What You Need To Know About Clickbank And FTC Policies - 6 minutes read
Many of you have probably already noticed - ClickBank, the world's largest marketplace for digital products, is really taking off in Germany.
And that is definitely to be welcomed, as Clickbank opens up unprecedented opportunities for us internet marketers in the German-speaking region.
With Clickbank, both providers of digital products and affiliates have many advantages from a single source. Because Clickbank is a partner network, partner program and payment provider at the same time. At Clickbank, everyone can post their own digital products and have hundreds of affiliates advertise them at the same time.
If you want to know more about Clickbank and want to know why Clickbank enriches the market for digital information products immensely, I recommend that you request the free email course from ClickBank professional Shawn Josiah.
He has worked intensively with Clickbank in the past months and can give you a lot of helpful tips for starting with Clickbank.
Despite all the advantages that Clickbank offers, there are also some special features that are not apparent at first glance. In this article, I want to share a personal Clickbank experience that can save you a lot of time and hassle.
It's about the guidelines of the American Federal Trade Commission, or FTC for short.
What is the Federal Trade Commission?
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC, German for “Federal Trade Commission”) is an independent federal agency of the United States.
It is responsible for merger control and consumer protection. It acts on direct complaints from consumers or companies against individual companies.
The agency's mission is generally described as dealing with unfair and deceptive practices to ensure the functioning of a competitive market. Here it goes beyond the tasks of a competition authority in that it also carries out consumer protection tasks.
Although American jurisdiction does not actually affect us directly, these regulations also apply in this country, because Clickbank is an American company.
Important note: I am not a lawyer and therefore cannot give you any legally secure tips. This is all about my own experience with Clickbank and I want to help you avoid the mistakes I made myself.
Here is my concrete example:
I have just created a sales text for a friend from Germany. He sells an eBook on the subject of “more parental allowance”. After some consultation, he decided to sell the e-book through Clickbank because it simply offers a lot of advantages.
After I wrote the sales text and created the sales page, he submitted both to Clickbank for review. Because Clickbank checks every product before it is included.
He then received the following email from ClickBank:
Due to some changes to the Federal Trade Commission guidelines, vendors are no longer allowed to make statements regarding specific amounts of money that customers could make using a vendor's services. As a vendor, you may make statements about quantities you have earned, but you may not indicate or suggest that customers will see the same results.
Because the product could be bought anywhere, and because ClickBank is in America, you have to follow the FTC rules. That means: ClickBank does not allow the sales text for an eBook to contain information about possible earning opportunities!
In this case, I wrote that with the tips in the e-book "More Parental Allowance" you can get up to 15,000 euros more parental allowance. This is absolutely true, but it reflects the maximum amount that can be achieved.
I have expressly pointed this out in the sales text. As this information does not correspond to the average value that everyone can achieve, the sales text from Clickbank was rejected.
Which meant for me that I had to completely rework the parts of the sales text, in order to give specific figures. Which of course was a considerable effort.
Why am I telling you this?
So that you save yourself a lot of time and trouble! If you want to sell an eBook via Clickbank, please make sure that you handle possible success information carefully.
That doesn't just apply to sums of money now. Even if you sell an e-book about losing weight, you must not write in your sales text that everyone can lose 20 kg in 2 weeks.
You can write that you have achieved this result yourself, but not that your potential customer will have the same success in the same time!
This rule also applies to testimonials from your customers!
Suppose a customer has lost weight with the help of your eBook and is writing a customer review that you want to include in your sales text:
"I am absolutely delighted with your eBook. I have lost 30 kg in 12 days and feel better than ever!”
Clickbank can reject your sales text based on this customer opinion, even if it is true. Why? Because not everyone will achieve this success!
According to the FTC, testimonials and sales texts must not give the impression that every average customer will achieve such extraordinary results!
That sounds like splitting hair. But should serve to protect the customer from fraudulent offers. And in principle there is nothing wrong with that.
Clickbank wants to prevent people from being lured and ripped off with promises that are completely over the top.
On the other hand, it also makes life difficult for reputable Internet marketers and copywriters. Because it is often simply necessary to work with concrete numbers to underpin the benefits of a product.
One can therefore endlessly discuss the meaning and nonsense of this regulation. The fact is, you can't ignore it if you want to sell digital products such as eBooks through ClickBank's partner network.
I personally think Clickbank is an excellent tool for every internet marketer. Simply because you get everything you need for the successful sale of your own digital products.
Follow these guidelines and you will save yourself a lot of time and trouble. And then nothing stands in the way of your success with Clickbank.
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