Is the Clickbank system prone to abuse?

Asks Neil Shearing, pointing to Andy Williams’ comments about some of Clickbank’s failings. Andy’s experience, I’m afraid, reflects my own (that’s on top of the fact that Clickbank can’t seem to get a check to me, while “everyone” else seems to have no difficulty, but that’s by the by).

One of the first problems I had with using Clickbank to sell downloadable products to marketers / webmasters (i.e. people who know how the system works) was that I needed to set up all manner of scripts to keep thieves off my sites, whilst attempting to give a seamless delivery process to genuine customers. I gave up on that in the end, because, like everything similar, each time I improved the mousetrap the bloody mice just got smarter.

The second was the number of people who would buy something, then immediately demand a refund. One in particular, I’m convinced to this day, had this automated. His refund request came in before I’d even had a chance to see the sale notification. It wasn’t that the products sucked: this “customer” could not even have had time to download it, let alone look at it, but the system was allowing, nay, encouraging people to do this.

For these reasons, I stopped using Clickbank to sell downloads years ago.

And, although I do still link to products sold via Clickbank, this is somewhat incidental. I don’t go out of my way to enthusiastically promote any product sold via Clickbank, particularly not downloads aimed at marketers / webmasters, because I see no or hardly any commissions.

It is not at all difficult to find instructions online that tell you exactly how to subvert the Clickbank system and buy through your own link.

I’m not showing you that so you can do it. This blog is aimed at marketers: you either already know or you are going to need to know before someone does it to you, or maybe to explain why your high-traffic’d affiliate link is resulting in zero sales. And, for those who doubted that this is going on, I also wanted you to see how blatantly it is being taught.

Once you understand how that works, you’ll realize that all the cloaking in the world doesn’t stop someone determined from finding a way.

Marketers and webmasters need to know what the problems are with this system and, from there, I think greed and temptation take over.

Is Clickbank likely to do anything?

Neil further suggests that, “Perhaps both merchants and affiliates should petition Clickbank to have a system less prone to “abuse” and, perhaps they should, but I’m also not sure that it would have any effect.

You know I have absolutely no reason to defend them, but whilst I wholeheartedly agree with Andy that neither the majority of merchants care about the situation and that Clickbank appear unconcerned too, for the most part, this really only applies to the “internet marketing” sector.

In other niches serving consumer markets the problem hardly, if at all, exists, because the customers are not “savvy” webmasters. It doesn’t happen, simply because they are not looking for webmaster type information and, through it, coming across the method to help themselves.

And, whilst many vendors in the internet marketing sector can’t see beyond traffic (at anyone’s cost), the vendors in consumer sectors may not be so exposed to the situation and their “not caring” might be simple ignorance.

The problem with Clickbank - and I am basing my belief in the way they are likely to think on the attitudes I have encountered from dealing with them - is that, they’re perfectly happy, thank you. They get their commission on the transaction, no matter who buys, from whom, through which link.

Clickbank might have chosen to see themselves with the simplistic and blinkered view of providing a service where consumers buy stuff from vendors. Which is, basically, what they are, but this effectively ignores the “internet marketing” sector where marketers sell to other marketers and where clearly, their system can’t deal with the problems that exist.

They should address that, but I don’t think we can expect them to do so.

Up to a point, I can understand the “business decision” behind it, since vendors selling products to end consumers may be likely to cause them less hassles, less refunds, less costs and paperwork. Clickbank’s primary concern will, naturally, be towards avoiding trouble and protecting their relationships with the credit card companies on whom they rely to provide them with the merchant accounts that form the basis of their service.

It does rather say that they don’t place much value on vendors who sell to other marketers, even the ones with genuine, quality products though.

And to that, Andy’s response to move along, is, I think, the only valid one.