Clickbank Killer On The Horizon?
By Joe Lloyd, Sat Dec 10th

Rumor has been milling on the various marketing-related forumsthat a long-needed competitor to Clickbank is soon to belaunched to the public. At this point, not much information hasbeen leaked, but from what it seems we could have a real bigshowdown on our hands coming up.

On the one hand we have Clickbank, the colossal giant in thedigital marketplace, backed by thousands of affiliates andfirmly entrenched into the status-quo of the online marketingcommunity. On the other hand, we are looking at the new guy onthe block, who stands to make inroads and long-neededimprovements in what has become a stagnant market due toClickbank’s massive, monopoly-like presence.

Like many internet marketers, I’ve had something of a love-haterelationship with Clickbank. The first time I logged into aClickbank account several years ago, I remember thinking, “Thisis it?” It seemed too simple, like there was nothing to it.Frankly, the site was unimpressive in many ways. But whatimpressed me is the way that Clickbank became such a greatvehicle for digital commerce.

Clickbank revolutionized the market of selling e-products onlinethrough one simple thing: the combination of an affiliatenetwork with third-party payment processing. This made it sothat affiliates could be credited the moment a sale was made –which was beneficial to both the affiliate and the merchant. Nolonger would the affiliate have to trust that the merchant wouldpay out on sales that were being privately tracked and privatelyprocessed. And it made life a heck of a lot easier for amerchant who was just getting started to acquire both a captiveaffiliate base and a means to process credit cards all in onefell swoop.

Over the years however, people started getting more and moreirritated with Clickbank’s shortcomings, and started longing formore. But it seemed too difficult for a newcomer to break intothe market – Clickbank was just too dominant, it seemed.

If you’re reading this, you are probably familiar with whatClickbank has to offer and why they’ve been so great to theonline marketing community since they broke onto the sceneseveral years ago. In this article, I am going to point out justa few of many possible improvements to Clickbank, many of whichare being embraced by those who are poised to steal Clickbank’sgrown.

1. Recurring Billing

Recurring is when your customer signs up for acontinuous service, and gets billed repeatedly on a regularbasis (such as weekly, monthly, or yearly). This form of billingis very popular with membership-based websites as well asservices such as web hosting or email hosting. To this day,Clickbank has not included the capability for this.

But why is recurring important? Very simply, because itallows a marketer to build a passive income that pays out monthafter month with no extra work. As long as you are promoting agood service where the customer will stay on for a significantperiod of time, you’re building up a regular income that couldlast years into the future. Building a passive income is one ofthe most powerful ways an online marketer can build a great, lowmaintenance, business online.

Some merchant processors (such as 2checkout or Paypal) dosupport recurring options, but they lack one keyingredient: they don’t support affiliate programs. This is whythe addition of recurring to a Clickbank-style systemwould be so revolutionary for the sale of e-products online. Itwould allow not only merchants to begin building a passiveincome, but also for them to provide the opportunity



foraffiliates to earn a passive income with virtually no upfrontcosts or cash-flow concerns. It’s truly something that I lookforward to. But there’s one thing that could make things evenbetter:

2. Two-tier Affiliate Support

Two tier affiliate support is when affiliates can recruit moreaffiliates under them, and earn a percentage of their income. Atypical two tier affiliate program for an e-product might payout 50% on the first level and 10% on the second level.

Two tier support is important because it allows the merchant toprovide all of his affiliates with an additional incomeopportunity in finding more affiliates to join his program. Thisis essentially giving affiliates an incentive to grow theaffiliate program, and thus it automates growth. It allows theprogram to organically grow by word of mouth, with every singleperson involved having an incentive to get more people involved.

Combine two tier support with recurring support and wenow have a recipe for a passive income that automatically growseach month! Of course this is all predicated on the fact thatyou must have a good product that is worth buying and keeping.Without that, this whole model will just fall apart because thesales will not be there to fuel the growth and sustain the ship.

3. More Payment Options

Any marketer knows that the more options you give a customer topay, the more likely he is to be able to pay. This is especiallytrue online. Credit cards are very prevalent in the UnitedStates, but as we begin to look toward the world stage inmarketing and selling our products and services online, we mustface the reality that not everybody has a credit card, nor doeseverybody want to use their credit card online.

Fortunately, there are a whole host of other payment systemsavailable to people around the world, that aren’t plagued withthe problems and drawbacks of credit cards (which in my opinionare actually a pretty outdated way of conducting business). Icould write a whole article about alternate payment systems (andperhaps I will), but for now I’ll say this: anyone who wants tosteal Clickbank’s throne needs to add more payment options otherthan credit cards. These could include: Paypal (and similar),e-gold (and similar), mobile phone payments, mailed-in moneyorders, and countless others.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about how merchantsand affiliates receive their payment. In Clickbank’s currentincarnation, the only way to receive payment for sales oraffiliate commissions is by a check in U.S. dollars drawn on aU.S. bank, and mailed by regular mail. Talk about an inefficientand antiquated system! A Clickbank replacement needs to be ableto pay US publishers by ACH (automatic deposit into bankaccounts) such as Commission Junction has been doing for quitesome time, and be able to pay foreign publishers bywire-transfer. Alternatively, payment by digital gold currencysuch as e-gold would also be welcomed and useful to many.

Of course there are many things that need to be done in order tocreate a better digital marketplace for e-product marketers andpublishers. I feel that the three things outlined in thisarticle would make a huge difference towards making e-productpublishing a larger market worldwide, while at the same timeproviding opportunity to even more people.

These are the kind of changes we need to see more of as we moveinto a more global, and best of all, more profitable futureonline.

About the author: Joe Davison has been quietly making a living online for oversix years, and is the owner of Profit Guild,http://www.profitguild.com, an information hub and community forInternet Marketing professionals.

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