Clickbank Refund Rate 50% WTF!

Hi Matt!

I have seen other members complaining about CB affiliate refunds (not just CB, other venues have that issue too) ... I suspect you are going to keep having this problem. CB just might not be the best marketing channel for an e-book.

My guess is that either those people are "serial refunders" (whom ClickBank does ban when they make a habit of it), or possibly they felt there was a glaring discrepancy between the product delivered and what they were (for whatever reason) expecting.

People do sometimes report things like this.

A product with an overall 50% refund-rate over a statistically significant number of sales will be removed from the Marketplace by ClickBank, because their 7.5% charge on each of the other 50% of unrefunded sales typically won't cover the costs of processing all the refunds, and they're not there to lose money.

It's true that products in some niches do characteristically have slightly higher than the average (about 7%/8%) ClickBank refund rates, because of the nature of the niches, but generally the percentage of refunds generally depends on the degree of unity between the respresentations made for the product (whether by an affiliate or on the sales page) and what the product itself delivers.

You haven't mentioned affiliates, above, but certainly the refund rates for the same products can vary dramatically between different affiliates, illustrating that it's the "pre-selling/selling process" that commonly makes a huge difference. It's simply factual that some affiliates/vendors have high refund-rates for everything they promote, while others promote a wide range of different products and sell very large numbers of them with overall refund rates never even approaching 1%. This surprises many people, but it's so, and any member of ClickBank's staff will confirm that it's so. In other words, refund rates are determined by quite a variety of different factors, and are not dependent simply on "the product itself".

Wishing you better luck ...

It may not be the best marketing channel for some e-books, but also let's not forget that they do retail about 15,000 different e-books there, with an overall refund rate of about 8%.

If you don't already have good analytics/tracking software then install something straight away. I currently use Piwik (free) and Google Analytics (also free) and can tell where most visitors come from. The traffic source will give you at least some idea of why they are refunding.

I've had very few refunds so far (<2%) from a product in the parenting niche. And the referring site for one refund was the CB marketplace--I suspect that person bought with intent to refund, since they were clearly familiar with Clickbank (although, as Alexa mentioned, serial refunders can get into trouble with CB). And like your refund requests, it happened very soon after the sale.

Also, with the CB refund system, the vendor has 24 hours to communicate with the buyer and try to resolve any problems or help them with the product. Make use of this. The buyer is not obliged to respond, but if you send them a courteous (even warm) note offering the help them, and asking what the problem is, then you might get some answers. If you get no response, then most likely the 'buyer' was a tyre kicker

From the OP.

My first thought is that you are getting refunds from affiliates looking for new products to promote.


Say I am that dishonest affiliate:

1. scan clickbank for new products released this week
2. buy product that looks intresting to promote from the sales letter
3. keep a copy for my research and request a refund
4. create my pre sales page using the product and product sales page



were your sales directly from the clickbank website itself, or some method of your own ( landing page, email campaign, etc..)


I do not do this, but if you look around at all the methods people use, it would not suprise me at all if this is what has happened to you.


YOu made no mention on how you are promoting the product so affiliate scam is what I think has happened. CLickbank isn't really a shopping site for an actual end user to browse and buy, its a platform for products and affiliates to connect and make sales and commissions flow more smoothly


whereas eBay is a shopping platform, and people have found your product via searching keywords



unless the product is absolute garbage.

I think you happened to either
1) be very unlucky
2) have affiliate who bought your product to review, and then refunded it

"Horror" is the same word I used last time I offered something on ClickBank. The most unbelievable and terrible affiliate promotions and refund rates. If you are going from another selling platform to ClickBank it can be stunning.

If you are going to use ClickBank you need to steel yourself and have a different mindset: your refund rates are going to be higher than you are used to. However, whatever net sales you have are still net sales and profits in your pocket.

Other issues to look at are disabling products if a refund request is made so someone is not buying and refunding for the purpose of grabbing a pdf file they will resell, and having continuity or delayed delivery of some content until after the 60 day refund period.

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Try jvzoo to sell your product. You can delay payments to affilliates until you get to know them better. This will help you to track if the refunds are coming from certain affiliates

Anton

Basically I think it means you've attracted the wrong kinds of affiliates. If they do it right, and you provide them with a good product, they'll see few refunds. But if they over sell or attract teh wrong people, people who just refund everything for free stuff or whatever--then you'll make no sales. To attract the right people, I'd look at some of the threads on here about what good affiliates should look for and avoid. Alexa Smith is a pro (she commented on this thread already) and has tons of great content on here that can help you know what solid affiliates look for. For instance, non-leaky sales pages. You provide that and the good affiliates will recognize.

Maybe find someone already doing well promoting products for commissions. Contact them and say you'd like to offer them a certain % as a super affiliate and that they can promote your solid product for great profits. On ClickBank you could just put a link to a site where a person has to apply for the job. Yes, others can use the already generated hoplink but if you make people apply, and then open up even more info and a sales page for them to use, that might weed out the bad affiliates. You can also set up a system in ClickBank where the more affiliates screw up or succeed the higher % they earn. So you're really encouraging people to step it up or else their commissions go down.

Consider selling on Kindle or on other platforms too.

The situation for the OP may not be nearly as bleak as it first appears...

What seems quite likely is that, as a new product, it has attracted the attention of several affiliates who have bought through their own hoplink in order to review the book, and then issued a refund request.

That's not an uncommon action for professional affiliates as it is a lot quicker (and more certain) than going to the trouble of asking for a free review copy.

For vendors, of course, it sucks, but at least it shows that affiliates are taking notice of the product. If they go on to promote and make sales, then I'm sure there won't be too many complaints!

The first couple of weeks a book hits the CB marketplace are not likely to reflect what will happen when the initial affiliate interest has settled down, but be aware that affiliates will continue to buy and refund - its just the nature of the business.

What has made it so painful is not the refunds but the percentage of refunds to actual sales. Hopefully the balance will change in favour of real sales soon enough.

Martin

Ugh. Clickbank. I have an offer there. It's done well with about a 3% refund rate. It's not an IM product. A few months ago I was traveling and someone did a big mailing for my offer without letting me know first. I'd made some adjustments to my autoresponder a week before that apparently made the download link for my product invalid.

I logged into my account from the library because I was waiting for Internet service to be connected at my new residence. I saw a bunch of sales and a refund request. Then another. What was weird was that no one who had purchased the product could get the download. Within about an hour or so I was able to figure out what had happened and took care of everyone.

No one had to wait more than 2 1/2 hours for their product. But my refund rate was a bit over 20% for this little snafu. There were several people who just flat out lied that they never received their product. Sometimes things go that way.

What pisses me off it that Clickbank downgraded me from their top tier seller to gray or some BS rating. This is after impeccable performance with them since 2002. Not sure what I'm going to do but I'm leaning heavily toward just finding another platform.

The people who know that Clickbank will refund them tend to take advantage of that. That is why the IM niche has so many refunds, of course many of the products in that niche are also poor, but anyone in that niche already knows Clickbank will refund them if they just ask.

Other niches outside of normal online business stuff have customers that do not know about the Clickbank refund policy, so they tend to have lower refund rates.

Refunds are always going to be a problem in Clickbank, they punishes you for their ridicules policy. Even serial refunders know they can just order from different accounts.

As an affiliate my status was lowered from green because I marketed a product with a higher refund rate. That makes no sense at all. When I questions them via support they told me I should market higher quality products. What is that about? You approved the product in your marketplace... you mean to tell me you are going to approve the product and then when I market the product you approved I then get a penalty. It's good to know Clickbank does not even support its own approval.