CLICKBANK - How's This for Strange?

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by markph

my sales with clickbank collapsed in October. So what I did was this.I offered customers buying through my site a 10% discount. The reason for this was so I could track what was going on. If anyone bought it they would have to email me directly for the 10% and I would know if there was missing sales. Were there missing sales..After the 4th email asking me for the discount on non existent sales I confronted clickbank with the evidence. They turned round and said there had been no sales! I don't know if they are just plain incompetent or just a bunch of thieves and I'm not hanging around to find out. I'm done with them.

First, offering rebates violates CB's rules.

You seem to be assuming everyone claiming your rebate actually bought the product. Did they send you receipts? Some people will claim rebates or bonuses without buying the product.

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by Daniel Scott

What does everyone use for an alternative? PDC is of course a possibility but I have heard that a lot of people are having major problems with them as well, so...?

And by the way I am a publisher. My product is fairly new so not many affiliates (certainly no powerful ones) so this is just going on my ~50 uniques a day (mainly from articles).

-Dan

What problems? Their system works. The only thing I've heard is complaints about a few people not paying their affiliates on time, no problems making or tracking sales.

[Chris Thompson]

I just launched my product and had one sale after about 500 PPC clicks. the page should convert a lot better than that. I was thinking it was my page, but this thread has me thinking something is screwed up.

I use DLGuard so the tracking allows me to know if downloads have occurred. They have NOT ... so either there have been no customers wanting to buy (other than one) or the payment page is causing problems and customers are abandoning it.

Steven - interested in what your CB contact tells you for sure!

[ecdavis]

Hi. I've also been experiencing a similar problem. In fact, I was just going to post about it when I found this thread. I've been tracking clickthroughs from my sites and TIDs to Clickbank and have found that the hops go unrecorded. In addition, sales have gone to zero. I've sent 4 polite emails explaining the problem and asking for assistance but so far have received no reply.

[markph]

Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood

First, offering rebates violates CB's rules.

You seem to be assuming everyone claiming your rebate actually bought the product. Did they send you receipts? Some people will claim rebates or bonuses without buying the product.

yes I know and accept offering rebates violates clickbanks rules, Not getting paid for sales I know I have made though violates mine. So I ran this for a very short time to prove the fact that sales were being made and not registered, after repeatedly being told there were no problems.Even though it was becoming clear there was a big problem.

you are right, people will claim anything to get something for nothing, so I specifically requested and received proof of purchase from each person,and clickbank still denied that any sale had been made at all. I'm done with them.

[getmorebuyers]

I thought I was the only one who was thinking like all of you. I am so glad i found this thread because like you I have been having the same experience. I work up to 16 hour days getting articles out, doing product launches, etc. and only 1 sale at launch time! This is not good.

[oortcloud]

Has anyone checked their sales funnel ?

Meaning, are people hitting your thank you/download page
despite not having any sales ?

[Adam Carn]

I wonder what Harvey Segal's views are on this issue.

[Eric Lorence]

Originally Posted by Adam Carn

I wonder what Harvey Segal's view are on this issue.

True, funny he hasn't been in this one.

But he is so established, this probably hasn't affected him much.

[Daniel Scott]

Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood

What problems? Their system works. The only thing I've heard is complaints about a few people not paying their affiliates on time, no problems making or tracking sales.

Chris,

Do you use PayPal with them, or a different system? I have heard from some marketers (such as Paul Myers) that PayPal's order pages really aren't conductive to sales, but this was probably 6 months ago, and he is still using it, so maybe the issue was short lived or he found a way around it.

-Dan

[websitemoneynow]

I heard they are having problems with people purchasing with credit cards , that even good credit cards are being turned down .

[Margaret Arumugam]

Check out the sales graph from CB Analytics (attached file).

Look at the sharp rise in sales over the past few days indicating that "someone" is still making sales -- probably publishers themselves. That spike seems to be around and after the US elections, or an indication that maybe CB is tinkering with something in its systems.

Bottom line is, my own sales as an affiliate are as dead as a dodo (sorry for the cliche but a little upset with the 'downturn')

[tamtu]

I did have a similar problem, I had 3 sales of the same product to the same person on the same day, I did not have a clue as to what that person was going to do with the same product, but with in a week 2 of the sales got canceled, yes something should be wrong with click bank.

[Martin.Avis]

I'm not saying that ClickBank are perfect, but I do know that they monitor sales and conversions very closely. So any systemic failure would be picked up very quickly.

Folks, the last couple of months have been crazy for anyone selling anything. Online and offline.

Since early August the threat (and now the reality) of impending recession has made many people much more cautious about spending money. So any downturns in sales that people may be seeing with ClickBank are probably just a reflection of market conditions.

Remember we just had a banking system crash, a credit crunch, a plummet in house prices - and for those in the US, an election. None of those things encourage people to spend.

But - and here is the marketing reality - if you have a first class presell and a top rate sales page for a product that presses people's buttons, sales will still flow just fine, thanks very much.

Just this last week or so I've been promoting a ClickBank product. If I were to believe the doomsayers here, I may not have bothered. I would have expected a complete failure.

Luckily I didn't read this before promoting this very hot ClickBank product because so far I've converted one in every 6.5 hops to a sale.

ClickBank not tracking things properly? I don't see any evidence.
ClickBank's new currency policy on the order page putting people off buying? Not in my experience.

Similarly, as a vendor, I see no particular variation in my day-to-day sales. Of course, the 'normal' sales pattern is pretty chaotic, but I expect that and haven't seen any overall longterm decline beyond what I'd expect in a downturning economy.

Is ClickBank broken? I don't know, but judging from the size of my checks right now I'm not in any hurry for them to fix it if it is.

Martin

[JayXtreme]

Originally Posted by Martin.Avis

If I were to believe the doomsayers here,

I take exception to this statement Martin.. I appreciate your point of view.. but my thoughts and conclusion were based on my stats... comparisons between clickbank and non clickbank product conversions...

So if you would do me the courtesy of respecting my opinion without branding me a "doomsayer" it would be much appreciated..

In the midst of all this I do have some products still converting on CB.. but the majority are not looking bright...

Kindest

Jay

[Anbelle]

To me that doesn't seem like a coinsidence, so many of you having problems. Why don't ALL OF YOU write to Clickbank....? Tess, did you get an answer yet... Also the fact there is no answer in several days, tells me something is not right. I am just starting and this is actually scary...

[BizBooks]

In the past week, i have had zero sales.

today.... several!

maybe their system is backed up...?

[WilsonA]

Originally Posted by Margaret Arumugam

Check out the sales graph from CB Analytics (attached file).

Look at the sharp rise in sales over the past few days indicating that "someone" is still making sales -- probably publishers themselves. That spike seems to be around and after the US elections, or an indication that maybe CB is tinkering with something in its systems.

Bottom line is, my own sales as an affiliate are as dead as a dodo (sorry for the cliche but a little upset with the 'downturn')

Yeah, it is because of the two recent lauches in the im niche - the blogging book and the ranking book. When the 2 start going down you would start to see what it is really going on

Wilson

[Wayne]

It might be the anti fraud measures being used for credit card processing. I received an email from another affiliate program that said their sales dropped considerably in late September. After investigating, they found that the anti-fraul tool, Verified by Visa, was declining many more sales than it used to. They turned it off and right away their sales increased by more than 50%. Then after talking to some of the top people in the industry found out that it was happening to many others also. There have been many reports of affiliates saying people are emailing them saying their credit card is declined, so I think this could be something to be concerned about.

[deedgrabber]

I will just chip in to say that my Clickbank product is sold 95% through myself and abou 5% from affiliates. I have noticed a nasty drop in sales the last month or two and have been wracking my brain to figure out why.

After reading this thread it doesn't seem to be Clickbank's fault, I am still getting a few affiliate sales as normal, and they don't seem to be skimming sales without reporting to me. For some of us it might just be a natural business cycle.

Rick Dawson

[Martin.Avis]

Jay,

Why do you take exception to anything I say?

A lot of people have commented in this thread and I didn't single out any of them in my response.

People are always writing about how bad ClickBank is. Their have been threads bemoaning the fact that Clickbank is 'broken' for as many years as I've been online.

The fact is that business is cyclical. Sales are rarely as consistent as some people like to think. One day is good, and another is bad.

My point is that people are awlways very quick to blame ClickBank when the reality may simply be that tastes change, customers's cash flow may change and the economy certainly has a big influence.

I really don't know if ClickBank have a problem - my own sales suggest not, but I'm not a statistically significant sample. All I'm saying is that it is probably better to look for other influences rather than always jump to blaming ClickBank.

No personal attack was intended on you Jay - or on anyone else.

Martin

[Adam Carn]

It's all those million dollar launches that broke the Clickbank tracking system!

[ccmusicman]

Glad to see something is being done.

This has been reported by a lot of people for sometime. At first I didn't believe it either, but then I too had strange fluctuations in sales. I was converting at 1 in 10 for a relationship niche product, but then after a month, bam...sales stopped...ever since then they have been erratic.

Hopefully Steven's contact will get this taken care of. But I'm starting to move from the affiliate bandwagon to the merchant one...i think their may be more money in that anyway.

Rob

[rickyou]

I sometimes do receive some emails from my list saying that they can't buy the product. So I think the payment processor is one of the problems.

My sales have dropped considerably a lot recently because of my falling traffic. However, the strange thing is my traffic only fall half, but my sales drop by 70-80%. If the sales only drop by half, I supposed to get 1-2 sales a day. But now, I get only 1-2 sales a week. It is really quite sad when I log into my account and see zero sales, or maybe only one or two rebills.

The strange thing is my sales recover in the past few days, making about 1-2 sales a day instead of zero sales.

I wonder whether this is really the market preference problem because I have been promoting the product since April, things are pretty consistent before September.
------
Edit : I just checked my bro's CB account too, it seems that he get 2 sales for the past 2 days after a dreadful period of zero sales.

Rick

[Tenzo]

It seems that more and more CB sales pages are using virtual agent type software. Is it possible that affiliates are not being credited because of this?

Regards,
Kevin

[JayXtreme]

Originally Posted by Martin.Avis

Jay,

Why do you take exception to anything I say?

A lot of people have commented in this thread and I didn't single out any of them in my response.

People are always writing about how bad ClickBank is. Their have been threads bemoaning the fact that Clickbank is 'broken' for as many years as I've been online.

The fact is that business is cyclical. Sales are rarely as consistent as some people like to think. One day is good, and another is bad.

My point is that people are awlways very quick to blame ClickBank when the reality may simply be that tastes change, customers's cash flow may change and the economy certainly has a big influence.

I really don't know if ClickBank have a problem - my own sales suggest not, but I'm not a statistically significant sample. All I'm saying is that it is probably better to look for other influences rather than always jump to blaming ClickBank.

No personal attack was intended on you Jay - or on anyone else.

Martin

Like I said Martin.. I appreciate your opinion...

But like I mentioned already.. I'm usually in your shoes telling people to look at their own funnel before blaming the payment processor, but this time the evidence stacks up against Clickbank... and you were very broad in your doomsayer statement applying it to all in the thread who had something to say against clickbank... no offence taken Martin, just exception to your broad tarring with one brush...

No hard feelings, I just wanted you to know that my perspective comes from one of calculated analysis and not some crazy ramblings of someone who doesn't have a clue..

Peace

Jay

[Margaret Arumugam]

Both Jay and Martin have valid points, but I'm hoping Steven W can get us a more objective (insider) view of the situation from his source.

[NickMarks]

I never really had a problem with CB in regards to tracking or payout..

[GeorgR.]

guys,

we can easily test this. Ironically, i remember exactly the same problem about year ago.

I had people telling me that they bought products respective watched someone physically buying a product via some clickbank link, but never got credited the affiliate commission.

So..if you wonder whether things work..buy "something" as an affiliate and check whether you get credit from CB.

[Daniel Scott]

Georg,

The problem with your theory is that the problem may be sporadic, or only accepting certain CC #'s based on an unknown marker, or other possibilities (including that there is nothing wrong with CB at all).

I'm not trying to knock your theory, just saying that it would need to be pretty-large scale to be a scientifically accurate test.

-Dan

[Greg Cooksley]

I've been following this thread with interest....

Does anyone have any concrete updates?

Regards

Greg

[freelikehell]

I just put up a tracking code in my clickbank redirection page for payment.
Now, if anyone clicks on the 'order now' button, then first, my database will store the click and then the visitor will be taken to clickbank page. That way, ill know if any screw up is happening or not.. i get a stream of visitors everyday, so ill get to know within a day or two..

[jacstone193]

Originally Posted by goose1234

I think clickbank are having problems, but there may be something else to consider for folk that are having falling sales.

I have a product I sell on clickbank that sells 99% to UK customers.

Last week Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday I made a total of 6 sales.

Usually in that period I would sell between 50-75 copies. I have been selling this product for over 4 years so I have a pretty good idea.

The reason I think it happened was clickbank changed the way the price was shown.

Before it was shown in dollars but think around last Thursday they changed the way the price was shown and it displayed the price in £s for anyone that arrived at the site from the UK.

You might think that would up conversions but for me it didn't.

My product is priced at $32 and after the conversion the new price was shown was £20.40.

It has pushed the price over the £20 barrier which seems more.

I reckon when most people in UK see $32 the will guess it works out at around £16-£18 doing the conversion in their head. No scientific reason behind it but just with a small poll I carried out with friends.

I have since changed it back on Monday and sales are back to normal.

Just a thing to consider if people are having slowing sales. Tiny things made huge differences.

Thanks for this - worth bearing in mind!

[Ryan_Taylor]

I have a theory...

How successful do you think Google Chrome is? And how many people do you think use it in incognito mode?

From Google:

If you use Google Chrome in incognito mode, it will not transmit any pre-existing cookies to sites that you visit. Sites may deposit new cookies on your machine while you are in incognito mode, however. These cookies will be temporarily stored and transmitted to sites while you remain in incognito mode. They will be deleted when you close the browser or return to normal browsing mode.

[affiliateppc]

Ryan,

Don't know how responsible Chrome is yet, but that is going to be a problem in the future.

One of the theories floating around is that CB cookies only last for 1 session. I don't know how true it is, but looking at the info from Google, it is possible.

Visitor gos through your aff link to merchant page. Bookmarks for later reference. Closes browser and BAM, no comission for you if he returns later through the bookmark

AffiliatePPC

[maverick80]

I wanted to throw my two cents in here as well.......

I have had a product going for almost a year.

Payment period ending October 1st. I had my best two weeks ever, and received my largest check from Clickbank to date.

Payment period ending October 15th. My sales dropped roughly 45%.

Payment period ending October 29th. My sales dropped an ADDITIONAL 50%.

I contacted Clickbank and they told me it was most likely due to economic conditions. We currently have no concrete evidence to rule this out. However I find it extremely strange that I had my BEST two weeks of sales ever, only to watch them drop to the LOWEST levels ever. It's like someone turned off a light switch. Currently I find it more likely that something has changed with the processing of credit cards. Either some business or technical process seems to have changed over at Clickbank.

Steven, please do reply to this thread with any information you get from your source. It would be much appreciated.

Regards,
Mike

[naruq]

My clickbank sales have been consistent for the last 8 months!

[Adam Carn]

Originally Posted by Ryan_Taylor

I have a theory...

How successful do you think Google Chrome is? And how many people do you think use it in incognito mode?

From Google:

If you use Google Chrome in incognito mode, it will not transmit any pre-existing cookies to sites that you visit. Sites may deposit new cookies on your machine while you are in incognito mode, however. These cookies will be temporarily stored and transmitted to sites while you remain in incognito mode. They will be deleted when you close the browser or return to normal browsing mode.

That's quite scary stuff! Hmm as long as someone clicks on our affiliate links and purchase before closing the Chrome browser we should be ok.

Adam

[tess47]

I will be glad when someone hears back from Clickbank. I know I have emailed them again, and I hope Steve W gets a response from his contact as well.

I have a product I've been marketing for months that normally converted at about 1/60 for me, as of today I have over 400 hops with not ONE SINGLE SALE. It's really discouraging.

The sad thing is, I market many products that I just can't find a good replacement for. I have looked at PayDotCom, but most of their products just lack the quality I like.

Maybe things will straighten out soon!

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by tess47

I will be glad when someone hears back from Clickbank. I know I have emailed them again, and I hope Steve W gets a response from his contact as well.

I have a product I've been marketing for months that normally converted at about 1/60 for me, as of today I have over 400 hops with not ONE SINGLE SALE. It's really discouraging.

The sad thing is, I market many products that I just can't find a good replacement for. I have looked at PayDotCom, but most of their products just lack the quality I like.

Maybe things will straighten out soon!

Tess, I heard back from Jen. I won't post the whole email here but
essentially what she said was that they had been contacted by quite a
few people, which tells me there is a widespread problem somewhere,
but in researching, she says they haven't been able to find a system
problem.

I know Jen a long time and one thing I can tell you is this. If she says
she can't find a problem, she can't. That doesn't mean there isn't one. It
just means it's not something that is obvious or going to be easy to find.

She did add this. She said that many of the people who contacted them,
when they checked their accounts, their sales "averages" really haven't
changed over a significant time frame.

What this tells me is this.

Either the downturn hasn't been going on long enough to determine an
actual problem or, the sales "blips" have been so intermittent that if you
were to look at it long term, even for months, nothing significant would
show up.

In other words, if you haven't made any sales for a few days or even a
couple of weeks, that could simply be the economy. I've seen this happen
before in my 5 years, though not to this degree. However, this is the
worst our economy has been in 70 plus years.

Those of you reporting no change in sales, look at your niche. Most likely
it's in an area that isn't going to be as affected as others. People looking
for debt relief right now are probably still buying as opposed to people
looking to get back with their ex, maybe not so much since they probably
don't have the money to spend on them anyway.

The economy can't be ignored and I'm inclined to believe that this has as
much an effect, if not more so, than Clickbank problems.

My gut tells me that this downturn is going to end after the New Year, if
not sooner.

Like I said, I've lived through this before.

[carik42]

Steven:

Many thanks for the update.

I just don't know what to say here as what I see in this thread makes no sense to me at all.

Last month was a really good month for me across all my promotions, so to see people have these issues really is baffling.

Hopefully you're right about things improving in the New Year...got a feeling it's going to be a tough couple of months for a lot of affiliates.

[TheNightOwl]

There certainly does seem to be a lot of conflicting anecdotal evidence in this thread.

The key word there being anecdotal.

For example, in Mr Wagenheim's response, he mentions the ClickBank VP of Ops' reply that after checking people's accounts, they found that monthly averages were not erratic.

It could certainly be the case that people just think there's something wrong when in fact there's not. That people are having some kind of mass delusional episode that their sales have fallen sharply when in fact they have not.

Or it could be that ClickBank is trying to pull some lame Jedi mind trick on everyone: "These are not the slumping sales figures you're looking for..."

Jay and markph present empirical information (evidence?) based on testing and actual stats.

This bit is particularly worrying in my opinion:

Originally Posted by markph

I specifically requested and received proof of purchase from each person,and clickbank still denied that any sale had been made

To be fair(-ish) to ClickBank, there may be no hanky-panky at all and people really do just think their sales have gone down when they haven't.

(I ain't buyin' it, though, if so many people are saying "I've been getting X sales a day for the last 400 years and then suddenly in the last month few or none". Sorry. To quote Mr Horse from Ren & Stimpy "No, Sir, I don't like it at all".)

But let's face it, as if(!) ClickBank is going to just admit that they have a problem. Do you think that their folks don't read all the significant threads in forums like this?

They know that if they were to admit there was a problem, IMers would drop them like a hot potato.

Now, Mr Waggenheim, I'm certainly not saying that what you did was bad. And I think a lot of people appreciated hearing at least something from ClickBank on the issue. So that was nice of you to contact them.

But it was, in my opinion, a bit pointless, really. There is no way in Hell--no matter how good your relationship is with Jen--that she is authorised to openly confirm a problem with their system should it exist.

Yeah, I know you said that her saying so doesn't mean there isn't a problem... I know; I read it.

But no one at ClickBank is going to admit there is (or was) a problem for the hot potato reason I mentioned a moment ago.

That's not to say, incidentally, that I automatically believe there's a problem just coz Jay and markph have some stats that lean in that direction and because a bunch of folks are all saying sales are down. As has been pointed out, this could be for all sorts of reasons.

But I still find markph's story pretty concerning, frankly.


TheNightOwl

[TheNightOwl]

Just found this in another thread:

More stats. Hmmm...


Okay, "Too small a sample size" you might say.

But the OP has a good point about 32 clicks for people who were on the page for 3-4 minutes. They read for this long and then clicked and not one of 'em bought?

Possible? Sure.

Weird? You do the math.

"Well maybe he doesn't have the price on the page and people are clicking through just to find out the price" you say...

Fair enough.

So I asked. Let's see what he says.

[freelikehell]

Just updated the thread TheNightOwl :The DREADED Clickbank problem.. some facts
Even replied to your query... take a look

[Daniel Scott]

For a bit more info...

Had a sale today that wasn't processed. At the very least, someone landed on my thankyou page, which should not be indexed by the SE's and has a nonsensical string of letters. So it is possible, although unlikely, they got there on their own.

Through CB too.

-Dan

[TheNightOwl]

Hmmm... the plot thickens.

[Nutrifitness]

Originally Posted by ste25

Its not the economy thats causing drop in sales. Try ordering a CB product using Paypal. Sometimes you get to the product download page but you arent charged. No money leaves your Paypal account.

Happened to me last week. Whatever is wrong needs identifying and fixing fast.

Did ou notify cb of this asap? what was their response?

[tess47]

Here is the response I got from Jennifer at Clickbank:


Hi Tess,



I appreciate you contacting me! I saw on the forum that you had not gotten a response from ClickBank yet -- so I'm glad Steven passed my email address along to you (by the way -- where did you send your initial email to us? Was it through one of our forms, or to a particular email address? I'd like to research why you didn't get an answer before now!).



We have seen the forums and we have had people contact us directly, and we have researched for potential problems on our side in depth. We can not find a systemwide problem anywhere. In fact, many of the people that have contacted us about a decrease in conversions or in sales, once we have researched it, have actually not had a decrease in their average -- or in some cases, their average has gone up during the time they state they have noticed a decline.



I'd be happy to research any accounts individually -- and have our IT team look at any individual account, as well, to see if we can find anything specific. What is your ClickBank nickname?



Also -- I will be sure to go over this thread in detail, and see if it brings to light anything that we have not already tested! We certainly take these concerns seriously, and want to make sure everything is okay!



Best regards,



Jennifer

V.P. Operations

Digital Products Retailer: Affiliate Program & Sell Online - ClickBank

[trippmarxx]

I was planning on publishing a few products on ClickBank. While I still might do this, I plan to do many of my own products via PayPal and setup my own affiliate tracking software and do it that way. Seems much, much easier than dealing with all of the issues that CB has had lately....

[spudzz]

Absolutely trippmarxx - it's a shame more marketers don't take full control over their own affiliate sales. It really is easy to set up and once you've done it the first time it's just a case of rolling it out the same each time.