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Clickbank Killer on the Horizon?
Rumor has been milling on the various marketing-related forums that a long-needed competitor to Clickbank is soon to be launched to the public. At this point, not much information has been leaked, but from what it seems we could have a real big showdown on our hands coming up.
On the one hand we have Clickbank, the colossal giant in the digital marketplace, backed by thousands of affiliates and firmly entrenched into the status-quo of the online marketing community. On the other hand, we are looking at the new guy on the block, who stands to make inroads and long-needed improvements in what has become a stagnant market due to Clickbank's massive, monopoly-like presence.
Like many internet marketers, I've had something of a love-hate relationship with Clickbank. The first time I logged into a Clickbank account several years ago, I remember thinking, 'This is it'' It seemed too simple, like there was nothing to it. Frankly, the site was unimpressive in many ways. But what impressed me is the way that Clickbank became such a great vehicle for digital commerce.
Clickbank revolutionized the market of selling e-products online through one simple thing: the combination of an affiliate network with third-party payment processing. This made it so that affiliates could be credited the moment a sale was made ' which was beneficial to both the affiliate and the merchant. No longer would the affiliate have to trust that the merchant would pay out on sales that were being privately tracked and privately processed. And it made life a heck of a lot easier for a merchant who was just getting started to acquire both a captive affiliate base and a means to process credit cards all in one fell swoop.
Over the years however, people started getting more and more irritated with Clickbank's shortcomings, and started longing for more. But it seemed too difficult for a newcomer to break into the market ' Clickbank was just too dominant, it seemed.
If you're reading this, you are probably familiar with what Clickbank has to offer and why they've been so great to the online marketing community since they broke onto the scene several years ago. In this article, I am going to point out just a few of many possible improvements to Clickbank, many of which are being embraced by those who are poised to steal Clickbank's grown.
1. Recurring Billing
Recurring billing is when your customer signs up for a continuous service, and gets billed repeatedly on a regular basis (such as weekly, monthly, or yearly). This form of billing is very popular with membership-based websites as well as services such as web hosting or email hosting. To this day, Clickbank has not included the capability for this.
But why is recurring billing important' Very simply, because it allows a marketer to build a passive income that pays out month after month with no extra work. As long as you are promoting a good service where the customer will stay on for a significant period of time, you're building up a regular income that could last years into the future. Building a passive income is one of the most powerful ways an online marketer can build a great, low maintenance, business online.
Some merchant processors (such as 2checkout or Paypal) do support recurring billing options, but they lack one key ingredient: they don't support affiliate programs. This is why the addition of recurring billing to a Clickbank-style system would be so revolutionary for the sale of e-products online. It would allow not only merchants to begin building a passive income, but also for them to provide the opportunity for affiliates to earn a passive income with virtually no upfront costs or cash-flow concerns. It's truly something that I look forward to. But there's one thing that could make things even better:
2. Two-tier Affiliate Support
Two tier affiliate support is when affiliates can recruit more affiliates under them, and earn a percentage of their income. A typical two tier affiliate program for an e-product might pay out 50% on the first level and 10% on the second level.
Two tier support is important because it allows the merchant to provide all of his affiliates with an additional income opportunity in finding more affiliates to join his program. This is essentially giving affiliates an incentive to grow the affiliate program, and thus it automates growth. It allows the program to organically grow by word of mouth, ......
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