Now, I’m not one to complain too often about how companies do business, because I understand a lot of their issues and why they do things. But in this case, Clickbank, the affiliate company, is simply stealing my money, and that makes me very angry.
I’ve been both an affiliate for Clickbank as well as a publisher, and granted, I’ve not got the hang of how to do this kind of thing yet. But listen to this.
I signed up with Clickbank, and have been promoting affiliate products for a while now. Because I’m admittedly not very good at this, I’ve not gotten many sales. The few I did get came early on, but I haven’t gotten in a while. Now, of course almost every company has some minimum amount you have to earn before they do a payout, and as a sidenote, there’s no good reason for that considering you can send any amount to Paypal accounts with not much difference in cost. The reason they hang on to your money in their bank account is to generate and capitalize on the interest. It’s the long tail of savings accounts if you want to think of it that way.
Now, that’s fine, whatever. I don’t care too much about that. But this morning I went to check my stats and instead of finding $0 income, which I’m used to now, I find the past 4 days have $1.00 charges on them. WTF?
So, I emailed Clickbank this quick message, inquiring why the charges:
I have 4 -$1.00 charges on my account. Why are you taking away my money?
Relatively simple, I thought. Here was Clickbank’s response:
Thanks for your inquiry. It looks like your account is receiving dormant fees. Our dormant policy is:
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 inactivity, $5 per pay period after 180 days of inactivity, and $15 per pay period after 365 days of inactivity.
For further information, please review our accounting policy at: http://www.clickbank.com/accounting.html.
Kind regards,
ClickBank Accounting
Um…..
So, let me get this straight. Not only will you keep the interest on the money I earned originally, you’ll CHARGE ME for not making any more money? OMG! (and I don’t use that acronym lightly)!
I promptly replied with:
Well then just pay me what I’m owed and I’ll cancel the account. That’s ridiculous.
… let’s see if I ever get the money I made from them. What do you think?
On another note, if you still like ‘em, maybe you could use these suggestions to help stop clickbank refunds.
Posted by nate
Update: They replied with this:
And I replied with:
Posted by Brad
Man, that sucks!
Posted by Wes Mahler
Wow, there really going to charge you for a somewhat inactive account, that is really bad business imho. Don’t they make enough money, that is a bad policy, someone crazy must have though that up to Charge accounts for not making enough money. Good Call I’d close it too, that is unacceptable. Sure makes you want to promote them more. *sarcastic*
Posted by nate
Yea, exactly. I’m still waiting for reply on the 8 days, but since I’m still new to the game, I have no trouble quitting a program and moving somewhere else. There’s always another game in town.
Posted by kay
What makes this worse is that clickbank will NOT pay you any commissions earned until you have met their 5-card rule. To get paid, no matter how much you’ve earned, you must have purchasers using 5 different credit cards, which must include mastercard and visa. The requirement was originally three, then four – and now it’s five cards.
This wasn’t a big problem until clickbank began accepting paypal – but the rule stayed in place and paypal purchases don’t count toward the requirement.
It’s true that affiliate companies may have minimums they pay out but other companies are dollar minimums such as $50 or $25. Paypal’s requirement is ridiculous when you consider that while they are refusing to pay you, they will also start siphoning off your commissions.
If you have sales and haven’t met the 5 card requirement – give some money to relatives/friends and have them make a cheap purchase with their credit card.
Posted by Kyle
ClickBank Is A Thief!!!
Posted by Justin VerBurg
It sounds very suspicious to me as well. These days, even well-established companies, who you think you should be able to trust, have deceptive ways of getting more money than they’re entitled to. All in an effort to keep Wall Street happy… (-:
Posted by jen
omg that sucks they probly know that not many people will make over $100 that sucks thats wrong
Posted by benjy
What is the alternative to Clickbank?
I’ve heard paydotcom stinks. I need to check out commissionjunction and regnow.
There’s a lot of bad press out there on these Clickbank jokers.
My story: I wrote a little book, put it on clickbank 2 years ago.
I sold a copy for $37, and did a little dance…
and then nothing happened for months. no sales nothing.
I finally go look at my account and it’s all gone due to these fees and others–every penny.
I mean, I take it as a learning fee, tuition in the school–but my first infoproduct sale, which I created from thin air–and I never got compensated one bit–that just stinks.
Now, I sold another copy – yes, 2 books in 2 years, a very slow start…
I’m not going to stick around to see how this one ends…!
Posted by Frank
They truly are thieves. Can’t any legal action be taken? Anyone up for a class action lawsuit?
Posted by nate
I wish there was a lawsuit. I just don’t think there could be because of the agreement we agree to when we start promoting their products. When we agree, there’s not much we can say about it unless it’s illegal. *shrug*
Posted by Chris
I disagree with the whole charging accounts. It’s just retarded.
One thing that annoys me is the holding of money. I understand that they need to hold 10% in case of refunds. I get that. the problem is that when they release that 10% into a check, they take an additional 10% of the new total. That means you technically can never get all your money out of the account. There’s always going to be 10% taken and there will be a point where there is some left in the account.
Now since they created a way of doing things that makes it impossible for you to get all the money out, I’m pretty sure that is illegal.
Posted by raj
That dormant account thing is just ridiculous..Are we a slave to keep earning you money? Mr. clickbank.. and if not you take money from our account? Idk how people are still using clickbank even after they openly taking money from people’s accounts. Not only people are getting incredibly ridiculous, i think big companies are getting greedier by the day. The only way to stop this f*ckers is to stop accepting MONEY as payment. We should go back to “barter system” and without taxes.
People from now on if anyone gives you money for your service or product, refuse to accept it. THIS WILL BRING THEM DOWN!
Posted by Paul Simister
I was caught by this stupid Clickbank rule and immediately closed my account.
Having been caught I refuse to waste my time selling any Clickbank products and I have been very successful in some of the bigger Internet launches.
Their loss but I recommend that anyone wanting to sell through affiliates avoids Clickbank. Why waste your time if you won’t get paid?
Posted by Maurice
It is my understanding that the policy was introduced to prevent people from buying products through their own links and collecting commissions without really selling anything as an affiliate.
It might have been better to just prevent affiliates from buying through their own link which has always struck me as a rather stupid policy.
CDR is a thorn in the side of more affiliates than you might think, but once you’re past it you don’t have to worry about it again.
However, those who are working with Clickbank and struggling with CDR but still wishing to continue might be interested in one solution that can be very effective in getting you the required 5 credit card purchases.
You can read it online here
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5168605/Clickbank-For-Newbies
Hope this will help some people rather than make them just give up, because Clickbank can be pretty lucrative.
Posted by staglo
I find them disturbing and to me is PURE FRAUD.
I have stopped promoting thier products, cos I hate cheating.
Lets face you can receive 0.01 via paypal , so if you made that sale then get paid.
And so , if you buy a product throgh your link, did it ever register it might be your company expenses?
Never promote thier products its a waste of time
Posted by John Paul
They took my money too. I made over $50 from a sales. I could not get the money out because they have a requirement that you must have sales where buyers pay with different cards. Since I had only one buyer who paid with one credit card, I could not get my money out. I was not happy with that because I did some advertisement to generate the sales and I figured that what I earned was mine. Months later they took all of my money because my account was dormant.
Posted by Christopher Hardin
I am not sure where you guys are from but i am from the United States in the good old state of Georgia. I made a heck of an income from them but for some odd reason I did not meet there CDR. Then after about 6 months of me trying to get paid I all of a sudden logged in and my account was empty. Not even what I had left nothing not a penny. I think I was down to a couple hundred.
Well here in Georgia TOS means nothing. I can sign into any contract I want. Yet it means nothing. They still have to abide by the law no matter what they sneak in or try to say. What they did was not only Steal from me but also stole from the vendor as well. As they took money out to pay me from his account yet never did so. So they stole money from 2 different people.
So not sure what country you guys are from but here in the USofA theft is illegal. It is kinda like signing a contract that they can have my first born in terms of they pay me for my sales. That contract would not hold up in court and neither would this ridiculous pyramid scheme they have now.
the point of the matter is this. Most people who has been flambuzled by CB are usually the lower end of the scale and do not have a lot of money and they did not lose that much money. So most people write it off. No one has actually really went after them in the court of law before.