What if ClickBank posted refund stats for their products?

by MTVida
4 replies
Now I'm not a huge fan of ClickBank, largely because of the product selection that they offer. I fell for a few worthless money making products, and in the process, became an afilliate getting an idea for how ClickBank works from the inside. When I started looking through the different products available in my nich (language learning), only one had a halfway decent sales page. Still, I wasn't impressed with a trail run of the product, so I took my search to other networks.

By and large, as a network, ClickBank is actually not bad at all. I find them very easy to navigate though and to use, and as a customer, their refund policy is way above par

I hear a lot of people here reccomending ClickBank because of the high commissions paid, but it always seems to come with the caviat "BUT, their products tend to have a high refund rate."

If ClickBank would post a refund rate on each product (in place of say, 'gravity') I think people would be winning all around.

Affiliates would spend their energy promoting better quality products that customers would be more satisfied with, and there would be a lot less junk to sift through to find the quality offers (more productivity.)

It would make the product sellers better by forcing them to create better products, and the scammers would ge weeded out.

Cutomers would obviously end up happier.

ClickBank's reputation would improve overnight.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't want to consider this. The only sales that they would lose would be the ones that would just get refunded anyway. I don't know, there may be some reason why they can't/won't. Personally, it seems like a no-brainer that would increase the quality of products and of consumer experience, and do away with thousands of wasted man-hours for the affilliates.
#clickbank #products #refund #stats
  • Profile picture of the author Rob Howard
    I've never sold a product on clickbank - as an affiliate - that's ever had more than a 5% refund rate.

    You must remember that there is a huge difference between the overall refund rate and an affiliates specific refund rate.

    For example - a product I recently released has an overall refund rate of 3.4%. However, I have one affiliate that has a 30% refund rate.

    So, in theory, that affiliate could go screaming everywhere - "don't promote this product - it's got a 30% refund rate!"

    A lot of times a quick analysis shows the affiliate is lying or not representing the product correctly.

    As far as them posting refund percentages -- that's up to them. I doubt it's as high as you think it is overall.

    But really, I don't think posting it will change what people think of clickbank. They either love it, use it and are ok with it - or hate it.

    Rob
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    • Profile picture of the author myob
      In my experience, any of the published stats on Clickbank are abysmally worthless in determining a product's quality or suitability for promoting. Using stats as a filter in selecting products can be a very costly mistake.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by MTVida View Post

    What if ClickBank posted refund stats for their products?
    Personally, I'd ignore it like I ignore almost all of their statistics.

    Why would other affiliates' refund-rates be relevant to me? :confused:

    Refund-rates vary dramatically between different affiliates of the same products. It's mostly about how the product's pre-sold.

    It's true that there are some markets which, for different reasons, do have above average refund-rates, such as Forex (sometimes crap products that are based on "backfitted indicator analysis" and therefore don't work), Make Money Online (sometimes over-hyped nonsense with fraudulent income-claims on their sales pages), and so on. But in general, any product that has a high refund-rate across its whole range of affiliates is removed from the Marketplace pretty quickly by ClickBank.

    Look at it from their perspective: their cut (regardless of whether or not there's an affiliate involved in the sale) is only 7.5% + $1 per product. If they had to refund a significant/high proportion of sales, the processing and administrative costs would mean that they'd be making a net loss instead of a net profit on the product.

    It's worth remembering this, if you see affiliates claiming that they have a 50% refund-rate for an individual product. They're doing something wrong. If that were the typical/collective refund rate for the product, the product would no longer be for sale through ClickBank.

    I think they're right not to publish this. It would only mislead people who don't understand how these things work.

    And if I were a vendor, and they wanted to publish my products' refund-rates, I wouldn't use their network.

    Originally Posted by ccmusicman View Post

    a product I recently released has an overall refund rate of 3.4%. However, I have one affiliate that has a 30% refund rate.
    Very typical, I'm sure.

    There are always a few less-than-desirable affiliates.

    Unfortunately, that one may turn out to be the schmeckel who starts off forum threads saying "This product sucks: its refund-rate is 30%". :p :p
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  • Profile picture of the author Derek S
    I would have that system gamed so quick with the help of a good sized offshore team. Would take me less than a week to completely ruin all my competitors refund rates and assume my actions would be reciprocal once they figure out how I am doing it.

    Not to say their current gravity model cant be gamed just as easily (it can)
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