Is Clickbank Shafting its Affiliates and Vendors?
March 30th, 2007 by 
Amit
As many of you many know, Clickbank is the leading provider of digital products online, and a major CPA network that has thousands of vendors marketing everything form: ebooks, membership sites, and software products.
As someone who’s heavily vested in clickbank I was shocked to see my Clickbank profits drop by 30% this month (March), even though the traffic to my affiliate sites is basically unchanged. In one of my niches I had to pause half my campaigns, since it basically stopped converting. I made well over $12,000 profit in this niche last month, this month my profits for that niche are down by over 60%!?!
What’s worst is that many other clickbank affiliates are experiencing record low sales this month.
So what’s going on? Is it seasonal? No, since last year sales were fine in March.
Just the other day I found out from a good friend of mine, Miles Baker, that Clickbank may be the culprit. Miles had a chance to talk to a Clickbank representative and the conversation was more than revealing:
http://www.marketingwithmiles.com/my-clickbank-phone-call/
It turns out that Clickbank has upgraded to a new system, the problem is that they still have their old system running simultaneously. As a result their servers are overloading now and then (no one really know how often) and sales are slipping through the cracks!
Now it all makes sense!?! After hitting my head on the wall trying to figure out what happened to my conversion rates. Although Clickbank claims only a few sales are being lost here and there, this month has been the WORST sales month in years by account of many Clickbank affiliates.
Who’s right? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
There’s two things I’m outraged by:
- Clickbank never publicly told us that we were losing sales due to system overloads
- That Clickbank didn’t IMMEDIATELY change back to their old system once they realized sales were being lost
I for one will never promote another Clickbank product EVER, and I’m elated by the fact that the Clickbank merchants I’m working are planning to move to a new payment processor.
clickbank clickbank affiliates miles baker online payment processor
Posted in Industry News | 
Interesting post. I’ve always been suspect of clickbanks policies and communication. Below par in my book. Thanks for the insight.
No problem! Although I currently make the bulk of my income from clickbank, I no longer recommend promoting their products as an affiliate.
Ah clickbank, what an awful business partner. Still profitable nevertheless.
I’ve often wondered how they could be so bad for such a long time without losing their market position. It has to happen sooner or later.
Btw, this is an excellent new blog. I just subscribed and read every post. Already looking forward to the next one.
Thanks Alex, Glad you enjoy the blog. Great post about Adwords180 btw!