Clickbank Customer Distribution Requirements

Clickbank CDR – Customer Distribution Requirements

Clickbank CDR is something many affiliates and vendors often know little about. Clickbank articles have become commonplace but there is still a lot of misinformation spread around about the Internet’s largest digital information product retailer.

I see a lot of newbie related questions and a fair amount of unsubstantiated claims along with the usual scam type accusations being thrown around. If you are new to Clickbank or thinking about signing up as an affiliate in an attempt to make some money I hope this hub will be helpful.

Let’s get something out of the way right at the outset. There are people who make a lot of money with Clickbank, but they are almost certainly in the minority of the 100,000 plus affiliates who have a Clickbank account. It is unlikely that you are going to become one of these “super affiliates” in your first month, despite all the products out there that claim they can do just that for you.

However, if you are looking to earn some extra income, Clickbank is just another affiliate network that can help you do it. As with most affiliate networks it costs nothing to sign up, but if you are going to earn any commissions you are going to have to do some work. This is where most people fall at the first hurdle. If you are starting from a position of zero knowledge of internet and affiliate marketing, you have a lot to learn and it is going to take time.

Having said that, I am going to address an issue that is extremely controversial and has caused a lot of nonsense to be written about Clickbank claiming that it is a scam etc. etc. These claims are often made by disgruntled people who are prone to signing up for anything and everything on the web without really understanding what they are doing and, 99% of the time never reading any site’s terms of service or conditions of participation. These are the people who click on the “OK” button every time and then cry when they fall foul of a site’s rules.

You will see the relevance of this shortly, I promise

I have also seen claims by Clickbank affiliates that they are being cheated out of commissions but it all seems to be based on the number of “hops” they are getting in relation to the number of sales/conversions. From this they deduce that someone must be robbing them??? Unfortunately, in my experience, conversion rates can vary so wildly on a given product and are dependent on so many other factors that it’s a shaky foundation to base such accusations against the affiliate network. However, I digress, so let’s move on to this controversial issue….

Clickbank’s Customer Distribution Requirement or CDR

Did you know that a large percentage of Clickbank affiliate accounts, supposedly around 90%, are
inactive? It is quite a shocking statistic if it is accurate. The main reason for
this high number of dormant or inactive accounts is something that few people know or even talk about. It is however a very important part of Clickbank’s terms of service and it often proves to be a killer for many
hopeful Clickbank affiliates.

If you manage to sell an item or two on Clickbank, hold the celebrations. Before getting paid you need to need to meet the Clickbank Customer Distribution Requirement. Here is what that means, taken directly from Clickbank’s site:

“In compliance with US law, ClickBank will withhold payment of any account balance until the following criteria
is met:
* Sales made with 5 or more different credit card numbers and
* Sales made with two different payment methods (either Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal). Note: PayPal
purchases do not count toward the minimum 5 different credit card numbers”.

That seems pretty clear. Most affiliate networks will require you to generate a minimum amount of commissions before you get paid but the Clickbank CDR specifically states that you must record sales from five different credit card accounts as well as sales from at least one other form of payment such as Paypal. (I find that a lot of my CB sales are through Paypal and credit cards lag a fair way behind). This in itself is not too bad if you can generate those initial sales, but the problems arise when you don’t and find your account marked as “dormant”. Basically here is what Clickbank say…

“Accounts
with a positive balance but no earnings for an extended period of time
are considered dormant. Dormant accounts are subject to a charge of $1
per pay period after 90 days of inactivity, $5 per pay period after 180
days of inactivity, and $15 per pay period after 365 days of inactivity”

This is the major cause of Clickbank affiliates losing heart and giving up. Many disgruntled people then sound off and complain bitterly of mistreatment by Clickbank. In short, they didn’t read the terms and fail to understand why those terms exist.

Clickbank are not perfect by any means. One of the other biggest complaints you will hear about them from both vendors and affiliates is that they stubbornly insist on allowing people to buy through their own affiliate link. Because of this policy, they came up with CDR, to prevent people from opening an affiliate account just to buy through their own link and pay a fraction of the product’s cost by earning commissions on each purchase.

So, you could say that CDR is a band-aid to fix a problem of the company’s own making.

Whatever your view, that’s the way it is for now so you have to work within those parameters. If you are suffering with a dormant account or think that you could well find yourself in the position at some point in time, you are going to need to make more sales, more quickly and that’s probably easier said than done of you are already struggling.

In an attempt to address the problem faced by so many, Harvey Segal, the author of many Clickbank ebooksand owner of a Clickbank dedicated site, the CBGuide, has come up with an ingenious answer. It is a short free report and you will not need to give out any personal information to get your copy.

I consider this an essential read for anyone working as a Clickbank affiliate or publisher/vendor. As with all of Harvey’s
offerings, it’s a very well thought out and executed product that will
genuinely help people to succeed with Clickbank. It also contains a very clever viral twist.

Download Your Copy of Clickbank For Newbies Here.

I am sure that when you have read the report you will see how it can change your Clickbank luck and help you and help you to help others. This is not another “make millions on Clickbank” publication, just a clever and simple way for struggling affiliates to get past the first hurdle and pick up their first check in the mail. Let’s face it, it’s a check you deserve if you have promoted products and made a handful of sales, and beats seeing your earnings steadily decline and dwindle away along with those aspirations and hopes of making some money online with Clickbank.

I certainly hope you will find it useful along with the other excellent resources I have listed below. These will give you further insights into affiliate marketing and Clickbank and are well worth a visit.

Now, go and earn those commissions and enjoy your first payment.