I now own 2 scripts from 2 different authors to handle automatic delivery of Clickbank bonuses – this is something I hope to be able to handle in a radically different manner in the future, but for now, this is something I want to be able to automate with something off-the-shelf.

I paid for both of them – I don’t intend to ask for a refund on either.

If you have seen marketing “gurus” suggesting that you send them an email to get a bonus, or submit a support ticket, then they obviously haven’t got their processes 100% sorted out.

Historically bonus automation was only possible by parsing sales tickets or somehow scraping data from the Clickbank interface. These days Clickbank have an API which can push data to an end point, though I believe it can only handle a single end point, thus you may end up using lots of Clickbank accounts for different things.

Clickbank List Automator

The first script we are going to look at is Clickbank List Automator from Adrian Ling.

Adrian is a well known Clickbank expert, is heavily involved with the Clickbank Success Forums, and has been publishing Clickbank tools for years (since 2002), including his ever popular EasyClickMate

I have seen EasyClickMate used for a number of large launches, to great success and Clickbank List Automator is a similar tool – solid, reliable, and you know that if it goes wrong there is support available.

In time, I expect this product to grow in features, who knows if it will keep pace. It will always be a solid workhorse.

Clickbank Bonus Domination

This is a product that just launched – I didn’t purchase the previous incarnation, and I have only just purchased the script, so I haven’t had time to play around with it.

I didn’t even plan to buy it, I was just monitoring the launch to see if there were any key features that I might have overlooked, as I was quite impressed with Adrian’s script, and didn’t expect anything better.

Clickbank Bonus Domination has some very interesting features.

First of all you have to realise that this is a much larger package deal, and the presentation is superb. They have actually been running a pre-launch for a week or so with free videos which were informative, but the presentation of the sales page was actually what convinced me to purchase.

There is a great “customize your order page” before being sent to Clickbank with some tempting offers – I did buy the upsell.

One of the primary reasons to buy the upsell was the “Qualified Buyers” module, that allows you to offer a bonus to historical customers and get them on a buyers list. It is something you can do manually.

I did experience one problem with ordering – I am sure I ordered the “Premium Plus” version that will only be available during launch, with all the bonuses. For some reason after purchase I am only listed as having a “Standard” package. I will probably have to file a support ticket to solve that, but I am sure there will be no problem.

There is one negative… upgrades – based upon one of the upsells (yes there are some additional offers), this isn’t a product you will receive unlimited upgrades for life. It wasn’t very clear whether the upgrade in some way would offer incremental upgrades so you could remain on the cutting edge, plus I must admit I felt it was a little pricey, though that probably makes it a lot more exclusive, and thus gives a greater competitive edge.

In fact there is another negative – during prelaunch… another Twitter script asking for passwords and creating a leak really didn’t leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Not Just For Launches

Whilst the primary focus of this kind of script might be for big product launches, to get an “edge” over your competing affiliates and add additional value… and then automate it, in many ways these concepts are more powerful.

• Googlecash – if you send PPC trafic directly to a sales page, you don’t get an email address, especially if someone buys unless you grab the data manually from Clickbank – labour intensive. With this system on all your Clickbank campaigns you can immediately offer a bonus at the time of purchase, even if unadvertised, and get confirmed buyers on your list (preferally a seperate list).
• Advertsing Units – There are tons of Clickbank based advertising solutions, some mimic Adsense, others have images, or there are also keyword based tools that create text links. Those links are very rarely pushed as part of a special promotion, so you probably wouldn’t be able to easily add the buyers to a list. With these scripts you can.

If you do this manually, there is a delay in the emails, and the longer the delay, the more risk it might look like what you are doing is spam. If your bonus comes to them at the same time, or possibly even before a notification from Clickbank, Paypal or the vendor, you are in the driving seat, able to offer complimentary products, get them on a list etc.

There is still another paradigm shift that can (hopefully will) occur with this kind of system, but for now this is something that if you use Clickbank as an affiliate, you really have to be using.

So which one? On the surface Clickbank Bonus Domination looks like the better deal – more features (especially if you grab the upsell) and the training looks to be top notch – lots of videos.

I almost wrote about Clickbank List Automator a couple of weeks ago when I picked it up, but I already knew Clickbank Bonus Domination 2 was on its way.

Also don’t forget with bonuses Clickbank have lots of special rules, don’t get your account burnt by offering cashback, spam, non-FTC compliance (disclosure?) or not stating who is liable for the bonus delivery.

If I get time I will try to get a more hands-on review published of both, but I have an “epic” SEO post lined up for tomorrow. It is huge, and will have a massive impact on your SEO results.

Clickbank are one of the largest affiliate organizations in the world, but news from Clickbank often took a long time to filter out of the organization, often only through people with inside connections such as Harvey Segal at the Clickbank Forum.
Also being a private company they have never been obligated to provide financial details in public, so press releases and news isn’t in any way a legal obligation compared to public companies.

The first substantial post, other than an initial welcome message is by Clickbank CTO Monty Sooter who delves into some of the new features coming in the future.

• More internationalization
• Client to client communications
• A new publisher referral program
• Extension of electronic payments to our clients

The last point is already coming to fruition. Adrian Ling (author of easyClickmate) seems to have been the first with the news of Clickbank XACH support for users outside the US

Adrian has also published full instructions on the information you have to provide to Clickbank

XACH is available for the following countries now

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Mexico
• The Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom

One massive caveat that Rosalind discovered is that Clickbank direct deposits must be made in local currency, so if you are in the UK, you would get deposits in GBP. You couldn’t get payment to a USD account even if it is a UK bank account.

For people in the US this might not be a significant change, but for smaller publishers who didn’t meet the requirements of Clickbank’s Wire Transfer service and didn’t want to pay a $35 fee for each transfer, this is a major change.

In the past I have avoided promoting Clickbank products because of the hoops I have to jump through to cash checks. Endorsing cheques (yes I do know how to spell it the English way too) when you live in a different country to your bank is a pain, plus I normally have cheques posted to my UK address.

The XACH service apparently is free and they use bank rates of exchange – That makes Clickbank quite attractive for a payment processor and affiliate management system for international publishers – no worries about tax paperwork for your affiliate army.

You might think you receive your money with PayPal faster, but that is not always so clear for those living outside the US. It takes 5-7 days to withdraw money from PayPal, so Clickbank works out only a little slower.
For an affiliate promoting many affiliate products that are paid through PayPal, the merchant may only make payments at the end of each month, and I have personally experienced payment delays of up to 3 months.

Clickbank does hang on to a rolling percentage of what is withdrawn, but if you are actively promoting Clickbank products, that isn’t a major problem – I don’t think it is too much of a burden for merchants either.

Last year I had one good friend contact me for advice on Paypal – it was more for moral support than anything else – they had something like $50,000 frozen by Paypal and still had to meet affiliate obligations – something like that can destroy a business – and this was a situation which had been going on for over 6 months.

A lot of the bigger internet marketers now use merchant accounts and pay their affiliates by check – I really don’t like checks.

Why am I linking through to someone else promoting a product?

• Allan has used the software and give far more depth to the product than I could
• You can learn a lot from reading his newsletter even if you don’t buy anything
• He is one of the few internet marketers who practices what he preaches. The newsletter also confirms what I have been saying regarding the Clickbank rules for bonuses.

AssociatePrograms.com is a great resource to nose around and I used to spend a fair amount of time on the forums. I also have a few products listed in their affiliate directory… as an affiliate ;) – that is quite within their rules and is great for 2-tier programs

I am not sure how long this has been in the rules at Clickbank, as Clickbank currently block archive.org – that being said I am sure it would have been brought up by someone during the last few months in discussions regarding various paid review services such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews.

The A-List bloggers concentrated their attacks on the paid reviews services because it made good headlines, and most missed the much more serious implications for affiliate marketing.

Clickbank isn’t a small startup company looking to carve a niche – their daily sales turnover is probably higher than the funding received by any of the paid posts companies. It is only possible to estimate their sales figures, because they are a privately held company. They claim 20,000 sales per day on their website, and typical prices of their digital products are $47 to $67 each, with many of the top sellers costing $77 to $97.
In the past I have asked Clickbank directly for more accurate figures, but as is their privilege that was declined.

As an example, the current top selling ebook launched 6th February, Day Job Killer, an ebook that provides tactics for affiliate marketers using Adwords PPC to drive traffic to various affiliate merchants such as Amazon and Ebay has sold more than 5000 copies in the first 24hrs of release, with a $77+tax price tag, thats $385,000 in sales which many Web2.0 statups can’t achieve in advertising revenue in one month.

A large chunk of that revenue will go to affiliate partners, but that will easily be recouped by backend sales. As an example this is the 3rd Ebook published by the same authors, and I am sure many of the 5000 sales recorded were direct sales by the authors to their private mailing list.

I am not a lawyer, and this blog article is purely a discussion topic for your own amusement and does not represent legal advise.

Here is the specific clause from the Clickbank Rules:-

If you promote products listed by ClickBank, then:

* You agree to make no such promotions that suggest or imply any warranty or other policy that might conflict with ClickBank’s eight week return policy.
* You agree to make no such promotions that involve unlicensed use of materials protected by copyright or trademark law.
* You agree that you will not engage in activities that interfere with our tracking of commissions, or with the normal flow of traffic from affiliates.
* You agree that all such promotions will be fully compliant with federal and state laws, including US federal and state laws regarding network abuse, unsolicited messaging, and FTC Advertising Rules and Disclosure Rules.
* You agree to make no such promotions promising customers rebates, coupons, tickets, or vouchers in connection with their ClickBank purchase.

I have bolded the first line and 2 sections, and I will deal with the second section first

Offering Bonuses for Clickbank Products

The wording is clearly aimed at monetary bonuses as we expected the clarification in Clickbank rules from back in November to contain. Many Clickbank affiliates are still offering cash incentives as this advert for Day Job Killer grabbed yesterday confirms.

I have also received many emails offering cash rebates. With those who I trust and have business dealings with in the past, I just sent a friendly note. It is not like Clickbank send out email notifications of rule changes. In fact the rules changes don’t even make it to their internal news system.

Clickbank and Disclosure

I don’t remember seeing the statement regarding disclosure within the Clickbank Terms of Service when I was last reading them in November.
Whenever Google change their policy statements, everyone knows about it, and discusses it. When they change their Terms of Service, you normally have to agree to the changes, and there is normally word for word analysis by many sites.

The above clauses are clearly intended for affiliates, because the opening line is “If you promote products listed by ClickBank“.

The FTC Disclosure Rules don’t mention the word affiliate, but they frequently mention advertising. I am clear in my own mind that the rules cover both placement adverts, and various forms of word of mouth advertising.

For an Affiliate Marketer, I am fairly open about disclosure. I have a disclosure policy, and there is a link to my disclosure policy with my feed items, both in the form of a custom footer in my posts and RSS feed(Disclosure Policy Plugin for WordPress), and as a Feedburner Feed Flare. Those are my own developed solutions for affiliate disclosure as an alternative to adding (aff) after affiliate links, which might not have meaning to a casual reader.

As I pointed out in my fairly neutral review of Day Job Killer, it is important to conform to all the rules, and some of the techniques in Day Job Killer would be less successful if you plastered “I am trying to sell you something” all over a squeeze page.
I offered a bonus for Day Job Killer, but none are cash equivalents.

Duncan Riley’s research into one of the endorsements on the Day Job Killer sales page is also intriguing. There is also the possibility it is a real person, or a real testimonial with a made up pen name.

I just read a Squidoo Lens promoting Day Job Killer written by a Tax Attorney – it is a shame he is breaking Clickbank’s rules on disclosure, not a disclosure in sight.

It is interesting that Clickbank now require disclosure, and Google effectively prevent disclosure for their referral units.

I would be very interested in the opinion of some more legal experts such as Brian @ Copyblogger or Mike Young

I am not a lawyer, thus any interpretation of the situation I am going to leave in the hands of lawyers who I have a great deal of respect for, and who themselves are involved in the internet marketing field.

First of all the “opinion” from the FTC (PDF LINK)

For some reason I read Darren’s post today before Brian’s (who is a lawyer) – there is some interesting discussion in both threads.

I then read Dr. Tony Hung’s opinion (he is a Dr of medicine) but the opinions are very valid.

Mike Young is a lawyer, specializing in internet law and wrote about this topic yesterday on the Copywriters Blog, his internet law blog, and there is further discussion on the copywriters board.

Other mentions I haven’t fully digested yet

FTC May Regulate Pay Per Post @ Techcrunch – The Techcrunch post targets Pay Per Post, which in my opinion is actually totally missing out on the much target picture. It also affects many of the companies Techcrunch cover who use affiliate programs for monetization.
FTC tells PayPerPost to knock it off at Matthew Ingram – Matthew does mention affiliate marketing, thus why target PPP with this. This affects Google more than PPP.

This affects Amazon, Google, Ebay, Clickbank, Commission Junction, Linkshare and a host of other billion dollar companies that allow affiliates to link directly through to a particular product or service.

For WordPress users, the perfect solution is my Disclosure Policy Plugin.

Discussion on forums is just that… talk. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is Clickbank’s opinion, and rules on this subject. Thus Harvey Segal decided to approach Clickbank for an official statement.

A few minutes ago Harvey made the following post in a thread on his Clickbank Success Forum.

Official

Affiliates may offer bonuses that are not cash or cash equivalents if
they adhere to the following:

1) Affiliate must state clearly and prominently that the bonus offer is
not the responsibility of ClickBank or of the seller of the primary
product.

2) Affiliate must state clearly and prominently that ClickBank will not
honor any refund requests that are based on non- delivery, quality, or
functionality of the bonus materials.

3) Affiliate must provide their own direct contact information (email
address, etc.) and state clearly that any issues regarding bonus
delivery, bonus functionality, or bonus quality must be addressed with
the affiliate, not with ClickBank or the seller.

ClickBank Note:

It is not posted on the website yet, but our security team will be
using this policy from here on out unless we experience any additional
problems from affiliate bonuses.

Obviously this post has been made by Harvey, and not directly by Clickbank, but it is my belief it originated from Clickbank themselves. There is a chance the wording might change before it appears within the Clickbank rules or on their “news” pages within the Clickbank site.
I suggest people make some changes to their affiliate landing pages pronto. I am not sure how this will affect people using Affiliate Project X tactics. My own gut feeling is being honest with customer is generally better, and if you suggest you are placing the disclaimer to follow Clickbank rules, it might even help conversions just because customers might gain some sense of additional trust that there are rules for the way you are offering bonuses.
The tactics of projectx are very valid, and are becoming increasingly popular, and might even be increasing sales and conversion rates for Clickbank products. There is always a good reason why rules are changed for the better, and I applaud both Harvey’s efforts to get a straight answer, and Clickbank for giving one that is workable.