HUGE refund rate on IM products?

I won't go into too much detail about what products I've promoted and gotten a refund level similar or higher to yours, but I will just say that you are not alone.

You figure, a lot of IM products don't live up to the hype. On type of that, you're marketing to a lot of other people who most likely are familiar with Clickbank. So they either use their own affiliate link or get the easy refund after the purchase.

Yeah, I know IM products don't leave up to the hype, but it's really disturbing seeing that while working for a good conversion rate on my site I lose over 50% from refunds. That's like cutting my conversions in half no matter how good I do.

Anyway, wondering if there're other people with the same experience as ours with these refund rates and really wondering about the non im related products and the refund rates for those.

Thanks,
Alex

I think its far too common.. Clickbank needs to do something about it.

On Clickbank, my non-IM product refund rates are astronomically lower than any IM product refunds I have, both my products and others.

Well, the IM products that show up on Clickbank are hyped up BS 90 times out of 100, refund rates are naturally high. Its easy to refund with Clickbank, and once you realize that the product you have in no way matches up with the sales letter you are going to want your money back. Throw in the serial refunders and those who know how to game Clickbank and you the IM niche becomes very much a hit and miss kind of game.

In an industry where "60 Day Money Back Guarantee's" are common place what do you really expect?

Does it really matter whether your product was good or not? Millions of people can't bring themselves to actually pay for a $1.20 song on iTunes... What makes you think that they really want to pay for a product on how to make money online? Especially the people that most clickbank IM products are targeting.

At this point, whether they get anything out of what you just sold them or not, you've been advertising a "60 Day Money Back Guarantee" since half way down the sales page... Couple that with people constantly wanting more and more stuff for FREE and its easy to see why refund rates are so high.

I think that is what you get when you hype stuff that is not good. I think if you are trying to burn people with questionable sales letters it comes back to haunt you. I mean I sign up on some of these guys lists...it's not hi, hello, how are you doing...It's ram, jam, one email after another email of push button millions. I'm surprised they make any money at all, because you know their product will not live up to what they say. If it smells like crap it is crap.

Wow, great replies here. Thanks everyone.

Yeah, IM products are hyped up and they do target tire kickers all the time, but frankly I was expecting more like 25-30% refund rates compared to 50%+ I got.

Looks like there's gonna be some changes on my table and IM might just get excluded from my to promote list.

Thanks,
Alex

yeah the refund rate seems high on the new type of pruducts, its normal because people realize they dont work.

Yeah, I bet you're right! Btw. can you name a few physical product affiliate networks that work internationaly?

Thanks,
Alex
P.S. nice talking to you again. Did the image redirection trick and it works really well. Thanks for pointing that out back in the day, not sure if you still remember.

50% is NOT normal. I put my product up on Clickbank and refund rate went from 1%-3% to 36% overnight...AND the hackers and thieves came out of the woodwork in droves. I took it off Clickbank and the refund rate went back to 1%-3%.

1 + 1 = 2.

Needless to say, my product no longer lives there.

Two suggestions...get out of Clickbank, and get out of the IM niche. Don't overlook Clickbank for market research though.

The problem with Clickbank products is that once you've downloaded the report or ebook, you've got it. If you want a refund because you're unsatisfied with it, there is no product to return. So ultimately you have the ebook and your refund so you effectively got the product for free.

I believe this happens much more than we'd like to see. Just a nature of the beast I'm afraid. If you want to reduce the refund rate, stick with physical products which must be returned for a refund.

Here is my Rant:

Most of the people that cry about refunds are people that sell those "I will show you how to make $1200 / day" bs. Common, be real, the only way YOU probably make money online is by selling your BS tutorial. 99% of them don't even make sh*t. It's all the same scenario, 9 out of 10 WSO's going to tell you either create an affiliate web site or an adsense micro niche. And 99% of those authors failed to make money from both of those methods. Actually, 99% of them are still newbs that think they know everything about IM after reading a few forum posts. They create their sh*tty WSO and blast it all over click bank etc. with HOT titles.

I think we all can agree that people that KNOW AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT about IM will never buy something with the title "See how you can make $5000 in 1 day", but who will? People that don't know sh*t about IM, people that are looking for easy way out, people that want to get rich, and they want it NOW. When they buy your WSO where you tell them that you actually have to work for it, the first thing they say is "oH Noazzz FaWK dat" ... Here goes your refund, because they were expecting money printing machine.
You want 0 refunds? How about you title your WSO "Let me show you how to make $30 / day, but you have to work your ass off for at least a month"

My biggest problem with IM is that people lie their ass off, it really gets to me. Looks like there are all bunch of people that KNOW how to make 1000s of dollars through IM, but yet they still fking broke.

/rant

I'm partly agreeing with tolyZ here because some of the IM products don't live up to their initially promised titles and sales letters so it's quite common...from my knowledge I think here are two situations where a refund can occur

1) The product is not living up to it's ability which means seller was lying
2) Leechers or internet thieves just purchased your product to spread it on torrents

Second case is tough to avoid...but the first case is easily avoidable...just provide the damn info that was promised earlier...

makes sense?

With a lot of the Clickbank IM products... their business model is to get high upfront conversion rates even if that means high refund rates.

They'd rather have an offer that converts well upfront than one that has low refund rates.

To do this... they use hypey blind copy (where they don't tell you what the product is) to get as many people as possible in the door. So... if you want a product with lower refund rates, then:

1. Look for a solid product to promote
2. If it really is good, then it's less likely to use completely blind copy.

-Hans

This is why its always smart to update yourself on the current most sellable niches...In a business like this, the trend would most always be unstable

IM products has the range of refund rate in 30-60%. The best product I promoted so far has around 25% refund rate. So I think your stats is pretty normal. Clickbank provides refunds so easy.

I think people abuse the Clickbank refund policy, especially in the IM field. For some reason I kind of doubt that people selling dog training lessons or ebooks about how to build chicken coops are seeing such astronomical refund rates.

I've long been wondering if ClickBank is the correct place to sell our product because it's a high quality product, similar to what I've seen some folks here refer to as "A list products" etc. It's far from the pump'n'dump MMO/IM style products, and I'm concerned about it being tarnished with the reputation that ClickBank has for these.

I've also heard from a well known SEO that his refunds went from <3% up to 10 times that amount when he experimented briefly with ClickBank.

I know this is sorta critical but the IM Niche (and most stuff on ClickBank) is magic bullet products that promise unreasonable results. Thats bound to result in higher returns.
Those kinda products don't promise to teach your dog to earn a six figure income or how to make a solid gold chicken coup with materials you have lying around.

In general the IM niche is very screwed up cause the products are all sold as magic bullets and their often complete garbage and the good ones are still exaggerated in quality.

The reason for the high refund rate should be very obvious, IM products are usually bought by IMers, and IMers ,unlike people in the other niche markets, are aware of their right and how easy it is to get a refund from ClickBank. Also very small percentage of IM products live up to the hype, hence the high refund. It's the worst product to promote.

Maybe you should create your own products, and really provide good value for it? That way, you know that what you're selling is worth the value your customers are paying for. You can then just block serial refunders from your list.

I've promoted products that had as high as a 70% refund
rate... because the product owner failed to deliver everything
promised.

However, most IM products that I promote have a refund
rate of less than 5%.

MOST of the products that I promote aren't on Clickbank.
Not that I have anything against Clickbank.

Willie

Too many people go onto Clickbank just to get what will be a free download via refunds I thought CB had a policy of some kind of checking if someones refunds requests were more than 2 a month.

CB should be looking into why the refund rate of any product they sell is above say 20% against other products with much lower refund rates, they may see that the sales pitch does not match the product and do something about it.

Live in hope but with the % that CB must be making I doubt if they will bother.

IM CB refund rates are one of the highest...

All internet marketers know that it's super easy to get a refund from CB, so why would they not?

I suggest picking another niche

Cheers,

~Gary

This is my 2cs worth , I think the best way to stop all the serial refunders is to give there refund at the end of the refund cycle i.e 7 days , 14 days etc would put a big stop to it all but would the big companies go fo it !! they would think twice about purchasing the product if that was the case , just an Idea would be worth a try.

Jason

Great feedback people, love it! Thanks!

Ok, so we decided IM products have huge refund rates and that niche products are better as far as refunds go. HOWEVER from your experience is there anything we can do, as affiliates, to lower the refunds? I dunno... maybe like throw in some crazy bonus or anything?...

Thanks,
Alex

My refund rate on Clickbank for the products I promote is 0% at the moment and that's with at least several hundred sold. Find good products.

The IM niche sucks. I'd feel dirty promoting it, tbh ... which is saying a lot, well, considering.

Find good products. You're probably promoting products with too much hype that's promising too much. Then, once the customer actually sees it, they refund because it isn't as mentioned.

I will agree with the statement that alot of IM products available through CB are loads of hyped-up, fluff-filled crapola. But not all the products in the marketplace for the IM niche are one-click miracle softwares. There are some good service-type products (with re-billing) that have good standing, and are from well known and respected marketers. You should see lower refund rates on the genuine article products. Peace and Prosperity.

Sherry, I did that! That's how the reviews got written... Might be that I see value different from other folks... Anyway...

Will steer away to a different kind of product and maybe that will work better.

In terms of the IM niche, clickbank is best for exposure as a product creator and for list building. The marketers releasing those auto software type stuff are fully aware they'll be getting 50% kind of refund rates but they're also adding 10-15000 people onto their list if it's a big launch. Not to mention the hosting company promotions and then all the back end stuff you can sell on webinars etc. However, if you're simply looking to promote stuff as an affiliate then there are much better niches to go into.

There are 2 sides of the coin (to the people compaining about hyped up garbage)... fact is, most people won't buy an "honestly pitched" product. This has already proven itself hundreds of times over - check out the WSO section and see what's hot right now.

... As long as there are people stupid enough to buy the get rich quick stuff, there are going to be people selling it.

Ansar

Yeah but these guys in those markets don't know how to game Clickbank, they don't know they can buy through their own link and get 50 to 75% off discount.

I market in other markets and it's only the IM niche where you get these insane refund rates.

James