Problems with a Rich Jerk technique
The Rich Jerk E-Book is yet another guide to making money on the Internet. Whereas the guide does contain some good ideas, there are other ideas that are rather dubious.
One of the ideas given in the book is that you could promote ClickBank products by offering a reduced price for each product, giving the customer some “cash back.” How this is meant to work is as follows:
- Customer buys product through your affiliate link.
- Customer waits 60 days. After this time, they will not be able to get a refund from ClickBank.
- Customer presents you with the ClickBank order number.
You then check the details, and if you find the order amongst your records, you provide your purchaser with whatever payment you promised them. Simple as that!
Somebody has tried this approach to making money, and it has upset some vendors. I believe that the reason for this is simply that their prices are being undermined, and therefore they are getting competition from a corner they didn’t expect. This is especially the case for “natural” visitors, i.e. those who have come across the site and decide to buy the product without buying through an affiliate link. If they grant 50% commission and the person buying the product recognises that the product is sold by ClickBank and then goes through the rebate site to buy it, that vendor has lost 50%.
It’s even worse for other affiliates. The customer clicks through a perfectly acceptable AdWords ad, finds out the product is a ClickBank product, then goes to the rebate site. The original affiliate has lost out on all of the income that they would otherwise have got.
The account of the person offering the ClickBank rebate has been disabled. They claim they are going to fight it, but I don’t see exactly how they are going to do this. In my opinion, it has now been proved that this technique is unsuitable for generating affiliate income.
David Thomas, The Affiliate Marketer
