Clickbank products can be a lot of fun to promote if you find a good one. There are a few problems, however. The first is mostly a problem of internet marketing and health niches, which is that many of the products have questionable claims by FTC standards, but Clickbank is trying to improve that situation. Another problem is that some merchants’ pages are quite leaky from an affiliate perspective. You need to check the pages out before you start promoting any Clickbank product – any affiliate product, really.

1. Opt-in forms and mailing lists.

A good merchant who tries to get visitors to sign up on his or her mailing list is a wonderful thing for an affiliate. It can also be a terrible thing. Some merchants use that list to place one of their own cookies on the customer if they buy due to clicking through a newsletter link, rather than crediting the affiliate who brought the person to the list. Most recent affiliate gets the sale when it goes through Clickbank, so this is an easy and tempting switch for someone to make.

This isn’t entirely unreasonable some ways, as the merchant made some extra effort to make the sale by providing more information to his or her list, but at the same time, without the affiliate, that customer wouldn’t have been on the list in the first place. You don’t want to lose customers to the merchant’s list.

Check for this by signing up for their list through your own affiliate link. You’ll find out what they’re saying to their list, and you can see if your affiliate link continues to be good during it. Some merchants even program their list to include your link in mailings, but so long as there’s no other affiliate link used, you should get the credit for any sales. It’s a good practice as an affiliate to go through as much of the merchant’s sales funnel as you can. You need to know what you’re promoting.

2. Merchant sells other products on the sales page.

Some merchants aren’t all that focused on selling their own product. They want to sell other products too, and do so right on the sales page. It doesn’t bother me if they do that later on, that’s their business, but if it interferes with the sales of their own product that you’re trying to generate, it’s a problem.

This problem may also include ad units such as AdSense on the page. Some merchants feel that they aren’t getting enough sales of their products, and so they slap up some AdSense or other ad units to improve their earnings on their pages. The problem is that this can decrease the sales of their own product tremendously, which decreases your commissions.

Sometimes they even have links which don’t help them to earn anything. While these may be useful

Take a look and see if the sales page is focused on the product you’d like to promote or not. Links to other websites, whether they earn for the merchant or not, are leaks for your earnings. You may do better with products that don’t have so many leaks.

3. Merchant takes payments through other processors as well as Clickbank.

It’s a nice idea for the merchant, not so good for you when they take payments through other processors. The problem, quite simply, is that you won’t get a commission through any system that doesn’t have you as an affiliate. Those sales are lost to you.

What Can You Do to Avoid Affiliate Page Leaks?

You do have options to avoid these kinds of leaks. You can ask the merchant to set up a special landing page without all these leaks, for example. It shouldn’t be that hard, and they can continue to use their leaky page for people who come through non-affiliate sources. If you have a proven track record as a promoter, you have some leverage to encourage this.

Now, just because you’ve checked the product you’re promoting and found a page without any leaks doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. You should recheck periodically, as pages do change over time. Sign up for the newsletter again to make sure your links are still going through during that process. Look over the page. Generally keep an eye on things, especially if your conversion rates suddenly drop.

You can also start your own mailing list by signing people up on your own site, and then referring them to products. This is a generally good practice in any case, as it gives you the chance to make still more sales.

You can link directly to the Clickbank checkout page if you like. It’s recommended that you check to see if the merchant minds if you do this at all, and definitely keep your sales page honest about the product. You’ll have a furious vendor as well as customers of that vendor who bought through your link if you aren’t providing utterly accurate information while linking to the checkout page.

The format for linking to the checkout page is:

http://prodnumber.affiliate_vendor.pay.clickbank.net

You can get the product number and vendor name by looking at the checkout link on the sales page. Prodnumber is often 1, but some vendors have multiple products, so be sure you have the right number. Affiliate is your Clickbank ID, and vendor is the vendor’s Clickbank ID. Make sure to test the link before using it live on your site so that you can see if it’s working. This method is somewhat unofficial, but some affiliates like it not only to bypass leaky pages, but poorly written sales pages for products they think are otherwise good. Just keep an eye on it, and make sure your link continues to work.

Clickbank released some new rules recently for vendors (and affiliates) to be more in line with FTC requirements. They’ve made minor changes to their rules before, with minor effects, but these may be more serious. Whether you’re a vendor on Clickbank, an affiliate with them or you just want to see an example of how careful one should be in promoting products, you should check out their new rules. These apply especially to those promoting products about making money online, but it matters in other niches too, especially in areas such as health. While the guidelines page title says vendor, it’s important to note that affiliates are expected to follow these rules as well:

Screenshot from the Clickbank site:

Here are some of the big points:

• Specific advertising claims must be from real examples and actual experiences, and must be something you can substantiate. No making up stories.
• You can’t infer that the product is significantly easier to use than it really is.
• Affiliates are not to pose as neutral third parties comparing products just to make a commission when one is sold.
• Vendors must include a script to all sales videos for Clickbank to consider during the approval process.
• No false scarcity. If you say there are only 300 copies available, Clickbank will monitor sales and halt them at that number.
• No more claiming a sale price if you haven’t sold the product at that price before.
• No more than 3 upsells and two exit offers in the sales flow, with clear “no thanks” links.
• No corporate logos on sales pages without documented permission to use said logos.
• Prices, including rebill prices, must be clearly presented.

All in all, it’s what I would call pretty good stuff. Current vendors have until August 31, 2011 to get in line with these new terms. I think the start of September may be very interesting. If Clickbank enforces these strictly, I think there will be a lot of devastated vendors and affiliates scrambling to cope as noncompliant products get taken down. Just now, when you go through the e-marketing and e-business section, most of the top products don’t look particularly compliant.

Enforcement is going to be interesting. The basic way Clickbank has handled things in the past, you set up your sales page and send them your product for review, they check it and if it all looks good, you’re in the marketplace. The only problem is that it’s very easy to change both the page and the product after approval.

Policing sites for such changes would be difficult, but certainly not impossible. Makes things more expensive for Clickbank, I would imagine.

The other option is to rely on complaints, which I suspect won’t be good enough for the FTC. That there’s a chronic problem with exaggerated claims and full on false statements in the make money online industry is well known.

I’ve seen some people bemoan the loss of the “wild west” atmosphere of online marketing. Some feel that the right to free speech includes the right to claim whatever you want when you sell something.

That hasn’t been true for a long time. The only reason people are so used to it on the internet is because the internet is so much harder to regulate. That doesn’t make it right when people tell desperate buyers that they can make thousands of dollars in just a few mouse clicks. Being able to back up the claims you make about your product has been the law for a very long time.

Honestly, I don’t expect these changes to make a big difference. I’d like them to, but there are more payment processors out there, and plenty are willing to take on products places such as Clickbank may not want anymore.

This is, naturally, all about protecting Clickbank as a business. They want to have something they can point to saying that a vendor not obeying FTC rules was breaking their Terms of Service. I don’t know if that will be enough, but with the FTC stepping up enforcement and credit card companies looking harder at who they’re allowing to process payments, Clickbank has to do something to protect themselves. I don’t think it will remove their liability, but it might help.

I have no doubt in my mind that the vendors used to making big money off heavily hyped products and misleading claims know how they’re going to handle these changes. I expect a change in tactics, not so much a change in their business as a whole. I firmly believe that “buyer beware” will continue to be a good thought to keep in mind when you seek out ways to earn money from home.

Of course, if this works out, it would be wonderful. No more “As Seen On” lists of logos that really mean the product has been advertised on sites such as Google. No more products claiming to have just 9 more copies left for months on end while claiming tremendous popularity. Maybe even more products in the Clickbank Marketplace that I can feel good about promoting. I won’t even touch most of them because I loathe the typical sales letter so.

I’m also wanting to know how this will be enforced on affiliates. Vendors aren’t the only ones who make these wild claims, and by current FTC rules, vendors are responsible for what affiliates do too. Could get interesting, especially since Clickbank vendors don’t have direct contact with affiliates unless they get the affiliates to sign up with them directly. It’s rather difficult to be responsible for affiliates when you don’t know who they are or what they’re doing. Could this start a wave of Clickbank bans of affiliates?

There has been a lot of chatter online about changes Clickbank is about to make for vendors. These changes sound really good to me, as many will impact the business opportunity offers that make outrageous claims.

Here’s a quick rundown of the changes. If you want to see the whole thing, it’s on this thread at Warrior Forum.

1. Don’t make major pitch page changes after product approval. Changes should be sent to Account Manager for approval.

2. Internet Marketing products need to follow FTC rules, such as not giving the impression that you can earn easy money with little work or imply earnings are guaranteed.

3. False scarcity is discouraged.

4. Sales pages that include Clickbank stats must be verified by Clickbank and have been earned by the method being promoted.

5. Videos that include a Buy Now link must also display the price of the product.

6. Products must be usable on their own. They cannot require an upsell to function. Customers must be able to download the product before dealing with upsell offers.

There’s a bit more, but those are the big ones, and very welcome in my opinion. Too many Clickbank products in the internet marketing niche go way beyond what I understand to be acceptable according to the FTC.

The big question is how well they will implement and enforce these changes. They’re pretty huge, considering how many products sold there are what I would call highly questionable. While I very rarely buy products, I hate seeing how many launches don’t make it clear what it is you’ll be doing and just say you’ll earn big money with no effort. Gives the entire industry a bad name. Some people do earn big money online, but it takes time and a whole lot of effort.

It’s not clear if this will also impact previously approved products or if this is just going forward. I’d like to see a lot of current products cleaned up.

Of course, Clickbank has made changes to the rules before to comply with the FTC, but that hasn’t stopped the problem, because either the rules weren’t strict enough or they weren’t enforced properly. We’ll see how things go this time.

I wasn’t at all surprised when I logged on to Clickbank last night to see that they have their new terms up requiring clients to agree to before logging in:

All communications and/or representations made by You in connection with any Promotions and/or in relation to any Product will be accurate and contain all disclosures and disclaimers necessary to prevent such Promotions from being false or deceptive. Such disclosures and disclaimers must be made in a clear and conspicuous manner, and will otherwise comply with Your country’s laws and all U.S. federal and state laws, including U.S. Federal Trade Commission regulations, policies and guidelines governing advertising, disclosure and consumer protection, including the FTCs endorsement rules.

And I think this part is new too, once again, no doubt so they can handle the new rules:

ClickBank reserves the right, but not the obligation, to review your Promotions. You agree that ClickBank, in its sole discretion and at any time, may demand changes to product promotion and delivery pages, customer support or other items related to the content of Your Promotions.

Then for vendors:

You will advise ClickBank of any regulatory or legal complaints, or threats of such complaints, that You receive in connection with or relation to such Product You receive from any person, company or entity who purchased such Product or received a Promotion in connection with such Product within two business days of Your receipt of such complaint. You shall assist ClickBank, at Your sole cost and expense, in taking any steps and actions, as necessary and appropriate, or as reasonably requested by ClickBank to respond to and/or resolve such complaints.

And there’s some stuff about indemnification, and that Clickbank doesn’t take responsibility for the stuff you do, as much as the law allows them to avoid it.

Really it’s all pretty sensible. Behave yourself, don’t make false, deceptive or exaggerated claims. Even if you had great results yourself, be careful about what you say. They’re liable, and they will do everything they can to protect their business. You’d do the same.

If you’re wondering what to do and what to worry about, Lynn Terry has some good posts on the new FTC Guides and on how to do FTC compliant endorsements and testimonials. There are also products steadily coming out on how to cope… naturally! When something this big impacts internet marketers of all stripes, there are going to be big product launches.

I haven’t bought anything so far. It’s hard to tell at this point what’s going to do the job. I really don’t have anything in particular to recommend at this time. You do at least need to read up on the materials that are out there free, right now.

The big point to remember is that right now the FTC wants to work with bloggers. Even if they find something wrong with your marketing, the current plan is to give you a chance to comply. Fines aren’t the first thing they’ll be doing, or so they say.