At last, ClickBank is offering recurring billing! Great news for both ClickBank affiliates and vendors.
If you are a vendor selling monthly memberships/subscriptions, you know the hassle of affiliate tracking and payments. Each month, you have to check your affiliate stats and manually pay your affiliates via your processor or write checks.
Now, you can delegate this task to ClickBank and use your time for more profitable tasks - e.g. marketing, jvs, creating new products, etc.
If you don’t have a ClickBank account yet, now is a great time to apply to be a ClickBank Vendor.
For ClickBank Affiliates, you can now earn residual income and be assured that you will get paid. (ClickBank has never missed a payment since they started operations)
If you have not seen the announcement yet, please login to your ClickBank account now.
Note #1:
For normal ClickBank products (i.e. non recurring billing products), the ClickBank fee is:
7.5% + $1.00
The fees remain the same if your recurring billing product is $40 or higher.
But if your recurring billing product is priced below $40, then the fee is just 9.9%
ClickBank won’t deduct $1.00 from the retail price if the product is priced below $40.
An example:
Let’s say your recurring billing product is priced at $40 per month.
New fee structure:
$40 x 9.9% = $3.96 … so, $40 - $3.96 = $36.04 <-- you get (a little bit) more.
Current fee structure:
$40 x (7.5% + $1.00) = $4.00 … so, $40 - 4.00 = $36.00 <-- you get less.
Remember, if your product is priced higher than $40, then the current fee structure applies.
Note #2:
Another thing to note is that the recurring billing product is not *forever*. During the beta tests, one can only specify a monthly rebill up to 24months. However, based on the feedback ClickBank receives from the beta-testers, they have now increased this to 99 times (i.e. initial purchase + 98 rebills)
This means you can offer recurring billing products up to 8.1 years. Shouldn’t be a problem for most of us. Plenty of time for ClickBank to offer *indefinite* rebilling. But even if it does not, you can simply create another recurring billing product for another 8.1 years.
If you have any comments or thoughts, I’d love to hear them.
Have a great day!
Best wishes,
Adrian
13 Comments
Finally, this is great news. However, I wouldn’t like to see my membership site closed down when Clickbank decides to shut down the recurring billing option for any reason they may find… or am I too negative here ;-)
Hi Dirk,
Yes, I do agree with you and I have also raised this question with ClickBank. During the beta tests, the duration is only 24months.
But they have since increased it 99 months.
8.1 years isn’t too bad - plenty of time for Clickbank to change to indefinite recurring billing until the customer decides to cancel.
Once all their vendors starts writing in about this, I’m quite sure Clickbank will review this again.
Cheers,
Adrian
Howdy,
This sounds pretty good. Are there any membership scripts that exist that will integrate with ClickBank?
Most of the scripts out there integrate with Authorizenet or PayPal, so it will be interesting to see who decides to offer support for ClickBank.
Hi Adrian,
That sure is interesting!
Their fees seem a bit high, but then again they’re handling the payments to the affiliates - so I guess it’s fair.
They mention that you can have up to 500 different products set up under one account? At present, the once off products are 50 - so how will you be able to add the recurring ones if your account is full? (know you’ll have the answer for this LOL)
Quick Q: Will ECM be able to handle the recurring products in the same account?
Also, your new product - Forum Ad Manager - is this an option that might be added to this?
Thanks for letting us know about this Adrian.
Kind regards
Mada
Hi Mada,
Yes, some folks feel that the fees are high, but if they see it as “hiring an affiliate manager” - to track and cut a check for the affiliates, then it is very, very reasonable :-)
As for the 500 product limit,
Clickbank’s system will automatically add more fields once you have reached the 50th product. Note that this 500 Clickbank product limit includes both standard and recurring billing products.
>Quick Q: Will ECM be able to >handle the recurring products >in the same account?
Yes, it should. The only difference between standard product and recurring product is that ClickBank will rebill the client for the specified duration.
As for Forum Ad Manager, well, I’m afraid it will only work with Paypal at this point in time.
Best wishes,
Adrian
Hi Brian,
From what I understand, any current membership scripts that works with Clickbank will continue to do so. The Clickbank purchase validation (cgi-validation), etc remains the same for both standard product and recurring product.
Although I have not used it, n example of such a script would be amember. It currently works with Clickbank, and *should* continue to do so. Best write to the author to confirm.
I have plans to develop one as well. If you have any particular requirements, drop me a note.
Thanks.
Adrian
Last time I checked directly with CB they didn’t have PayPal working - only credit cards - with recurring billing.
It that’s important to you then check with CB first.
Hi Peter,
Yes, that’s correct. At present, the recurring billing at ClickBank only uses credit cards.
Best wishes,
Adrian
Hi Adrian,
Have you heard any news about the yearly recurring that CB is working on? This is a very needed feature since you can offer discounts for a yearly committment.
Also, there are issues with customers changing credit card numbers after they have signed up.
I am also curious how the liberal refund policy works with recurring since the norm with CB is that you have around 60days to refund..so essentually the customer could get 2 months of free service and then refund.
Regarding Brian’s question…I am looking for membership software that supports Clickbank’s recurring system, however I am looking for something that can drip feed the customer so they only have access to current content and have to pay extra for past content.
I understand Easy Member Pro will have this ability with Clickbank…but they are only in early beta.
Thanks
Rod
Hi Rod,
Good to see you here. Sorry for the late reply - am currently on a short vacation with my family.
I’ll check the refund policy up for you.
Regarding your comment about the membership script, I’m currently working on a digital download script - not really a membership script, but it allows your customers to login to download their purchases. You can say a semi-membership script + download manager.
I’ve noted your requirements … will see what I can do.
Cheers,
Adrian
Hey, Ol Buddy.
Quick question regarding the WordPress Semiologic theme/Simple Machine Forum as a membership site, with ClickBank handling the recurring billing and affiliate program … is their a way to deactivate non paying members, automatically?
If I have to wait for the IPN … any idea how long before they are going to provide that option?
Thanks, my friend.
Mike Merz
Hi Mike,
Good to hear from you :-)
I’m not sure if they are going to provide any type of IPN, but I do know that they will email the vendor if the customer decides to cancel the recurring billing.
But if ClickBank ever decides to provide an IPN, you’ll be among the first to know about it.
Cheers
Adrian
clickbank now does have an IPN
https://www.clickbank.com/20080219_release_summary.html
Pretty freaking cool!
–Corey Lewis
http://easytechvideos.com
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