Clickbank Clarifies FTC-Compliant Policies
Over the past couple years, information marketers have come under greater scrutiny by the United States Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has taken several companies and individuals to task for deceptive Internet marketing practices.
As the largest seller of information products online, Clickbank.com is now issuing clearer guidelines for the types of products and/or marketing practices that will be more closely scrutinized going forward. In other words, they are going to be working harder to clean up some of the “less legitimate” offers that unfortunately litter their catalogue.
I received the following email from my primary contact at Clickbank on Friday…
Recently we’ve received a few client questions about issues affecting our industry, such as the FTC’s recent case against Ivy Capital and other “work from home” business opportunities. Specifically, some of you wanted to know how these issues might affect ClickBank vendors, and what we’re doing to address them.
First, please know that ClickBank appreciates the hard work and skill that our vendors put into developing quality products and effective sales messaging that appeals to customers. We want to do everything we can to support your efforts and ensure your products convert as well as possible, while also protecting you from the possibility of getting on the wrong side of the FTC.
We wanted to share some of the most important guidelines to keep in mind when creating your Pitch Page, upsells and other sales material. To ensure that ClickBank vendors stay in good standing with the FTC, we will apply these guidelines when approving new products and working with existing vendors.
Most importantly, please do not significantly alter your Pitch Page after approval. We recognize that some changes are necessary for testing, but if you need to make significant changes to your page (such as earnings claims or images, sales messaging or video content), please notify your Account Manager so we can ensure the new page is also in compliance.
For Internet Marketing products: Per the new FTC information, sales material shouldn’t create the impression that customers can easily earn money without putting in much work, and should give specific ideas of how they’ll earn the money (e.g., content marketing, video marketing, social media, etc). Sales pages should also not overstate how much can realistically be made, or imply that earnings are guaranteed.
The FTC also strongly discourages false urgency/scarcity messaging (for example, “Only 3 copies left!”) when there is no actual scarcity. Closing the doors to new customers after a specified amount of time and reopening later is fine.
Any Pitch Page references to ClickBank sales stats need to be verifiable by ClickBank, and need to have been earned by the methods being promoted. For example, selling an affiliate training product using sales snapshots from a vendor-only account is not allowed.
For vendors using video Pitch Pages, if a Buy Now button appears during the course of the video, the price must appear as well. We also request that vendors provide transcripts of video sales letters when submitting a product for approval.
For upsells, the initial product purchased must be valuable and usable on its own, without requiring the purchase of the upsell offers. Customers must also be able to immediately access their original purchase upon completion of their order, before being presented with upsell offers. An access link may be placed on the first upsell offer page, but the link must be very clear and conspicuous (i.e., not hidden or in a small font). We highly recommend that vendors use ClickBank’s official upsell flows to present upsell offers to customers.
Please submit product approval requests at least several days before your launch, so that ClickBank has time to thoroughly review the offer and request changes if necessary. This is especially the case for products with video sales letters, since making changes to these can take time. We may not be able to accommodate last-minute requests.
To prevent customer complaints, vendors should not close refund request tickets or switch tickets from Refund to Tech Support more than once, and the latter should only be used when actually trying to help the customer and save the sale.
We hope this list helps make our guidelines clear. If you have questions about any of these items, please feel free to ask your Account Manager and we’ll be happy to discuss them with you.
We also want to reinforce that our mission is to make you successful, while at the same time ensuring our industry is on a strong foundation that will last long into the future. Thank you for your valuable work, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with you!
This is BAD news for those who have been violating the boundaries of ethics and fleecing people. However, it is GREAT news for those of us who have maintained integrity in our products and marketing.
Based on these guidelines, there are no changes that my team needs to make to any of our marketing. And I believe Clickbank must now go through their catalogue and eliminate a good number of products that are not falling within the boundaries of these guidelines.
In other words, this is a great move for an industry greatly in need of reform. I applaud Clickbank for proactively taking steps to self-regulate so that the government doesn’t step in to legislate and take over. That would be bad for everyone.
Do these guidelines go far enough? Not really. There are more issues with the current state of information marketing. But hopefully weeding out some of the scammier products and strategies for marketing them is a step that will encourage others to do likewise.
What are your thoughts?
Internet Marketing slowly getting cleaned up.
Clickbank is the best place for this, since there are soo many crap products on there.
Who would think government would be where change would come haha
I think it’s great for all those people that have violating because they’ll be gone! Muhahaha!
Thank you Joel, I appreciate this.
Your readers might also like a Jim Edwards Interview with Mr. Rich Cleland, Assistant Deputy at The Federal Trade Commission about the changes & additions to FTC advertising guidelines as they apply to bloggers, affiliates, online advertisers and internet merchants.
Here is a direct link to it http://www.igottatellyou.com/blog/ftc-change-interview (Nov. 2009 yet still very relevant)
Plus, a great PDF (or Windows Media Player press conference) titled Operation Empty Promises Press Conference at http://htc-01.media.globix.net/COMP008760MOD1/ftc_web/FTCindex.html (March 2011)
Yes, I am super glad that Clickbank is moving on this, I was getting a little concerned with the type of sales pages that were beginning to show up, which discredits Clickbank & therefore all of us, over time.
Cheers,
Thea
I think it’s fantastic. I’ve bought more than my share of crap off clickbank… Going through one now as a matter of fact. It’s nice to see they’re making an attempt to get rid of the trash and keep only the good products. That should reduce the field to like 5 products 🙂
I applaud these changes. This is all for the good of Internet Marketing buyers and sellers. I myself hate it that before I could access my download page I have to keep clicking no thanks, give me my link that I already paid for.
Finally action to separate the chaff from the wheat, is this the end of camel nose marketing?
THANK GOD FOR THAT!!!!
This has been to long in coming but I very happy to see that this is finally happening.
I started hating anything and everything to do with Clickbank purely based on all the unethical type sales pages and dodgy marketing tactics.
Great post Joel – Thanks you!
There is lots of nonsense too amongst all the great products and services that are available on clickbank. Nice to see them weeding out some of the rubbish ones. Looking forward to see you speak at the traffic summit in London this week.
Found some excellent new ideas from your new adsense code book.
Thanks For Your Tips And Ideas
Sotiris Bassakaropoulos
It’s good to have a filter, because in the long run this would be bad for everyone.
Finally Clickbank take action. Great news 🙂
Hopefully they remove all those guys on clickbank stealing our affiliate commission with 302 redirects. Happened a few times in new niches
Finally a filter for the junk!
Never thought I would be rooting for the gubment, but YAY FTC. Every time I have a wander through ClickBank, looking for products for my blog, I am amazed at the sleeze. Hope they run a bulldozer through it to clean out the garbage.
This is only the beggining. The market is over loaded with work at home offers and msny (most) will be out of business in 5 years. The sad fact is that before the next decade ends government is going to be swamped with complaints of false promises and rip-offs by people who have been seriously hurt financially and lost many friends. The restrctions are going to be mind blowing. The government’s tough restrictions won after 13 year multi-million major court battles. An innovative idea kept company in business.But that idea will not work next time. So do your housecleaning if you are a company and select carefully if you are looking.
Joel-if this is too long cut here. But for many years I traveled the USA talking about how not to get hurt in a home based business.Copies of the EVALUATION CHECKLIST sent to TV and Radio audience requesters is now available free by e-mail. Write [email protected]
Thanks joel for this great info. I have wasted thousands of dollars on products that the Gurus claim will make you money. I hope new and younger generation will be protected by such scams.
Time to clean up and bring repute but to the industry.
Glad action is being taken. Hated the fact that there was seemingly endless clicks needed and upgrades being offers immediately after the one initial purchase…felt so scammie. Be good to tidy this up.
Just wanted to stop by and give you a shoutout Joel in saying keep up the good work in your Transformation and living healthy efforts! =)
Joel,
Thanks for posting that information from ClickBank. Long over due, as I like many who have replied here, have been burned over the years by products purchased through CB. I know they have thousands of products and how they are going to police this I don’t know but at least it is a step in the right direction. There are alternatives to CB of course but the bottom line is: if you are being honest and ethical in your online marketing efforts you will prosper in the long run. I quote: “Choose a good reputation over great riches, for being held in high esteem is better than having silver or gold.”
Hey Joel,
Good column, however we all have to remember that some of the onus should be placed on the consumer as well. People who seek out only the get rich quick and immediate gratification ‘schemes’ have no right to complain that something was not as good as it sounds. We all need to do our due diligence when considering any purchase.
It will be nice to see some of the garbage get filtered out, but the demand will always be there for lazy riches. The people in this industry that are in it to make legitimate money know that there is a time investment. The dreamers don’t last long.
It’s people’s inherent laziness that have made people rich for years, even before the net, prime example is Joe Carbo’s “Lazy man’s guide to riches” a simple 10$ book that had legitimate enough info and sold 4 million copies through the mail. I think he said it cost him .50 a book.
I guess my point is, fools and their money are easily parted…..no matter how much the government tries to help them.
It’s good that CB if finally taking these steps. However it is also sad that it took possible interaction from the FTC to get it to this point. People at CB had to know for years that these products would not make you 6 figures in 6 days, etc etc. Felt like they just turned a blind eye to it as long as they got their money.
CB is a great company and a help to all of us, I just wish they would have been more proactive in this and not let it go for so long.
It was about time but you knew that with time, this was going to happen. Ethical Internet marketing is a a really great form of marketing. Clickbank had to stop this because you can say its a form of fraud where people spams or lies to people in order to collect money.
Well it is about time that somebody does something about this because until now any person could sell any crap thing on the net. There must be more control and by doing this,people will be more willing to buy products online. Thanx Joel for the article.
A step in the right direction. Anytime a company in any industry recognizes that changes need to be made as to the nature of it’s business and takes corrective steps on their own knowing that there is a real chance of loss of income is to be commended not for the fact that they take that first step rather because it is the right thing to do.
Any insight into how I can remain compliant when I endorse a product in my blogs would be appreciated.
But? Guess you mean “Back” Right?