Bizarre Clickbank policy

[T_J]

I've just submitted a product for approval to Clickbank and it has been turned down on the basis that they don't allow products covering list building!

This strikes me as a crazy policy, given that email marketing is a legitimate marketing strategy. The reason for it is explained in an interview with The ClickBank VP of Business Development, Dush Ramachandran, in February:

"Obviously, we cannot accept products that are promoting spam. Often, determining what spam is is on the line. It’s kind of a grey area. A lot of products promote building up lists, and that’s fine. But they also promote automated mailers, for example, where you say, “Okay, so build yourself a list. Download this product. Load your mailing list. Hit the button. Before long, checks will be rolling in.” The problem is what that promotes is spamming and because we get spam complaints about those publishers."

So he clearly states that products about building lists are ok, but products that advocate spamming via importing lists to mailers are not. That's perfectly reasonable, but those responsible for approving products don't seem to take this into account. As such, even if a product is about legitimate opt-in email marketing, it won't be allowed.

Anyone else had experience of this?

[MommyEnterprises]

Maybe you could try PayDotCom?

[Lynn Terry]

That's news to me - Wow! I honestly hadnt heard of that issue before...

[T_J]

Update on this issue...

It turns out that with some explanation, Clickbank are flexible on this. They will accept listbuilding products, provided the products are strictly about opt-in listbuilding. So if any Clickbank merchants are submitting such a product, make sure you stress that it only promotes the opt-in approach.

[Lynn Terry]