Membership Site Questions.. need Answers

Starting your operation and building your program in a system that you later regret is one of the biggest and most painful mistakes of online business.

Make sure you make the right decision the first time.

Also... what you describe as "penny pinching" is really an understatement.

What you are talking about is potentially giving away 5.5-8% of your entire business.

In a million dollar continuity operation where you recruited all your own affiliates that could be as much as $80,000 in lost revenue.

PayPal and Merchant accounts will cost you 1.9%-3% + a $.35 per transaction fee generally... sometimes more if you are higher risk.

Clickbank will cost you $7.5%-9.9% (on recurring) + a $1 per transaction fee.

Compare that to having a partner that has a 1.9% share in your business vs one that has a 9.9% share.

Compare the transaction fees alone... clickbank is 65-70% higher cost... look at it from the prospective of 1000 transactions... $350 vs $1000 in fees. Look at it from the prospective of 100,000 transactions $35,000 vs $100,000 in just transaction fees alone.

Sure most people never do that kind of volume... but it puts things in perspective when you are talking about one of the most expensive payment processors. No monthly fees but you pay out the nose.

The performance of the 9.9% partner is not guaranteed either... there is no promise that they will sign up any affiliates to promote your offer... you may still be on your own recruiting affiliates. There is only the hope... though they will write the checks for you they will also tell you that you cannot price your offer more than $197 and you have to ask permission every time you want to make a change or add an offer.

Also you may be giving up other things... the ability to sell any product you want without the fear of clickbank rejecting it, the ability to add products for sale in minutes without waiting for approvals from clickbank, the ability to easily integrate sales funnels etc.

Its actually faster and cheaper to set up a product for sale outside of clickbank and your earning potential is far greater... not to mention the technologies available to you are far better.

Clickbank is the most expensive and limited ecommerce automation system and payment processor I know of...

The main benefit is the affiliate database but even that provides little benefit for most publishers who have to recruit their own affiliates anyway to get started.

It may be a good choice for some... if they can totally game it and truly tap the affiliate database and get affiliates promoting them that otherwise would not do so.

However for many others that is just a pipe dream and sending their own hard recruited affiliates to clickbank is a mistake that they will regret later when they want solid sales funnel features on the back end, ecommerce, automation, content delivery, and more accurate affiliate tracking and more robust affiliate management features.

If its a risk you are going to take... make sure its a calculated one.