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Possible Proof Clickbank Could Be Stealing!!

by tylerdrun
15 replies
Alright, a friend of mine has been promoting this particular product via adwords and has been getting sales on a regular basis. He contacted the product vendor and aksed him to put the google conversion tracking script on his thank you page.

The vendor agreed. And after 3 days of running, Clickbank reported two sales whereas google reported 11 conversions.

here's the thing with Google's conversion tracking they place a unique cookie on someone's browser that clicked on your adwords ad and then when they reach the target page the conversion code is on - that's considered a conversion so you are supposed to put it on the thank you page if you want to track sales, which that is the page my code is on so it wouldn't show multiple conversions for the same computer

For this clickbank gave a B.S reply mentioning that google tracking isn't effective as theirs. What's happening guys? Has it happened to you before? Product owners? Affiliates?

What do you realize from this?
#clickbank #proof #stealing
  • Profile picture of the author LB
    Originally Posted by tylerdrun View Post

    Alright, a friend of mine has been promoting this particular product via adwords and has been getting sales on a regular basis. He contacted the product vendor and aksed him to put the google conversion tracking script on his thank you page.

    The vendor agreed. And after 3 days of running, Clickbank reported two sales whereas google reported 11 conversions.

    here's the thing with Google's conversion tracking they place a unique cookie on someone's browser that clicked on your adwords ad and then when they reach the target page the conversion code is on - that's considered a conversion so you are supposed to put it on the thank you page if you want to track sales, which that is the page my code is on so it wouldn't show multiple conversions for the same computer

    For this clickbank gave a B.S reply mentioning that google tracking isn't effective as theirs. What's happening guys? Has it happened to you before? Product owners? Affiliates?

    What do you realize from this?
    Google conversion code sucks, I say this from millions of clicks sent.

    The most reasonable explanation is that a customer returned to the download page more than once over a couple days to access the material, or bookmarked it and came back later and google counted those as conversions more than once.

    Still want to pay for google's CPA network?

    Their tracking really really sucks. Most of the top marketers, especially CPA leadgens are using quite complex tracking solutions that are far superior to what G offers.
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  • Profile picture of the author samstephens
    Another possible issue could be that people have bypassed the Clickbank payment page, and just dug your download page out of a search engine, or something similar.

    Are you using protection on the download page to ensure it's only displayed to valid customers?

    cheers
    Sam
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    Another explanation is people have seen your Google Adwords Ad, clicked on it, read about the product and have not taken action right away. They then decide to go and read some reviews and end up clicking on another affiliates ad and purchase through that affiliate instead. They have been on your ad and the thankyou page so that will show as a conversion to you however it was actually a different affiliate who made the sale.

    There are plenty of explanations as to why your stats are showing differently. Obviously the easy one is to just accuse Clickbank of falsley reporting sales however it is far more likely to be something else causing the inconsistency.

    What a lot of people tend to forget is Clickbank are doing themselves no favors by skimping affiliates of their commissions and sales. The success of the whole Clickbank network is totally dependant on affiliate marketing and the more sales affiliates make, the more likely it is they will want to make more and more sales. Do you really think Clickbank would be doing themselves any favors by screwing with affiliates? No way - so why would they even risk it?
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    • Profile picture of the author rts2271
      Use awstats or your hosting stats to track uniques hitting a unique non-indexed page. Do not use flawed tracking to track flawed tracking. Clickbank has tracking issues, but the way to catch it is a unique counter script, not G's conversion tracking.

      Even if you do catch it the fanboys will say it doesn't happen and CB will never admit to it.

      The other "gurus" with there own similar affiliate systems will all chime in on how wonderful the system is because guess what, to admit fault would open up a industry shattering exposure to potential liability. Imagine if you will a FTC audit to CB's tracking or books.

      Diversify away from CB is your best answer. Any guru that is a CB fanboy has skin in the game and can't be trusted. Use Idev for your own affiliate systems and skip the middleman. In short don't trust anyone with your money EVER.
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  • Profile picture of the author Drover
    "possible proof" lol
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  • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
    Here's another thing you might have not considered ..

    People clicked on your ad .. and possibly on more ads and search results.

    I bet you are targeting a product name in the PPC campaign. The last affiliate
    gets the sale as his cookie gets set and sticks the last when the purchase is made.

    And this could be a possible explanation why you see more conversions in google
    but less in your CB account.

    CB stealing ?? Give me a break .. even if they would "steal" your commission they
    would still not make any money since the "stolen" money would go to the vendor.

    Gabriel
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    • Profile picture of the author WillR
      Originally Posted by gabibeowulf View Post

      CB stealing ?? Give me a break .. even if they would "steal" your commission they
      would still not make any money since the "stolen" money would go to the vendor.
      Exactly. It always seems to be the same people who complain about Clickbank stealing - those who are making bugger all sales. They think there just HAS to be something wrong with Clickbank because how else could they be making such few sales - well, it's because you are not doing a good enough job of getting traffic and/or converting that traffic into sales.

      Let me ask you this.

      A lot of people run membership sites through Clickbank - a hell of a lot. How easy do you think it would be for some of these membership site owners to realise that they have 3,000 paying members in their membership site yet they have only received sales for 2,900 members? How easy? Very easy. Do you think Clickbank are THAT stupid? Do you really think Clickbank would leave themselves open that easily?

      And as the poster above said, if they are not ripping off vendors then the only other person they can rip off are affiliates. And by ripping off affiliates they are destroying the network they have worked so hard to create. By ripping off affiliates all they are doing is giving that affiliate commission back to the vendor, which:

      a) Does not make Clickbank any extra money...
      b) Means affiliates are making less sales and are less likely to use and promote products on the Clickbank marketplace - which means Clickbank's earnings then go down the toilet.

      You see, if you just used your brains before you go staight on out and accuse people of wrong-doings, you might actually see the stupidity behind yor arguments.
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  • Profile picture of the author DrGUID
    As a CB vendor I have to say that people really do google your product's name after they've seen it somewhere. I don't know about anyone else but I rarely impulse buy stuff, even eBooks.

    As a software vendor for 8 years I'll also add that affiliates don't always get credit for a sale. Software vendors in particular are suckers really as most B2B software like developer tools is trialled by developers, but bought by people in the office. That's epic fail for an affiliate, but as a vendor I'm unaffected. It sucks, but it's all part of being an affiliate.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
    I believe that the real cuplrit here is either:
    a) another affiliate closing the sale
    b) people using their own aff id

    it would still be very easy for cb to simply credit a 'phantom' affiilate with the sale and pocketing the commission.

    Do I think they do this?

    no - they make plenty of money already w/o having to play BS games. There's simply no need to.

    But then again, some of the most respected businesses in the world (MUCH more respected then cb) have proven to have ethical lapses (enron, worldcom, etc).

    I do know their tracking is not perfect.. last year I noticed my sales from a site had dried up, and when I tested my links through to the checkout page, it was coming up aff=none.
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    • Profile picture of the author TimG
      Originally Posted by jasonl70 View Post

      I believe that the real cuplrit here is either:
      a) another affiliate closing the sale
      b) people using their own aff id

      I do know their tracking is not perfect.. last year I noticed my sales from a site had dried up, and when I tested my links through to the checkout page, it was coming up aff=none.
      I would suspect that one of those three reasons is the actual cause of the problem. I had a marketer just conduct an email blast for my product on Monday and in an effort to help him I removed references to my affiliate program on my site (to prevent people using their own aff id).

      Of course, there were still plenty of sales that came through where I noticied people using their own id. I've also seen instances were the aff=none appeared but only afew times.

      I believe if Clickbank were actually skimming you would not see as many folks using it for product launches because many of those guys/gals do big sales.

      Ironically enough people get uptight with Clickbank and yet how about the folks that create fake clickbank screenshots of massive amounts of sales. In my eyes they have created the clicbank mess because they make it look as if sales are also to obtain which is clearly not the case.

      Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author Vikram73
    Some of the people on the forums have said there CB sales have gone to zero overnight. Opening a 2nd account and changing the hoplinks on their sites got them sales again.

    I don't think it's anything intentional on CB's part - probably some glitches in their tracking software.

    A lot of people (myself included) will have multiple CB & CPA network accounts opened to see if any shaving is going on.
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