Recurring billing products are ones which repeatedly bill customers on a regular schedule.
They fall into two categories
Examples are web hosting, autoresponders.
Managing such products is easy. You allow the customer use of the product until it is no longer required at which point you deactivate access to it.
The most common example is a Membership (or Subscription) site where customers pay to have access to information. Such information could be ebooks, software, articles, audio interviews etc
Membership sites tend to need more management and may use membership software to handle sign up, user accounts, levels of membership, cancellations.
Other examples are
* Online communities or forums where people with similar interests can share ideas
* Newsletters and online news sites which provide customers with access to the latest information about a particular niche.
The procedure is mostly the same as for a single item but with some important differences the main being in the item details required.
Product:
You need a Product Title (max 70 characters) and a Product Description (max 250 characters) - these will appear on the ClickBank order form, not in the ClickBank Marketplace.
Pricing:
Initial Price – what the customer pays for the initial purchase (the minimum is $4.95)
Rebill Price – what the customer pays for each subsequent payment (the minimum rebill price is $7.95)
Billing Information:
Frequency – when the rebilling will occur. The choice is weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly.
Duration – The number of times a customer is billed including the initial payment. This can range from 2 to 99.
You can also declare a trial period which is a period of time (maximum 31 days) where the customer can try out the product at a reduced price before the regular billing begins.
For example if you offer a trial period of 10 days and 30 monthly payments the customer will have a 10 days trial period followed by 29 monthly rebills.
As you may know once a vendor account is approved with the first item you can add SINGLE items without needing approval from ClickBank.
However with recurring billing each new item must go through the product approval process.
And because the subscription terms when a customer signs up need to be preserved for the life of the subscription no change can be made to a recurring item (apart from the product description)
If you need to change for example the price for future customers you have to create a new item. There is a duplication feature in the Account to help you do this. If you plan to have different price points you may want to set them up in advance and have them approved in one go.
For single items ClickBank purchases the product from the vendor at a wholesale price equal to 92.5% of retail, less a $1 stocking charge. This is similar for recurring billing products except that where the rebill is less than $40 the figure is 90.1% of retail.
Here is a useful calculator
If a customer cancels his subscription it means that no future rebills will be charged to his account. ClickBank will notify you by email and you will need to stop access to the product when the billing period he has paid for comes to an end. Note that a cancellation does not generate a refund.
If a customer refunds a product the remaining rebills are cancelled and no further charges are made to the customer. As per ClickBank's refund policy any payment within the standard 60 days return period will be refunded so this could involve multiple past payments.
To find recurring billing products go to the ClickBank Marketplace, select the Category/Sub-Category of the product you want and use the Narrow Results by Billing Type option.
Alternatively use Find Products at the top of the page with Advanced Search and choose the Billing Type as Recurring.
In addition to the usual Marketplace stats you will find these:
Avg Rebill Total $ is what you could expect (on average) to earn after the initial sale, i.e it is the total of future rebills. So it's a measure of how often customers continue their subscriptions.
Avg %/rebill the average commission rate earned on rebills (excludes the initial sale).