Clickbank plus my own shopping cart?

5 replies
I have my own shopping cart, but obviously the affiliate reach will be better on Clickbank. That said, is it considered wrong/illegal/against CB rules to put a product on their website and offer the same product on my site with my own shopping cart/merchant service?

Any thoughts?

My other idea was to offer the base introductory product on Clickbank, then use it to feed the backend products which I handle on my own.
#cart #clickbank #shopping
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by TravisVOX View Post

    is it considered wrong/illegal/against CB rules to put a product on their website and offer the same product on my site with my own shopping cart/merchant service?
    It isn't considered wrong by ClickBank, at all, no. They're only a retailer: it isn't their business where else you choose to sell your product.

    However, if you do this, you may well be saying goodbye to the prospect of (m)any serious, professional affiliates - this is the problem. And there are good reasons for that.

    The 95% of ClickBank affiliates who collectively make about 5% of the affiliate-referred sales may not mind at all (or even notice), but most of the 5% of pro-affiliates who typically make about 95% of the sales may well move on smoothly to another product, if yours has an alternate sales page elsewhere.

    The affiliates' problem here is that our prospective customer (with our Clickbank cookie on his PC), not having bought at his first visit to the sales page (which most don't, of course), can find the product again the following week via a Google search, which then takes him to the PaySpree/PDC/E-Junkie/vendor's-own/whatever sales-page, and our Clickbank cookie is no good to us there.

    If the Clickbank sales-page is the only sales-page (as is usually the case, of course), we still get paid, even if the customer gets back to that page via Google. This is why vendors on Clickbank who have another sales page elsewhere, or another non-Clickbank way to pay, can attract only affiliates who haven't quite thought it through. Call me a judgmental skepchick but I would venture to suggest that those are perhaps not the affiliates whom many vendors would ideally wish to attract?

    In other words: it will make a difference to some affiliates, but those will typically be the ones who make most of the affiliate-referred sales.

    There's a kind of way round it, but it involves repackaging the product under another name (some vendors do this). This can work, but you can also get a few refund requests from people who've inadvertently bought it twice, and it might be less than ideal for "goodwill".
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    • Profile picture of the author TravisVOX
      Okay, I hear you, and I agree.

      However, let's say I have 5 products in my line I'm going to offer. The first product - the introductory product - is put on Clickbank (and only Clickbank) while the rest are offered via my own cart on my site/shopping cart/merchant account. Any thoughts there?
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by TravisVOX View Post

        let's say I have 5 products in my line I'm going to offer. The first product - the introductory product - is put on Clickbank (and only Clickbank) while the rest are offered via my own cart on my site/shopping cart/merchant account. Any thoughts there?
        Not really ... I don't see how anyone can possibly object to that? Clearly you're entitled to make subsequent sales to your own customers, and where/how you choose to do so is entirely up to you? :confused:
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        • Profile picture of the author TravisVOX
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

          Not really ... I don't see how anyone can possibly object to that? Clearly you're entitled to make subsequent sales to your own customers, and where/how you choose to do so is entirely up to you? :confused:
          Okay. I agree. I was just making sure to quiet some of the negative thoughts bouncing around my head. Thank you!
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  • Profile picture of the author sammib01
    Great stuff Alexa. It is simple, complex but obvious. The affiliates do Not want you to bypass them so that they lose the sale and commissions. It therefore makes it difficult to spread your offer through multi networks or sales systems. I do not work that much with affiliates but will in the future.

    Thanks for the info Alexa.
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