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Using ClickBank to Sell Your Ebooks

ClickBank enjoys a very good reputation in the third-party processor industry. It's the processor of choice for a huge number of websites involved in the ebooks business.

The reason for this is that they specialize in offering their service to those that deliver products via download from the Internet which is exactly what you'll be doing.

With ClickBank you'll be able to accept payment on your site with all the major credit-cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Eurocard, Visa-Debit, MasterCard-Debit, and Novus.

However, what makes ClickBank particularly interesting is the fact that they'll also run an affiliate program for your product.

An overview of ClickBank's main features

• ClickBank enables real-time sales of your digital goods or services. Your customers will be able to order your e-book from your website using Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Eurocard, Visa-Debit, MasterCard-Debit, or Novus credit-cards.

• ClickBank enables you to accept payment with electronic checks as well as credit-cards (US customers only). An online check is a completely electronic transaction. Customers authorize payments to be automatically withdrawn from their valid U.S. checking account. The same transaction fee applies to check payments as to credit-card payments.

• ClickBank provides international fraud screening using ccScan^®. This means excellent security for both you and your customers.

• ClickBank handles all customer billing, billing inquiries, and bank inquiries which takes a huge amount of work off your hands.

• ClickBank has no sales caps, so there's no limit to the amount of sales you can make.

• On the website it says that they can process payments up to $50. Generally, however, payments up to $100 are no problem. You just need to contact them to arrange this. Selling goods for more than $100 each is possible, but can be more difficult to set up.

• With ClickBank there are no monthly fees, no monthly minimums, and no leases.

• The ClickBank service is available to merchants from around the world.

• To begin selling online using the ClickBank service you simply place a special order link on your web page. They'll verify that your site corresponds to their criteria. Once this is done they'll activate your account. The entire process is typically completed in 24 hours or less.

• ClickBank will take care of refund requests for you (i.e. when one of your customers asks for his/her money back). There's no cost to you or your customer for issuing a refund. Typically your request to issue a refund will be fulfilled by ClickBank 24 hours. The entire value of the sale will be credited back to your customer's account within about 10 days.

• When a sale has been completed ClickBank will send an e-mail to you and to your customer containing details of the sale.

• Thanks to efforts on their part to reduce the risk of chargebacks happening, ClickBank has a chargeback rate of less 1% (see jargon).

• The ClickBank service is certified by the Better Business Bureau

• ClickBank has excellent support. In my experience, questions sent to ClickBank via e-mail are answered both quickly and thoroughly. They'll also work closely with you if you're having any difficulty getting your sales link(s) set up.
  
• By using ClickBank as your payment processor, you automatically become part of one of the biggest affiliate program networks on the Internet. You can have other webmasters promoting your products in return for a commission.

The ClickBank affiliate network

An affiliate program is a means for one website to financially reward another website for sending them visitors or customers.

By putting an affiliate program on your website you're effectively employing an army of webmasters to send you customers. It offers a great opportunity to get other websites talking about you and linking to you. Best of all, it doesn't cost you anything unless you make a sale.

Normally, to set up an affiliate program, you need to employ the services of a third-party affiliate network provider or buy software specially made for the purpose.

However, by using ClickBank to process your online payments, you need neither of these things.

ClickBank have built an affiliate network into their payment solution. Once you subscribe to use their payment system you are automatically included in their affiliate network, which is known as the ClickBank MarketPlace.

Some details on ClickBank's MarketPlace

The ClickBank MarketPlace plays host to a massive 100,000 webmasters all of whom are on the lookout for new products to promote from their website. This puts serious selling power in your hands without any additional effort on your part.

These 100,000 webmasters can browse through the products in the ClickBank MarketPlace. If they like your product they can decide to feature it on their website, or newsletter, or e-book or whatever.

To do this they simply create a ClickBank 'hoplink' to your website. Hoplinks are the hyperlinks used by ClickBank affiliates to link to your site. It's these hoplinks that enable ClickBank to keep track of which affiliates send which customers to which merchants.

Once your visitors click on one of these hoplinks, they're taken to your website. If they decide to buy your product (immediately or within 90 days of the first visit) the webmasters who sent those visitors will earn commission on any sales.

ClickBank also takes care of paying your affiliates their commissions. They'll even give you the link to place on your own website to automatically enroll visitors to your program.

In short, they'll run your entire affiliate program for you.

The amount of commission to be paid for each referral is decided by you. The minimum is 5% and the maximum is 50%. The commission is a percentage of your net earnings on the sale.

So, let's say you're selling your book for $30. And let's say you're paying a 40% commission to webmasters who send you customers. ClickBank's charge for completing the payment comes to $3.25 ($1 + 7.5%). That leaves your net earnings on the sale at $26.75. Now the commission to the referring webmaster will be subtracted from this amount. That's 40% of $26.75 which makes $10.70. This $10.70 will be paid automatically by ClickBank to the referring webmaster and you'll receive the remaining sum of $16.05 for the sale.

ClickBank details

Setup
ClickBank has a one-off activation fee of $49.95.

Per transaction fee
ClickBank charges $1 plus 7.5% of the transaction value for each sale you make.

If you're selling your e-book for $30, ClickBank will keep $3.25 ($1 + 7.5% of $30). The remaining $26.75 will be paid to your account. With this type of payment structure, your e-commerce system only costs you money when you make a sale.

Reserve
ClickBank keeps a reserve of 10% for 3 months (see jargon).

If you're selling your e-book for $30, this means that ClickBank will keep a reserve of $3 on every sale. After the first three months have elapsed, you'll receive the reserve that was withheld the first month together with your pay check for that period. The following month you'll receive the reserve that was withheld the second month. And so on.

Chargeback fee
$15.00 chargeback fee for each chargeback processed (see jargon).

Pay periods
ClickBank's pay periods end at 12:00 a.m. on the 1st and 16th of each month. Checks are mailed within 15 days after the end of the period. Checks over $5000 are sent by Priority Mail (for US clients) or Global Priority Mail (for non-US clients) at ClickBank's expense.

In your account you can select $5, $25, $100, $250, $500, $1000 or $2500 for your payment preference. They'll hold your check until your payable balance reaches this amount. The default setting is $100. You are free to change it at any time. They deduct a $2.50 accounting fee from each check they issue.

Signing up with ClickBank

Setting up with ClickBank is very simplistic. Simply fill in the sign-up form on their website and set up the details of your product.

You'll be given instructions on placing the sales link on your sales page. You can place this link on one page, on several pages, in your e-book, in your e-mail messages, and so on.

Once someone from ClickBank has checked your site to ensure that everything is set up correctly, you're ready to start selling.

Ready to start?
Click here now to visit ClickBank's website

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