Clickbank FUCK with screenshots.
- Thread starter shab6969
- Start date
carrepairs12
BANNED
- Jun 7, 2009
- 326
- 236
well its witten in black and white, should not be a big surprise
Dormant Accounts
Accounts with a positive balance but no earnings for an extended period of time are considered dormant. Dormant accounts are subject to a charge of $1 per pay period after 90 days of no earnings, $5 per pay period after 180 days of no earnings, and $50 per pay period after 365 days of no earnings.
Dormant Accounts
Accounts with a positive balance but no earnings for an extended period of time are considered dormant. Dormant accounts are subject to a charge of $1 per pay period after 90 days of no earnings, $5 per pay period after 180 days of no earnings, and $50 per pay period after 365 days of no earnings.
brent360
Junior Member
- Feb 16, 2011
- 102
- 256
It's their business model. Many companies implement the same sort of thing in a different way. It's this or they aren't able to do what they do.
tacopalypse
Senior Member
- Nov 30, 2009
- 935
- 2,533
does clickbank suck for charging $10/month on dormant accounts,
or does the affiliate suck for making 0 sales in an entire year?
maybe both?
or does the affiliate suck for making 0 sales in an entire year?
maybe both?
Mokodoki
Regular Member
- Feb 26, 2011
- 225
- 356
I use CB and, while I'm not a $500/day person yet, I don't know what people really expect here. CB isn't your personal bank and they have several pay thresholds that you can choose from. There's no reason to leave money in your account unattended for that long.
The limits seem pretty lenient to me. Even with me JUST starting affiliate marketing using them, I have never had my account in dormant status. 90 days before they start deducting anything--3 months without making a sale! If you're going that long without doing anything, you probably are dead in the water anyhow.
Autumn
Elite Member
- Nov 18, 2010
- 2,197
- 3,073
I use CB and, while I'm not a $500/day person yet, I don't know what people really expect here. CB isn't your personal bank and they have several pay thresholds that you can choose from. There's no reason to leave money in your account unattended for that long.
The limits seem pretty lenient to me. Even with me JUST starting affiliate marketing using them, I have never had my account in dormant status. 90 days before they start deducting anything--3 months without making a sale! If you're going that long without doing anything, you probably are dead in the water anyhow.
Grasshopper, if you're working with only a handful of programs it's easy to keep track of where you're owed money and who owes you what. While I think the OP may have been foolish for letting their account run down like that, personally I have sites actively sending traffic to 150+ affiliate programs (adult and mainstream) and keeping track of accounts can be a complete fucking nightmare. It requires the services of a trusted book keeper several times a month. The traffic can't be consolidated because many of the programs offer unique products.
That's just me and a few outsourcers, and you'll find that with operations that are much larger and more professional than mine that sometimes missing payments and missed thresholds won't be noticed for months, whilst traffic in particular niches comes and goes with the fluctuations of the serps. This is kind of like that situation and Clickbank is taking advantage of that in a way that literally no other affiliate program does.
It doesn't actually cost CB anything to hold your money - in fact, you're giving your cash to them interest free in the same way that you do with a Paypal balance. While it may be listed as a liability on their balance sheet, it's still cash they have to use (and eventually pilfer from you) in the mean time.
So, while CB might have a few good products for odd niches, in other ways they suck balls. Much like how Paypal fills a need, but it basically sucks balls as well.
ShadeDream
BANNED
- Nov 27, 2008
- 2,296
- 5,536
Geez! When will people learn to read?
Clickbank is not taking advantage, if you're not using them because you can't get yourself organized, then that's your fault. 90 days without a sale is a long time, and there's no reason whatsoever to hold your money on a CB account for that long, unless you're not really using them in which case it's your fault.
While I think the OP may have been foolish for letting their account run down like that, personally I have sites actively sending traffic to 150+ affiliate programs (adult and mainstream) and keeping track of accounts can be a complete fucking nightmare. It requires the services of a trusted book keeper several times a month. The traffic can't be consolidated because many of the programs offer unique products.
That's just me and a few outsourcers, and you'll find that with operations that are much larger and more professional than mine that sometimes missing payments and missed thresholds won't be noticed for months, whilst traffic in particular niches comes and goes with the fluctuations of the serps. This is kind of like that situation and Clickbank is taking advantage of that in a way that literally no other affiliate program does.
It doesn't actually cost CB anything to hold your money - in fact, you're giving your cash to them interest free in the same way that you do with a Paypal balance. While it may be listed as a liability on their balance sheet, it's still cash they have to use (and eventually pilfer from you) in the mean time.
So, while CB might have a few good products for odd niches, in other ways they suck balls. Much like how Paypal fills a need, but it basically sucks balls as well.
Clickbank is not taking advantage, if you're not using them because you can't get yourself organized, then that's your fault. 90 days without a sale is a long time, and there's no reason whatsoever to hold your money on a CB account for that long, unless you're not really using them in which case it's your fault.
Autumn
Elite Member
- Nov 18, 2010
- 2,197
- 3,073
Did I say I wasn't using them? I get a healthy direct deposit from CB every week although they're not one of my main earners (mainly because 95% of CB tours fucking suck and CB is way too liberal with refunds). But just because a person might not send many sales to a program, that doesn't mean the program should steadily eat up the person's revenue.
It's totally non-standard practice in the affiliate world. In adult (the original home of affiliate marketing) for example, the standard payout is $25-35 a sale and the standard payout threshold is $50-100. It's not uncommon for people who only send occasional sales to a particular program to sit below threshold for months before they get another sale to tip them over the payout threshold. It's especially common with obscure microniche sites where there's not much traffic to go around in total, and an individual webmaster who spreads his traffic over a wide variety of niches may only have a trickle going to that sponsor.
The long tail strategy dictates that you promote large numbers of products in large numbers of markets simultaneously. You can't be making $1000 a week in every single niche.
I have sites promoting specific casino programs that may only get a few sales a year, but each of those signups is worth $200+. Sending volume to lower numbers of merchants is not necessarily the best or even a desirable strategy.
And there is no good reason for CB to take funds out of your account! If you've ever looked at an affiliate back end (eg. NATS) there is precisely zero administrative overhead to having people with unpaid funds in their account.
Is what CB is doing legal within their TOS? Yes. Should the OP have caught on to this earlier and set his payout threshold lower? Yes. Is this shitty money grubbing behaviour on CB's part that no other affiliate program partakes in? Yes. Do people have a right to complain on message boards about something they don't like? Yes!
ShadeDream
BANNED
- Nov 27, 2008
- 2,296
- 5,536