I’ve used Clickbank to sell digital products for 10 years. In that time I have seen other competitors, such as eJunkie.com and PayLaodz.com arrive and give Clickbank a run for its (digital) money. What disappoints me about Clickbank is that its failure to address its weakness and improve product designs that would make it a truly remarkable product.

With a little tweaking, Clickbank could be in the industry standard for selling digital products.

So, if anyone from Clickbank is listening here are five areas you could improve.

1. Digital Delivery

When you buy a product on Clickbank, it sends you to a download page on the customer’s site where you save the file. This has a few problems.

1. This web-page can be bookmarked and sent to others, who can then download the product.

2. This webpage must be created by the seller for every product. Time is money and this takes a lot of time.

3. This download page must be available 24*7. So, if your hosting company goes down, your customers cannot download their product.

As far as I know, Clickbank is the only leading e-tailer that uses this (old-fashioned) system.

What’s the alternative?

When you buy with Payloadz.com, the customer is sent an email with a link to the download. This removes the need/time to create unique web-pages for each product ala Clickbank.

Ghacks.net also takes up this point, “take a look at their requirements for pages, or better thank you pages that sell Clickbank products.”

It points out that the “requirement is that a thank you page has to be created on the website that is selling the product which will be displayed after the purchase has been made. Many Clickbank webmasters put download information of their products on this page to make it as easy as possible for their customers to download the product once the purchase has been made.”

Ghacks.net adds some tips on securing the pages. Most Clickbank Thank You pages contain the following or a similar sentence:

‘Please Note: Your credit card will be billed by “CLKBANK*COM”. The name “CLKBANK*COM”will appear on your credit card statement.’

Searching for ‘clkbank right click’ reveals hundreds of product pages that offer the product as a download after making the purchase.

Read more here http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/22/clickbank-we-have-a-problem/

Going back to Payloadz.com, it also means that the delivery is quicker.

The customer is not sent from

1) your site to

2) Clickbank and then

3) back to your site.

Also, the customer gets 5 attempts to download the product with Payloadz e.g. http://store.payloadz.com/detail_html.asp?Id=196478 and then the link expires.

Does Payloadz.com work?

I have used Payloadz.com since April. Not one complaint. Read that again. Not one complaint.

Why use Clickbank?

I still use Clickbank as I have designed the whole site around it and to change the code would take weeks.

Sadly, every morning I get emails from customers saying they didn’t get the product, the link doesn’t work, where is the link…

Over the course of a week, this takes several hours of customer support to address, which is proving to be very time-consuming and expensive.

Next week, I’ll discuss another area where Clickbank can improve – hoplinks!

Let me know what you think.

PS: my shop on Payloadz.com is here: http://store.payloadz.com/results/results.asp?m=33579

Ivan

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ivanwalsh

I’ve used Clickbank to sell digital products for 10 years. In that time I have seen other competitors, such as eJunkie.com and PayLaodz.com arrive and give Clickbank a run for its (digital) money. What disappoints me about Clickbank is that its failure to address its weakness and improve product designs that would make it a truly remarkable product.

With a little tweaking, Clickbank could be in the industry standard for selling digital products.

So, if anyone from Clickbank is listening here are five areas you could improve.

1. Digital Delivery

When you buy a product on Clickbank, it sends you to a download page on the customer’s site where you save the file. This has a few problems.

1. This web-page can be bookmarked and sent to others, who can then download the product.

2. This webpage must be created by the seller for every product. Time is money and this takes a lot of time.

3. This download page must be available 24*7. So, if your hosting company goes down, your customers cannot download their product.

As far as I know, Clickbank is the only leading e-tailer that uses this (old-fashioned) system.

What’s the alternative?

When you buy with Payloadz.com, the customer is sent an email with a link to the download. This removes the need/time to create unique web-pages for each product ala Clickbank.

Ghacks.net also takes up this point, “take a look at their requirements for pages, or better thank you pages that sell Clickbank products.”

It points out that the “requirement is that a thank you page has to be created on the website that is selling the product which will be displayed after the purchase has been made. Many Clickbank webmasters put download information of their products on this page to make it as easy as possible for their customers to download the product once the purchase has been made.”

Ghacks.net adds some tips on securing the pages. Most Clickbank Thank You pages contain the following or a similar sentence:

‘Please Note: Your credit card will be billed by “CLKBANK*COM”. The name “CLKBANK*COM”will appear on your credit card statement.’

Searching for ‘clkbank right click’ reveals hundreds of product pages that offer the product as a download after making the purchase.

Read more here http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/22/clickbank-we-have-a-problem/

Going back to Payloadz.com, it also means that the delivery is quicker.

The customer is not sent from

1) your site to

2) Clickbank and then

3) back to your site.

Also, the customer gets 5 attempts to download the product with Payloadz e.g. http://store.payloadz.com/detail_html.asp?Id=196478 and then the link expires.

Does Payloadz.com work?

I have used Payloadz.com since April. Not one complaint. Read that again. Not one complaint.

Why use Clickbank?

I still use Clickbank as I have designed the whole site around it and to change the code would take weeks.

Sadly, every morning I get emails from customers saying they didn’t get the product, the link doesn’t work, where is the link…

Over the course of a week, this takes several hours of customer support to address, which is proving to be very time-consuming and expensive.

Next week, I’ll discuss another area where Clickbank can improve – hoplinks!

Let me know what you think.

PS: my shop on Payloadz.com is here: http://store.payloadz.com/results/results.asp?m=33579

Ivan

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ivanwalsh

I use PayLoadz.com to sell digital products, such as Word and Excel templates. I also use Clickbank, which is in some ways simpler to use but not as feature rich as PayLoadz.com. To give an example of what I mean, here are some features to consider if you’re thinking about selling digital goods, such as MP3, ebook or audio files.

FYI: You can check them out over here (http://www.klariti.com/shop/).

1. Product Key and Serial Delivery
As some merchants may have enabled a registration system on their products, in order for their product to work, a specially generated code has to be entered someplace after the customer has downloaded the file.

You can do this in PayLoadz.com by going to the Product Key and Serial Delivery or Software Registration System, then the Product Detail page for any item in your account.

Once there, click on the link under the “Software Registration System” section.

Note: PayLoadz.com do not provide support for the actual creation of a registration system for your product. It only enables the delivery of keys to your customer.

If you already have a registration system in place for your product, then you can use our system to send keys to customers after they have paid for your item. The Software Registration System can be accessed from the product detail page.

CD Delivery System

PayLoadz can now deliver tangible, shipped CDs to customers for sellers using our service. It is rolling out the system in a limited trial basis to start. Currently, only single item purchases are able to be delivered via CD.

This lets customers buy a CD copy of your product that is shipped to them separately from the download. A fee is charged to the customer for each CD sold.

Selling MediaFire.com Files

You must have an account in Media Fire (http://www.mediafire.com/) as well as PayLoadz if you have both accounts then you can use these step as follow.

3rd Party Tracking Code

PayLoadz.com lets you enter tracking codes from other systems in order to track sale completions.

Some uses for this are:

• 3rd Party Affiliate Systems
• Google AdWords Conversions
• Google Analytics
• Yahoo! Ad Conversion Tracking
• AdBrite Conversion Tracking
• Other sales tracking programs

It is fairly simple to enable tracking for one or more of these services in your PayLoadz account.

Go to the Download Page Text field found in your PayLoadz Profile to copy and paste in the code obtained from the 3rd party website. Visit the following address to access your PayLoadz Profile after logging in: https://www.payloadz.com/account/profile.asp

To wrap things up, here is a list of their key features:

• Unlimited Number of Products. Sell more. Earn more.
• Secure File Storage on our Servers
• Automated File Delivery
• Digital Auctions on eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon
• Product Import via Spreadsheet
• Detailed Tracking and Sales Statistics
• Google AdWords Conversion Tracking
• Protected File Storage On Our Servers
• Affiliate Builder System (Affiliate System)
• Product Key Delivery and Registration System
• Transaction Log Export
• Support for currencies (US$, C$, Euro, Pound Sterling, AU$, Yen)
• PayPal Micropayment Support
• Google Checkout payment system

Read more at: https://www.payloadz.com/account/acct_levels.asp

Ivan Walsh is a technology writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Learn how to save time, make money and develop digital products.

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