If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I’m a massive fan of clickbank as an Affiliate.
Well this week while browsing through my Twitter feed, I noticed they made the announcement that they are switching or at least incorporating a CPA network model into their platform:
I’ve always privately seen Clickbank as a CPA Network of sorts, due to the nature of the business.
If you’re unsure what CPA is, check out this blog post, but for now just be aware it stands for “Cost Per Action”.
Where a payment is made whenever a specific action is taken.
That action might be a sale/purchase.
When I promote a clickbank product and somebody buys that product with my affiliate link, I get paid a commission.
That’s pretty much CPA.
So what’s different?
Well, quite a bit actually.
From a Vendor point of view, Clickbank’s current model is a percentage based commisssion either at product level or funnel level.
With a true CPA model, this changes to what I call a “flat fee” commission model.
Meaning, if an affiliate sells one of your products, the vendor will pay the affiliate a flat fee, not a percentage.
Also, vendors don’t need to pay affiliates anything if the customer they refer buys any subsequent upsells.
That sucks! I hear you say..
But hear me out…
Because the commission is flat fee and even though the affiliate is only getting paid for the first product the customer buys, there are no refunds or commission clawbacks the referring affiliate has to worry about.
Once the affiliate makes the sale, he or she gets paid and if the customer later refunds, it won’t affect you as the affiliate, you keep your payout.
So it’s great for affiliates like us, but it can be pretty risky for the vendor.
But the trade-off is, the vendor could potentially make more money, due to CPA being a flat-fee commission model and the vendor keeps all the profits from any upsell sales.
My thoughts…
It’s a brave move from Clickbank to push this model, my own feelings is this is very early stage and is putting clickbanks current model on a completely different trajectory.
My eyes are firmly fixed on this one!
