Below is a list of our most frequently asked questions. If you do not find the information you need below, please contact Customer Service and we will get back to you shortly.
ClickBank recurring billing consists of subscriptions. Subscriptions allow you to sell and promote products and services, for example software licenses and membership sites, where customers receive ongoing value.
For more information about ClickBank recurring billing, click here.
All accounts are automatically enabled for recurring billing products. For more information about the account setup process, go to the vendor Get Started page.
Yes - you can offer up to 500 products total per account. You can offer only standard products, only recurring billing products, or a combination of both for a total of 500 products per account.
In addition to standard product attributes, the terms related to recurring billing subscriptions are defined below.
No, the return policy remains the same for all products. ClickBank's return policy for both standard and recurring billing products is as follows:
ClickBank will, at its discretion, allow for the return or replacement of any defective product within 60 days from the date of purchase. For recurring billing products, returns for more than one payment may be provided if requested within the standard 60 day return period. After 60 days all sales are final.
However, keep in mind that once a refund is processed for a recurring billing product, the remaining rebills are cancelled and no further charges are made to the customer.
Customers can cancel their recurring billing product at any time during the rebill schedule. Canceling a recurring billing product does not generate a refund.
ClickBank will send an email to the email address listed in the vendor's account for every cancellation.
Within your account we provide a summary of any recurring billing products. To find this information, log in to your account, select the "Reporting" tab, and then go to "Analytics." If ClickBank has sold any recurring billing products for which you were the vendor or the affiliate, you will see a link under a section called "Recurring Billing Subscriptions." Click on "Click here to view details on your rebill product subscriptions" for details.
Currently, recurring billing products can be purchased using credit/debit cards and PayPal.
Yes - for subscriptions the rebill amount can be larger than the initial payment amount. The minimum initial price is $4.95, and the minimum rebill price is $7.95.
You cannot alter the initial, or rebill price for any recurring billing product once it has been approved by the Product Approval Team. If you wish to change the initial, or rebill price of a product for future sales, you will need to create a new product in the "My Products" section of your account.
For recurring billing subscriptions ClickBank offers bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual recurring billing. With these options, you can offer a wide variety of products and services in the ClickBank marketplace.
In order to accommodate recurring billing, each Marketplace listing will display two new fields. The fields and their descriptions are listed below.
Marketplace Statistic Examples
To locate recurring billing products, look for products that contain a value in the "future$" statistic.
Affiliates earn commission for the life of a subscription, which includes the initial payment and all rebills. The commission rate offered at the time of the initial payment remains the same for the rebills. Keep in mind that the initial payment must be equal to or greater than the subsequent rebills. Therefore, the amount affiliates earn for the initial payment may be greater than the amount they earn for each rebill payment. If a recurring billing product or subscription is cancelled, no future commissions will be awarded.
Recurring billing products are handled no differently than any other ClickBank product. The vendor is responsiblefor product delivery based on the terms of the purchase.
Yes - If one of your recurring billing products has sold at ClickBank, we provide a summary of any outstanding recurring billing products within your account. To find this information, log in to your account, select the "Reporting" tab, and then go to "Analytics." If ClickBank has sold any recurring billing products for which you were the vendor or the affiliate, you will see a link under a section called "Recurring Billing Subscriptions."
No. ClickBank purchases standard products, initial subscription payments, and rebills for subscriptions with a price of $40 or more from the vendor at a wholesale price equal to 92.5% of retail, less a $1 stocking charge. Subscriptions where the rebill price is less than $40, ClickBank purchases the rebills for the subscription from the vendor at a wholesale price equal to 90.1% of retail. For affiliate directed sales, the commission percentage is subtracted from the net sale price.
Here is an example of how commissions would be calculated if a vendor offered a 55% commission for a 12 month subscription where the initial payment is $29.95, and the rebill payments are $9.95:
This section describes "normal timing," "unavailable date timing," and "payment failure process" timing for monthly billing.
a. Normal Timing
The following is an example of normal payment timing:
b. Unavailable Date Timing
If you have a recurring billing payment scheduled for a day that does not occur in a given month (e.g. the 30th does not occur in February), the bill will occur on the last available day of the month. Thereafter, the payment will occur on the newly established day of the month (see example below).
The following is an example of unavailable date timing:
The customer signs up on Jan. 30, and is billed as follows:
c. Payment Failure Timing
Unlike many of our competitors, we don't give up after one payment failure. ClickBank understands that scheduled payments may fail for several reasons, including insufficient funds, so we have optimized our recurring billing process to reduce authorization declines and increase your revenue.
Authorization Failures
In the event that customer's credit card cannot support the payment request, we will attempt authorization again three days after the first failure date. After a second failure, we will reattempt four days after the second failure date. After a third failure, we will try once more seven days after the third failure date. A fourth failure will lead to an automatic cancellation of the subscription purchase. We send notifications to the customer and vendor on the final two attempts.
The following is an example of payment failure timing due to an authorization failure:Card Validation Failure
In the event that customer's credit card becomes invalid, we will deliver the customer up to four notifications requesting new credit card data. The notifications are delivered once a week. If there is no response after the fourth notice, the subscription purchase is automatically canceled. In order to keep the vendor informed, we also send them each notification. If updated credit card data is received from the customer, the rebills from that point forward are executed from the date of the successful authorization.
The following is an example of payment failure timing due to a card validation failure:Bi-weekly occurs once every two weeks and is processed under the same rules as monthly.
Quarterly billing will occur every 3 months -- not every 90 days. It is processed under the same rules as monthly, but the Unavailable Date Timing is different.
The Unavailable Date Timing for quarterly billing will bill each quarter on the same day as the last successful auth just three months later. If the month is too short to bill on the same day, the bill should occur on the last day of the month it is scheduled for and not be pushed into the next month.
Annual billing will occur once a year and is processed under the same rules as monthly.
The one difference between annual and monthly billing is that one week prior to the anniversary of an annual rebill, ClickBank will deliver a notification to the vendor and to the customer informing them that the rebill transaction is about to occur. The notification is delivered regardless of the rebill amount. This notification is an informational message about the customer's upcoming bill and will include instructions on how to update their credit card or email address, if necessary. It will also include instructions on how to cancel their subscription if they so choose. If ClickBank is unable to deliver the pre-billing notification, it will notify the vendor of the delivery failure and cancel the subscription, so the customer will not be rebilled.
The different statuses of a recurring billing transaction are:
Active - the terms of the transaction are not complete.
Completed - the terms of the transaction are complete.
Canceled - the transaction was canceled by the customer.
Authorization Failure - the last rebill was unsuccessful because the customer's credit card failed to authorize. This could be due to insufficient funds. We are attempting to address this issue via the payment failure process
Validation Failure - the last rebill was unsuccessful because the customer's credit card is invalid. We are attempting to address this issue via the payment failure process.