I found the earliest versions of ClickBank’s website starting in 1999 and traced it through the years up to what it looks like now.

Jan. 25, 1999

When I initially signed up with ClickBank this is what their website looked like.  Oddly, I still can recall the day I signed up and kind of remember the process even though it was over 14 years ago.  It’s amazing how much has changed since then.

Oct. 12, 1999

The first redesign had better navigation, and although basic, was very clear and organized.

May 10, 2000

This update was huge, check out the old ClickBank logo!  Even till today this is my favorite version, everything is organized and within one easy click from the home page.

Dec. 16, 2001

This design held steady for about 5 to 6 years with only slight variations, in this one you can see links were changed and the picture was reversed, I guess it looked better having the people face the other way.

Sept. 26, 2006

This was a big redesign and included ClickBank’s new and current logo.  Tabs were created, and there’s more description about what ClickBank does.

July 7, 2009

If you’ve used ClickBank for any number of years I’m sure you’ll recognize the version above.  This version also included the client payout counter in the right hand corner, which was probably my favorite element from all the website designs.

Feb. 16, 2013

This version seemed to be a temporary bridge to the new design that was later to come, mainly just a color change.

Current – May 10, 2013

ClickBank’s current website as it looks today.  Quite a big change from their beginnings right?  Which version is your favorite?  Let us know in the comments below.

This week’s episode features ClickScoop owner Miles Baker and contributor Dan Belknap discussing what’s new with ClickBank, where they think ClickBank is headed, and their personal backgrounds. Also discussed in this episode is the the future of ClickScoop Podcast and how YOU can get involved.

So what’s new with ClickBank? In this podcast you’ll learn about…

• New ClickBank CEO Matt Hulett replaces Bradley Wiskirchen
• New ClickBank.com website redesign
• The New ClickBank Powered Platform for Vendors
• The Risk Tier System

Also discussed is what you can expect from future ClickScoop Podcasts…

• Interviews & case studies
• ClickBank news and updates
• Money making strategies, what’s working, what’s not?

Resources & Sites mentioned in the show…

• AboutMilesBaker.com
• ClickBankExchange.com
• VeriPurchase.com

Remember you can tune into the podcast twice a month.  New episodes will be published every other Friday.

Subscribe to the ClickScoop Podcast…

• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe via RSS
• Subscribe via Miro

If you like this show please leave us a review on iTunes.  Have questions or feedback about the show?  Leave a comment below.

ClickBank’s new subscription-based service, ClickBank Powered, claims to provide all the tools ClickBank Vendors need to create a website, sell products, and develop a customer base. We tested out the ClickBank Powered Platform plan to see how the system works.

ClickBank Powered offers three separate plans: Platform, Insider, and Dedicated Advisor. Platform is the basic plan, while Insider and Dedicated Advisor offer additional support from ClickBank. The ClickBank Audience Builder Platform is a separate platform intended for ClickBank Affiliates.

Getting started

After logging into the ClickBank website, navigating to the ClickBank Powered Dashboard was easily accessed by clicking on the ‘CB Powered’ link in the top navigational menu.

The Getting Started Dashboard offers a clean, intuitive feel and presents users with step-by-step tasks to complete in order to launch your site page, create your first product, and generate recurring revenue.

Creating a website

The Dashboard homepage clearly lays out seven tasks you need to take in order to launch your site and provides simple ‘Do it here’ action links for users to click on. Users must complete all the tasks in order to launch their live site.

Five of the seven tasks are simply entering in details about your site, such as business name, address, legal fields, homepage content and about page. We found entering the information was pretty straightforward, as each task has its own field on the Business Details page.

Setting up our lead capture was also easy follow. With just a simple headline, text, button and media element (accepts image or YouTube video), we were able to quickly create a customer lead capture form:

As previously mentioned, a lead capture form is required for the home page of the site, which may be a turn-off for some users who aren’t interested in capturing customer information or would rather their home page be a sales page only.

The last task, adding a domain, is a step that might be complicated for some users.

There are two fields ‘Google Analytics Tracking’ and ‘Your Domain’.  You are required to have your own domain name and Google Analytics is optional.  Setting up your domain name with a CNAME and Google Analytics is a complicated process and there were no instructions on how to set these up.  However, we did find the instructions in ClickBank’s knowledgebase.

Once the seven tasks are completed, the site is ready to be launched and users can start creating their first product.

Creating your first Product

ClickBank Powered outlines three tasks to setup a product:

1. Create your first product
2. Set up your lead capture autoresponder
3. Make your first products live by getting your ClickBank Product approved.

ClickBank Powered simplifies the steps needed to add a product by using single Product entry form page. Users will need product details such as name, category, currency, and price.

In addition to product details, users will need to build a Deliverable Page where customers can access their product after the purchase.  The Deliverable Page consists of a title and optional rows for additional content.  There are multiple layout options for the Deliverable Page, which can also feature multiple types of components such as text, images, file uploads, embedded videos, testimonials and highlighted lists.

After completing the product details and deliverable page you can submit the product for ClickBank approval from the Products page by clicking the ‘Submit For Approval’ link next to the desired product, which will open a product approval request form. All products must be approved by ClickBank before they can be sold online.

Vendors also have the option set up their lead capture autoresponder using ClickBank Powered, which is a sequence of emails sent to prospective customers who entered their email into lead capture form on the site homepage, or customers who already purchased a product.

We found the autoresponder very limiting in that you could only send out one message a week for 3 weeks.  However, they did have a broadcast feature that will allow you to manually send out emails whenever you choose.

Generating Recurring Revenue

The final step listed in the Getting Started guidelines, ClickBank Powered presents vendors with three solutions for generating recurring revenue from customers beyond the sale of the first product:

1. Create your first back end product
2. Create your first subscription product
3. Set up your back end lead nurture

While these options can give vendors ideas for ways to generate recurring revenue, the solutions offer no step-by-step guides for doing so.

Summary

Once a vendor gets through the ClickBank Powered Getting Started steps they should be up-and running on ClickBank, complete with a site, product, and revenue streams. Now they can start to explore some of ClickBank Powered Platform’s other features.

Features

ClickBank Powered Platform includes a top menu toolbar offering vendors a variety of features:

• Dashboard –Getting Started steps to help vendors launch their site, product and revenue streams.
• Your Business – Business Details page where vendors can enter in site and business information.
• Articles – Article content system allows vendors to publish articles to their site to help generate traffic and engage visitors.
• Capture Leads – Customer name and email entry form allows vendors to capture visitor information from the site.
• Products – Add and manage the account products you wish to sell through ClickBank.
• Pitch Pages – Create sales pages for your products.
• E-mails – Compose and send emails or newsletters to current or prospective customers.  
• Tools – Manage contacts, create affiliate pages and edit site settings.

In addition, the Platform plan offers ClickBank customer support call center for the vendor’s customers. Click here for a complete list of features for each plan.

Conclusion

ClickBank Powered Platform successfully provides vendors all the tools they need in order to get started selling their ClickBank product online. Without the use of the ClickBank Powered Platform, it could take first-time or inexperienced vendors considerably more time and effort to accomplish similar tasks. However the ClickBank Powered Platform does come at a high price and lacks the substantial customization and flexibility options of a do-it-yourself plan. For vendors looking for a very basic and simple way to get started with ClickBank, the ClickBank Powered Platform may be a solution for them.

Matt Hulett, ClickBank CEO

ClickBank has appointed Matt Hulett to its executive leadership team as Chief Executive Officer, replacing Bradley Wiskirchen, who will continue to serve as Chairman of ClickBank.

Hulett, the former president of the gaming division at RealNetworks Inc., will focus on new growth strategies for the company in the digital publishing market. Hulett’s resume includes more than 23 years of experience in the tech industry and he will oversee 110 ClickBank employees.

“I’m thrilled to join an already strong team that’s delivering truly amazing online experiences to information entrepreneurs around the world,” said Hulett. “It is a privilege to lead this team through its next accelerated growth phase and beyond.”

Prior to leading the games division at RealNetworks, Hulett was the Executive Chairman and CEO of AdXpose Corporation. He was also President of the corporate travel division of Expedia, Inc., the world’s largest online travel company, where he launched the corporate travel business from an idea to a billion dollar worldwide leader in just a couple of years.

“Matt is well known and respected throughout the tech industry for his deep knowledge, management skills and broad expertise across diverse industries like entertainment, travel, consumer and enterprise software,” said Wiskirchen. “Under his leadership, we are looking forward to embarking on the rapid expansion of ClickBank.”

Read Hulett’s bio at www.clickbank.com/team.

Thanks to Andrew Ellestad for sharing this funny video of the ClickBank Team website. Are you feeling the Bank? We are!

From ClickBank on 2013-04-07

ClickBank will be performing maintenance to some systems on Thursday, March 7, 2013 at 10:00 AM PDT and concluding on Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 11:00 AM PDT. The brief outages that will occur and specific functionality that is impacted during this time frame are listed below. This maintenance will not affect hop links and customers will continue to be able to place orders.

Thursday, March 7
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT
Hoplinks and customer orders will continue to function. Partner Offers will not be available and Ads on the Login page and within the Marketplace will not display.

Monday, March 11
5:15 PM – 6:15 PM PDT
Hoplinks and customer orders will continue to function. All other applications will be unavailable.

Wednesday, March 13
5:15 PM – 6:15 PM PDT
Hoplinks and customer orders will continue to function. All other applications will be unavailable.

Thursday, March 14
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT
Hoplinks and customer orders will continue to function. Partner Offers will not be available and Ads on the Login page and within the Marketplace will not display.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to enhance your user experience.

The ClickBank Team

Source: ClickBank

ClickBank vendors are reportedly receiving emails from affiliates interested in forming a partnership with the vendor. According to the posts, the affiliate claims to be able to make a high volume of sales of the vendors product, reportedly as much as 200 or more sales per week.

The emails solicit vendors to pay the affiliate a commission amount for every sale that is made through the vendor’s website without the use of ClickBank’s traditional affiliate link known as a HopLink. Additionally, the email requests that commissions to be paid via PayPal rather than ClickBank’s own commission payment processing services.

A copy of the email originally posted on WarriorForum is shown below:

Hi (vendor name),

I have seen your ad on XXXXXXX and I am more than keen to work as an affiliate for the product, However I have one small special request to discuss. If you are ok with it we can start our JV right away.

Shall we discuss further?

Do you use skype?

We are aiming a 200+ sales per week .

Thank you!

Source: WarriorForum.com

If a vendor enters into a partnership with an affiliate under this scenario, it could be possible for the affiliate to use stolen or fraudulent credit card information to make the purchases.

By avoiding the use of ClickBank’s services, vendors could also potentially be at risk of paying additional refund fees for any fraudulent purchases that are made through the joint venture partnership, according to ClickBank’s Charged Back Sales policy.

Anyone receiving these types of message can report them by filling out this form on ClickBank’s website.

We reached out to ClickBank regarding the change and they confirmed they are split-testing the new page. Here’s what they had to say…

As you’ve noticed, we are currently split testing a new order form. This is something that we frequently do in an effort to continue to help improve order conversion rates for the products that vendors sell through ClickBank. Often, we’ll test elements of the order form and make incremental improvements. With this test, of course, we’re checking to see how a whole new layout of the order page performs. It’s still too early for conclusive results, but the performance is something we closely monitor–as always.

We also have an article in our Help Center that provides an overview of our order form split tests and the kinds of things we do:
http://www.clickbank.com/help/vendor-help/vendor-resources/order-form-split-testing/

UPDATE 2013-05-15: It appears ClickBank is testing with a LARGE 60 Day Money Back Guarantee Symbol (see screenshot below).

Check out the new order form below and share your opinion in the comments below.

New Image from 2013-05-15

“We realized our future was in helping even more infopreneurs start and create successful information businesses,” writes Eric Boles, ClickBank Director of Marketing, in a blog post about ClickBank’s new changes.

ClickBank users looking to sell their product in the ClickBank Marketplace will be presented with three different plans – Platform, Insider, and Dedicated Advisor – with different levels of functionality and pricing, ranging from $47 to $297 per month.

“It’s an all-in-one subscription-based offering that gives you everything you need to create, grow, optimize and run an information business,” states Boles. “Infopreneurs no longer have to cobble together a bunch of other tools just to begin selling their products through ClickBank.”

ClickBank still offers a free option to become a member through its ClickBank DIY, which features a more do-it-yourself approach to publishing a product on ClickBank.

ClickBank’s affiliate users looking to promote products are also presented with new Audience Builder package plan to assist them in starting, growing and optimizing their online businesses.

The Audience Builder includes website creation and blogging tools, email marketing, product ad creation and more. Priced at $27 per month, Audience Builder aims at offering affiliates everything they need to setup, host, design, and promote an affiliate website to sell ClickBank products.

Along with the new platforms, ClickBank completely overhauled its website from content to design.

“We wanted a whole new face for ClickBank that more effectively addresses the thousands of ‘everyday experts’ out there that can turn their know-how into an information business of their own,” writes Boles.

Much of the website’s functionality still remains the same, such as member account dashboards and tools. However the ClickBank Marketplace can now only be accessed by users with a ClickBank account, which is a significant change as the Marketplace was previously available to all users.

To help support their clients navigate and utilize the new platforms and website features, ClickBank also updated its online Knowledge Base for improved customer support.

“We’ve rolled out a new take on our Help Center to streamline support for our clients so they can quickly get the education and answers they need,” states Boles.

The transformational changes to ClickBank follow a recent series of updates to the ClickBank Marketplace as the company looks ahead.

“We’re even more excited about where our clients will now be able to take their own businesses–and ClickBank–in the future. With everything we’ve rolled out today, we think we’ll be able to help even more of them achieve success.”

Read our ClickBank Powered Review.

While some of the updates are meant to address the new platform, many of the changes reflect a shifting of accountability from ClickBank onto the individual clients.

Here’s a list of some changes ClickBank clients may want to be aware of…

Client Responsibility

If You register for a ClickBank account, You agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under Your account or password, if any, and You agree You will not sell, transfer or assign Your subscription or any subscriber rights.

Account Termination

ClickBank reserves the right to terminate Your account or otherwise deny You access in its sole discretion without notice and without liability.

ClickBank Services Liability

You acknowledge and agree that from time-to-time the ClickBank Services may be inaccessible or inoperable for reasons including, without limitation: (i) equipment malfunctions; (ii) periodic maintenance procedures or repairs that ClickBank may undertake from time to time; or (iii) causes beyond the reasonable control of ClickBank or that are reasonably unforeseeable by ClickBank, including, without limitation, interruption or failure of telecommunication or digital transmission links, hostile network attacks, network congestion or other failures.

No Guarantee of Validity

ClickBank does not endorse, approve, or certify any information provided on or through the ClickBank Services, nor does it guarantee the accuracy, completeness, efficacy, timeliness, or correct sequencing of such information.

Disclaimer

You assume all risk and responsibility for your decision to use the Clickbank services. The Clickbank services and all related services are offered “as is” and Clickbank disclaims any express or implied warranties including, without limitation, any warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Neither Clickbank nor its related parties and affiliates endorse or are responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any information, fact or opinion provided on or through the Clickbank services.