73.86% refund rate!

Hmmm, that's interesting. I read a little while back on here that refund rates on Clickbank are high because it's so easy to get one.:confused:

That is startling. It probably speaks to a lot of things: overpriced, the ease of getting a refund, affiliates that don't promote it accurately, poor quality, ineffective results, etc. The owner needs to pull his product and do a complete evaluation of it or he or she will be building the wrong kind of reputation.

I have noticed a higher refund rate with products sold via Clickbank
than my own products sold via RAP or 1SC.

However, it's been speculated that part of the reason for that is
that when a person refunds via Clickbank, they don't need to
interact with the merchant. Since it's more impersonal, it
probably feels easier to request a refund.

One of numerous factors though...

WOW! That's kinda of ridiculous! Our refund rate is less than 1% for all of 2011. I can't imagine a refund rate that high...probably why I don't sell on Clickbank!!

I have heard that many of the recent big product launches on CB are getting refund rates in excess of 40%, and when you analyze the quality of these products and their attendant sales copy, it'd not be hard to see why.

There's been a spate of "pushbutton" 1-2-3 type products flooding the market recently with blind sales copy, and it'd be easy to see why the purchasers would want to refund after being disillusioned with the over the top hype and claims from the sales copy for these products.

Talking about the serial refunders, does Clickbank track this and deal with it? Or is just an occupational hazard of working with Clickbank (and probably other digital products)?

Marvin

I've personally asked for a refund on 2 or 3 products that I purchased from Clickbank and to be blunt it was because the products just flat out sucked!

The sales letters were slick and probably had more time spent on them than the actual product hence my refund requests.

On the other end of the spectrum I can't recall if I have ever asked for a refund on a product I bought as a WSO because 95% of the time the products were high quality based on sound principles and did not promise money for nothing pipe dreams.

Respectfully,
Tim

I am pretty sure this product in particular just flat out sucks bad.
I am 99.9 percent sure this product mentioned was promoted by some big guns and it flopped huge because it is not up to scratch at all. Just goes to show when promoting the big push button traffic software it was all about the benjamins
-WD

Huge refund rates are what happens when people massively over-hype mediocre products with killer sales letters, and set overly high price points.

Just part of the business. There are those who don't care how many people refund if they are still doing big volume. It makes sense for the bottom line, or else they wouldn't be doing it.

What happens is the prospect reads a professionally-written sales letter that pulls out all the stops and sells them a big fat dream. Then they download the product and reality hits.

It's not the way I'd do things, but I'm not an online millionaire (nor trying to be).

I have tried clickbank last year a bit, but now I am using other payment platforms where people are buying lots of products and the refund rate is not so high :-))

Items with rebills have a higher refund rate, and clickbank will give refunds within 60 days no questions asked. In fact, I know people who routinely buy courses, only to return them once read for a full refund. It's why I never list my own ebooks on a website like that. I'd much rather handle it all myself.

I go for months without seeing refunds. This is just another piece of CB urban legend.

The only reliable 3rd party I am aware that discloses refund rates is flippa - and that's if the seller does a good a job of disclosing incomes, refunds and all the right data points.

The "make money online" and forex niches are probably the ones with the highest refund rates and those routinely go up for sale on flippa.

Even those guys are seeing less than 10% refunds.

ClickBank is a pretty reputable place to find affiliate products. I'm pretty sure they have some weirdness with order tracking (hence affiliates end up opening more than one account) but an all it's nowhere near as awful as people make it out to be.

When I presell a Clickbank product using my own words and build realistic expectations, my refund rates are low, but when I just use a products promotional material (say adding a banner) and their sales copy, my refund rates end up being ridiculous.

It also means that $26,000 did NOT get refunded. Plus all those people who did get refunded still go into the product owners list.

Looks to me like the product owner wins (again) and the affiliate loses (again).

I have no idea how accurate these numbers are but judging from the 2 clickbank products I've purchased, I wouldn't be surprised at 70% refund rates.

It could be that the sales page did not manage expectations and SUPER HYPED the product.

Then when the user saw that what he thought he was buying based on the sales page ended up being different, refund.

So the product might not necessarily be crap it could have been over hyped.

It's because it's so easy to refund on CB, and yes a lot of the "push a button and you get massive traffic" products suck.

The model a lot of them work off is basically factoring in a huge refund rate just to get people in their sales funnel. If they're smart, they will have used a non-clickbank processor for their upsell products..... but still if you sell junk on the front end, that's only going to do so much. Even better, their back end is primarily affiliate products with stricter refund policies.

At the end of the day, a buyer lead is almost always better than a free lead, so if you sold $100k worth and 50% of that refunded, you still have $50k worth of buyer leads.... the front end of your business isn't to make money really, it's lead acquisition.

I know if I shelled out $197, the product had better be pretty sticking good!

If he sold 10 units at a 74% refund rate at $197 his take is $512.20.

If the vendor sold the same product for $69, he would actually make tons more money, because he would only have to sell 15 at a 50% refund rate to make more money, netting $517.50.

And we all know that the refund rate for the same product at a third of the original price would drop the refund rate a lot more than 24%.

Also, at the lower price, he grows his email list almost 4 times as quickly, netting 7.5 customers versus 2 for the same amount of sales!

I would take 4 times the list members for the same amount of profit every time!

In other words... it's worthless.

And I see you have to upgrade to the Pro edition to see this information. Hmmm

Can you imagine the holdback percentage and time on these products? Good luck if you promoted any of them, you might get paid in about 90 days...

I wouldn't be surprised at all at the rates mentioned. Personally, I've asked for refunds on two products I bought in the past 5 months. That represents a whopping 14% of the products I've bought. Still a very high rate in my mind...

(Neither of the returns were WSOs.)

Both suffered from what I think is absolutely horrible (but obviously effective) sales pages.

I think the high return rates have to do with four major things:

First, the sales pages that over hype the programs beyond any reasonable level. They promise the sun, moon and sky, then deliver dirt.

Second, programs that are seriously flawed to begin with. Though a lot of people have what seems to be good ideas, they don't replicate well for others, or the seller/producer is unable to articulate the actual methods required for success.

Third (or maybe first again) Blind advertising is probably one of the largest problems... You know the type, the ad or sales page tells you all of the things the product isn't, and fails to mention anything about what it is.

The fourth problem is the whole launch/affiliate system. There is a product that is currently being hyped to death. I see at least three or four emails about it, and the vast majority of the email links are blind. "You gotta see this" "Just for You" "You up? Check this out right away" and a host of other two to five line emails. Then there are the emails that go to greater length, promoting the product with hyperbole that doesn't match up at all with the sales page copy... and on it goes. For the "choice of the day" I've been seeing promotional emails from nearly a dozen lists, a couple of emails a day for the past week or maybe even two. This sort of "saturation bombing" tends to get some buys, just to see what it is all about. When the product doesn't measure up, Yep, another refund.

It's no wonder the refund rates are so high on some products.

Hi,

I'm new to the Warrior Forum, but I am keenly interested in this topic. I've personally been going through and reviewing a lot of these "get rich quick" products. Truth is, bad product = high refund rate, period. Auto Traffic Monopoly, Massive Passive Profits, Total Profit Plan, they all have horribly high refund rates because they sell emotionally, pushing people's desperate desire for quick money and make their profit off the folks who are either too lazy or shy to demand a refund.

I personally have been recommending the Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner and Dan Brock's Deadbeat Super Affiliate. Deadbeat Super Affiliate has a refund rate of 8% and actually has some detailed info about creating niche websites and link building, etc and the sales page reflects what is inside the product, whereas these other sites all capitalize on people's intense curiosity to know what's the "secret tool".


Seth

Clickbank makes it very very easy for people to get a refund. You don't even have to have a reason; they grant any request.

It probably has a lot to do with outright poor quality products.

I've struggled to find products in certain hot niches, only to find only a few on CB worth promoting. That's like, the first 3-4 in the category list. And I wonder, since this is such a good niche, why aren't there better products available?

It seems to me that years back, CB only accepted good products, but they don't seem to care anymore.

People get sold via the sales letter, only to be disappointed when the product doesn't solve their problem. Or they decide it's overpriced for what it is.

As far as refunds go, there's supposed to be some sort of rule that if you refund too often, you'll get banned from buying CB products in future. Maybe it's not being iimplemented well enough.

One marketer some time ago mentioned a product of theirs being refunded and they did not have a say in it. The problem that triggered the refund was related to this same person buying the product repeatedly and returning it. Who knows, maybe he was downloading it and sharing it with his friends.

A review thread here describes one product owner who blew it big time by not providing adequate customer service for a product that was causing problems for many buyers. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the product you named at 75% refund rate.

If you can't get after-purchase service, what are you going to do but return it? This could well be why so many people ask for refunds.

Sylvia

Clickbank has a lot of garbage unfortunately, but wow that's high.

Yes, but personally I would not buy a product knowing refund rate is 74% Why waste time and nerves on this? :confused:

My personal thought that might lead to large refund rates is all the products that have that leave you hanging sales letter-they promise alot, but never really give you the jist of the product, so the customer takes the chance buying and then finds out it was not what they thought it was. So alot has to do with the sales letter I think be more precise and let the people know what they are getting at least the front end product that is. Just a thought thanks

Clickbank has become very strict about refunds. If you are contantly buying stuff and refunding, they will ban you from buying. When you see such high refund rates, it is not because clickbank is being lenient with people. It is because these are different people refunding and each person is entitled to a refund. What it actually reflects on is the product itself. There have been products that have had huge launches and very hyped sales letters only to turn out to be something other than what the customers were expecting. Some of these products are cheap to buy and promise the world but do not deliver. It is therefore not about clickbank at all.

With the liberal refund policy people are able to take the 60 days, test drive the product, glean all they can from it, then turn around and return it for no good reason. I wonder how many of the expert do that so they can "honestly" write a review?

It only reminds me of the phrase "caveat emptor" (One of the few things I remember from Lating class!). "Let the buyer beware." Truer words were never spoken when it comes to the IM field!

Erm..that is crazy. So i'm guessing the product is probably crap and its definitely one of the MMO product that creates a super hypey sales letter and over promises....

Cmon, we're looking at the hypothetical fraudulent glass of water 73.86% empty!
We need to look at it as 26.14% full!
Now that's a happy, more-than a quarter full glass of water!

Imagine if it was gatorade!

What I have noticed is that many vendors have one catch in their systems and they gloss over this in their videos. Yet their squeeze page says, it not this or that and you don't need this or that.

They seem to forget it is all about trust, so when they say checkout XYZ.com it is what we use for YYY, you look up the ownership of that domain and find they own it, it is their tool, second product etc.

I think they really miss the boat with the upsells, better to get the initial offering accepted, follow up with Aweber and then offer a second proposal when they have ascertained their client is making money.

There are of course people who don't buy at all, they have a cast iron refund so they consider every purchase an evaluation.

So for me a sale is not a sale until at least 60 days have past, anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy world.

Alan,

As many have said in this thread, how can the figures be accurate? I don't know either!

But like CyberSocerer said, if your product is good, you won't get to many refunds. My figures on my subscription site were about the same as hers.

This is where digital products for anything besides front-end, loss leader, relationship creator/affiliate bait are a total failure and physical products still rule. With physical products, if you want a refund, you have to ship it back and can't keep it.

The only caveat is when you're dealing with a closed loop distribution system like Amazon's Kindle. If you want a refund, Amazon removes the product from your inventory.

I've only asked once so far for a Clickbank refund and that was because the product didn't deliver what it said that it would, straight out of the box.

Linda