Implementing REAL scarcity with Clickbank?

ClickBank does not provide such a feature.

No - they will be directed to your temporary page.

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Update for anyone else ever Googling this: the Clickbank Products API (https://api.clickbank.com/rest/1.3/products) might let you make changes to the product info, like either deleting the product every time you wanted to suspend sales, or maybe making a change to it, like increasing the price (possibly prohibitively), to make the monthly quota more like a limited-availability monthly discount. Not sure you can do either of these, you need programming knowledge either way...

We should really talk about the reality of what you are planning on doing.

If you were to have a membership site then I could see where you would limit membership to a certain number of members to make sure everyone got the service promised.

But, when it comes to an ebook. Everyone, even non marketers, will know you are full of crap when you tell them there are no more copies of a digital ebook. If someone is looking for a how-to ebook on facebook ads and they found your sales page that says "No more copies" they will simply move on and find another and you will have nothing. Someone else who sells all day every day will get the sale and new subscriber to their list.

We also have to talk about affiliates. No affiliate in there right mind will promote a product that the vendor keeps shutting off so they can pretend that it is in hot demand and sold out.

So, as far as scarcity goes with ebooks you might want to go the dimesale route. Customers have to act now before the price goes up.

Just my thoughts

al

All good questions - I want to use Clickbank (and already do for other products) for several reasons:

1) they take care of all the tax stuff, which has lately got far too complicated for solo players like me to handle.
2) they pay me directly - I don't trust Paypal with any significant turnover and also it causes me income tax problems as I do not have an LLC registered in the same country where my PayPal account is opened.

As for the other question of why even use scarcity - no, with a lot of digital products I agree it's BS, but what if I said it was a software product? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on that. My arguments for limiting distribution of a software product (at LEAST until it is well-established, totally bug-free, etc. etc.):

1) The product is kind of SEO-sensitive so I don’t want it used on every site out there, creating a footprint and ultimately ruining it for everybody (think what happened to BANS, or just about any similar solution)
2) I am committed to supporting users properly, which I couldn't do if there were thousands of new users coming in every month, even if I built up a team, which I don't think is practical for me as a part-time IMer.
3) I am not greedy, this is not some big take-the-money-and-run product launch – this is a serious product and I am in this for the long term.

I have bought products in the past which seemed quite sound but support for them dried up within the month (or as soon as the refund period expired) and I just realised it was another hyped-up launch designed for nothing other than to bank big and bail out as quickly as possible (I could name names here...).

So - do I sell xx,xxx of these in a week via the Warrior Forum, with 75% going to affiliates, with upsells, downsells and every-which-sells, take the money, buy the Ferrari and run, or do I take a long-term approach (note, I have no interest in Ferraris, only in earning an honest living) and live nicely off the proceeds of a solid product (sold at a premium price - think $xxx not $x or $xx) for the next few years? I am more for the latter - has a lot to do with my personality, so I know many here would think this is a naive or stupid approach.

Along the same lines, I feel the product would likely sell itself in the kind of volume I am aiming for and I wouldn't in fact have affiliates at all, again, not initially at least.

Just programmatically disable your pitch page and your thankyou page when you have sold enough. Since they are both hosted by you, this should be easy.

If somebody does manage to type in the pay link manually (unlikely) then they will not be able to download anyway. y ou would have to refund them manually, but chances are this will never happen anyway.

I doubt ClickBank has a feature built in although I haven't used them in a long time to be sure. I would say the best way may be to just handle it yourself. When you reach your scarcity, take the order button down and let people know that you have run out of room in the exclusive offer. This may be difficult if you are doing daily scarcity, but overall limits should be easy to stay on top of and implement.

The only way that I would actually believe the scarcity claimed is real, is if there was an actual tangible product to receive in the mail. In my opinion, pretty much anything digital in nature can either be duplicated or replicated for next to nothing.