ClickBank (ClickBank.com) is a digital marketplace for products that you can purchase online. ClickBank is probably the most popular resource for online vendors who are looking for a venue to market and sell their product, as well as affiliates who are looking for new products to promote.
ClickBank is a name well known throughout the work at home, online business community because many of the training programs and business opps being sold online today are sold through ClickBank.
ClickBank offers all their customers a guaranteed, no questions asked refund within 60 days of purchasing a product. This guarantee is incredibly important to consumers. When purchasing a product from a company you’ve never dealt with before, seeing the ClickBank logo lets you know that if you encounter any problems with your program or service, you can get your refund from ClickBank with no hassle.
So Why Do People Complain About ClickBank?
While ClickBank is most definitely not a scam, the problem that many people have is that ClickBank doesn’t have any requirements or screening process that stops disreputable companies from using their services. The ClickBank marketplace is literally open to everyone.
Since ClickBank is considered a reputable company, when customers see the ClickBank logo on a payment page, they feel as though that is a sort of testimony to the quality of the product they are purchasing, when, in reality, the two things have nothing to do with one another. ClickBank will sell a terrible program just as willingly as a great program.
ClickBank isn’t a review site or a quality control site. They are simply a secure payment processing site in addition to being a place where vendors and affiliates can find each other.
When you see the ClickBank logo, simply know that it means two things: 1) that your payment page is secure, and 2) that you can have confidence in your ability to get a refund within 60 days if you need it. The responsibility is still on you to throughly inspect the program you have purchased to make sure it fulfills your needs.
I am worried if my card details could be misused.
So what are they charging the money for?
Incidentally, vendors, the costs stack up like this:
$49.95 one time "quality assurance fee"
$1.00 plus 7.5% commission to Clickbank per sale
50% (average) commission to affiliate
That means that, for a $100 product, once approved, the costs look like this ...
$1.00 to Clickbank "stock fee"
$7.50 to Clickbank commission
$50.00 to affiliate
You are left with:
$100.00 - $58.50 = $41.50 to the vendor.
Worse is to come. All the above figures are "off the top". You still have to account for sales tax / value added tax or whatever you call it in your country. Where I am, that is 20%.
So, 20% of $100 is $20.
$41.50 - $20.00 = $21.50 ... not much of a return for all my hard work and substantially less than the affiliate who just put up a link.
Steer clear!