The NEW ClickBank Trust Badge

I find this laughable.

Is the Trust Badge to be automatically available for every ClickBank product listed... or will ClickBank only issue the trust badge after reviewing either a) the product itself (a huge undertaking) or b) the product's performance level (i.e. popularity, conversion rate, and/or refund rate).

There are already plenty of existing trust certificates available for a vendor's site if he/she feels it will help conversions, but my personal experience indicates that their presence/absence has minimal effect. What is it exactly that sets ClickBank's Trust Badge apart from those already available? How will it exact a higher degree of confidence from the visitor than those trust certificates?

First they tried to convince us that high refund rates were the result of buyers not recognizing ClickBank as the seller when they received their credit card statement, but now they want us to believe that their badge (name/brand) will somehow exude confidence and warm and fuzzies? Why? Those "warm and fuzzies" didn't (by their own admission) help before.

In most niches, ClickBank is a virtual unknown to the consumer because they chose to be a "retailer" with no store front - no marketplace. This is just another attempt to "brand" the products with their name, and to eventually capture the customers for themselves (i.e. no affiliate cookie).

If they are successful with their Marketplace, it could be a boon for the vendors. The more sales made from the Marketplace - the lower the affiliate commissions required to compensate delivered traffic. Assuming their Marketplace could deliver a comparable level of sales to what affiliates now deliver - the vendor wins.

The very existence of the consumer Marketplace (assuming the Marketplace is successful) will negatively impact their affiliates. The Marketplace is already in direct competition with their affiliates and the more direct traffic/conversion through the Marketplace... the less there will be available for affiliates. A number of affiliates have already stated (in another thread) that their conversions on ClickBank products they have promoted for an extended period have suffered since ClickBank began trying to be more than just an affiliate platform.

How long before they begin mailing to "their" customers? maybe offering lower prices for purchases made through the marketplace, announcing specials? etc.

Here is the email from Clickbank:

"Last week, we addressed our recent platform implementation fail and our commitment to earning your trust back. In an effort to continue on the path of collaboration and transparency, we have assembled an exclusive list of beta testers to provide feedback on some of our brand new platform features.
YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED
Here's what you can expect as a member of our small and trusted Beta test group:
• Become the first of 5 million + clients to sample these new features
• Obtain unprecedented one-on-one time with ClickBank representatives to personally guide you through implementation and maximize effectiveness and benefit to you
• Gain direct access to the ClickBank's Executive Team to provide unbiased and transparent feedback
• Contribute to current and future developments on the ClickBank platform
THESE FEATURES WILL HAVE MAJOR IMPACT ON YOUR BUSINESS
As a Beta tester, you will gain exclusive access to the following features:
New FEATURES


New Content Delivery System
Designed to save you time and money while increasing delivery reliability, we'll host your content for FREE.


Newly Developed ClickBank Trust Badge
Designed to increase customers' confidence and security and reduce refunds by increasing Internet Retailer transparency throughout the purchasing process.


We thank you for your quality and performance on ClickBank and are eager to hear your feedback on new developments moving forward. Although we've hand selected our Beta test group, SPACE IS LIMITED. Email us at beta@clickbank.com to secure your spot now.
Secure Your Spot

Ray Morris and the ClickBank Team "

So they want us to put a ClickBank "badge" on our site now. And if we refuse, they will fire us as their customers and not let us give them money any more? Oh no!

These people are completely insane.

I think they should have stuck with the star rating system they tried for a short time a couple of years back. But it wasn't very popular with the many vendors that didn't have a good rating.

I am really curious to see what this new badge will look like. Still havn't found an example.

Do you guys think the badge will make you go into poverty?

Is this an example? https://ssl.clickbank.net/order/orde...C305FD26EF8AF7

Mark

Didn't they try a similar strategy where there was a color code attached
to an account depending on your refund rate? There seems to be no easy
way out that will satisfy the majority of the customers OR maybe its'
the internet marketers who are making the most noise?

-Ray Edwards

A couple things:

- In my view, the star rating concept was a terrible idea, especially considering that this is a platform where buyers are known to make complaints and file for refunds in order to get products for free. Star ratings were never needed - unless a seller's metrics are bad enough to warrant shutting down their account, leave them alone and let them sell.

- In reply to Randall, I don't know if you do any direct marketing via sales pages, but adding a new element of any kind is not something you do lightly after you've crafted a high converting sales page. And it's just another way to force people to add ClickBank's branding onto their sales pages against their will, which is objectionable at its core and will surely lead to more encroachments if ClickBank gets their foot in the door that way. They've made it very clear what they ultimately want here.

Clickbank is forcing everyone to have it configured on their vendor sales pages or your account will be closed.

I am trying to add it to my sales page... it is a site created many years ago using Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Marketing script but it isn't working.

Have searched everywhere for help on how to get this to work but am not having any luck at all.

If anyone has any advice on how to get the code to work, it would be much appreciated!

This is the code:

<!-- ClickBank Trust Badge -->
<script src='//cbtb.clickbank.net/?vendor=clickbankidhere'></script>

It is recommended to be added to the header section, but can also be added at the top of the <body> section if necessary.

just as I feared, I just received a warning about my accounts that I know I've added the badge on every page I could find, so I'm missing something..

How do ClickBank check? Do they physically check all websites in the market place by hand, or do they have some kind of algorithm that checks for them, even on URL's not in the marketplace?

I could be wrong but I think it's a free self promo of Click bank at the expense of vendors and affiliates. Good move Clickbank! Lets hope they obey and stay!

I got a similar email today so I've not removed the affected products (I'd already changed the sites).

And I checked some of the Clickbank products I promote and - on an admittedly small sample - about half weren't displaying the new trust badge and the other half were using a different payment processor.

I got the threatening email too, saying I hadn't responded to the first one even though I never received it. As soon as CB started the Trust Badge changes, I removed the few remaining products I was still selling with CB and closed one of the two accounts I still had active. I kept my main account open just in case I wanted to continue to sell a few CB products as an affiliate.

My question is this... if I no longer have any items on my site listed as products on my CB account, why am I receiving emails threatening to withhold payments?

Obviously, the software that they think checks for compliance doesn't work very well.

I've been doing business with CB for something like fifteen years and have made them a lot of money both as a vendor and affiliate, but the new business model they're apparently wedded to these days isn't a model I'm willing to support.

The email is obviously automated but whatever they're using to check simply doesn't work well.

In the "2nd notice" the list of affected accounts includes some of the accounts that I know I've solved and some of the accounts I'm yet to solve are not there.

The whole thing is simply unorganized - let's take the obvious question of pitch plus flow pages. It might be common sense but they still should deal with details like this in their "Implementation Guide". If you are telling somebody that you might keep their money, you better be sure that the procedure works.

I still have work to do to make sure all accounts I have are compliant before I contact them about this.

Luckily, the marketplace thing is not a big deal for me. We'll see what happens, but based on the emails, they don't have the precise data on the pages that they think are not compliant. If they did they'd make the list available to vendors.

I don't know how the issue will be solved if they're telling me, "We don't know where, but somewhere out there you have a page that has a payment link and no badge."

My issue is that I have plethora of website, most of them not small and with payment links on a number of pages, so right now I am basically going through everything I've ever done using Clickbank...manually...I don't know how else to do it.

Hold On...Hold On....

I received the same email but 7 hours later I received an apology from Clickbank.

Did anyone else get that apology email?

Yep, we received the same apology letter.

ClickBank are supposed to be professionals, are they not?!..

I haven't been following the story from the start so does someone know the reasons behind all this. Is the FTC pressing them to do something like this? No way this change can have a good impact on their income. People will leave them, conversions will drop...

Phrase like: "improved customer trust and experience" that are supposed to result in increased conversions are just that, phrases. Anybody (including Clickbank) who knows anything about conversion knows that often the conversion depends on pulling the visitor in before making an offer to sell them something and that you shouldn't put an image of them taking out the wallet and spending money.

This is true even for the call to actions, no smart marketer will say "Pay Now", instead you'll say something like "Secure Your Copy"...

And that badge talking about a purchase right from the start can in no way be good.

And as far as user experience goes let's split the people visiting the websites into two groups:

1) Those who have heard about Clickbank - there's no way that improves trust for these people, we all know that there's no "trust" factors attached to the good name of Clickbank, so it's a moot point

2) Those who don't know about it - just seeing the word "Bank" at the top makes you feel insecure. If you are a 50 year old women who just stumbled upon the website, there's no way that the badge will improve your trust. It would just give you the feeling that this website will do something related to your bank and you'll be out of there in 5 seconds.

We know it and Clickbank knows it.

But it is what it is and it would be great if people who already have implemented the changes and are measuring stuff can share their conversion experiences after the change here, like the overall change and even better, what's performing best in terms of the placement of the badge.

Safety and trust are usually the most lied statements. I know in my country they always say trust me I'll make you safe etc and it's always a lie! I would not trust a trust badge but that's me!

I suspect with the move into physical products....supplements included...there is increasing compliance heat from a variety of regulators.

The trust badge may have more to do with bigger things and bigger regulatory requirements in relation to providing support to some of the physical sellers.

If I had a fitness type program that was doing $10M a year on CB but my backend was like $100M and CB wanted a part of it I think CB would do everything to make sure it could handle the legalities of supporting these types of businesses.

CB doesn't want to piss vendors off...but it wants to ensure it becomes the processor for the big back ends that some of their clients have built.

There are growing pains with any business and the issues in relation to the trust badge are just that "growing pains"

If the big successes start leaving then you may start to worry.

Ask yourself....

....Are they leaving?