, I only saw one point of view; we did all the “leg work” yet the company considered all customers “theirs”.
But now as I look back, I can see the legitimate reason companies considered the arrangement the way they did. Especially since they took all risks involved with the sales transaction. They stood to lose alot more than the commission should a customer default on payment.
I think affiliates should just try to make their sites ones that customers would want to use on a regular basis (bookmarked). That way both the affiliate and the merchant along with the customers are happy campers!
Hi Michael – Thanks for that… and you’re exactly right. You gotta be able to see this from both sides of the fence to appreciate the reasoning. – Ros
Anji says
An important reminder to every affiliate, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to read all contracts with care. Perhaps re-read them from time to time?
I also looked up affiliate in the dictionary, interesting reading.