Check your affiliate link if you are promoting Strip The Fat

[Peter Johnston]

Originally Posted by bzimm

Here's a heads up if anyone is promoting Strip The Fat in the weight loss niche. When you get to the purchase page look at the bottom for you ID. I just did and it is not showing up from my redirect. Just to make sure I did not screw up anywhere I pasted the hop link into the browser and tried it again and still on the sales page it said affiliate=none.

I took it one step further and created a whole new hoplink at click bank and then tested that link in IE and Firefox just to see if it would make a difference, it did not. So if your promoting that program I would take a look to make sure you are getting paid.

What's going on with CB does anyone know, seems to be a lot of unhappy bunnies out there?

[Nicola Lane]

I've just tried my links and found the ominous "affiliate+none" on the order page!

I suggest that people also write to the owners of products that they are promoting and tell them about the problem - and tell them that if clickbank don't fix it then they will suffer from lack of affiliates!

I have just sent the following to clickbank - I will let you know what response I get!

I have recently been made aware that there may be some issues in affiliate hoplink tracking. So I tested a few of my affiliate links today. I also asked two friends on different computers in different locations to also test these links.

the results were most disturbing. WE went through the sales process to get to the clickbank payment processing page - and checked the bottom of the page where is says (affiliate+whomever.

We each checked 12 links. In my test I had the correct affiliate information once - every other time the information was (affiliate=none). One froend only had two correct affiliate pages and another friend had only one.

I would appreciate knowing when this problem will be resolved. Why I should trust that it will not re-occur, and what you will be doing to compensate me for lost commissions.

Sincerely

Nicola Lane

[Merlinthecat]

I checked my set-up (using Firefox) and affiliate link was OK on the order page.

[Dlocks]

I have tested about 7 random sites from the marketplace that I have never visited before and the ones below showed the [affiliate = none]:

(I'm new here so I can't post the correct URLs. Remove spaces to test for yourself)

ht tp://YOURID.turbulence.hop.clickbank.net/
ht tp://YOURID.freetattoo.hop.clickbank.net/
ht tp://YOURID.x360fix.hop.clickbank.net/
ht tp://YOURID.languages.hop.clickbank.net/

Tests done in Vista 64bit, all antivirus/spyware software shut down/closed/inactive.

IE7: [affiliate = none]
Chrome, Opera, FF: correct affiliate was shown.

I did not removed my cookies and temp files because a potential buyer will not do this each time he visits a website.

[Russell Portwood]

When I checked earlier, Firefox worked fine but IE gave me the affiliates=none. Now both are working OK. From reading this thread it seems as though the problem is constantly changing; works sometimes, doesn't others. Not only are commissions being lost, the problem is multiplied due to ad dollars being wasted.
While I am frustrated (as we all are), put yourself in CBs place. I have always found them to be on the up-and-up and if they are true to that, then their frustration level must be through the roof. How they would ever direct commissions to the right place, I don't know. They aren't keeping them, but the product owners are seeing a surge in revenue. (Or they *should* be seeing that)
I wonder if the CB stats will show fewer affiliate sales for this period? Could skew some of the merchants numbers if they rely on large affiliate percentage of sales.

I'm still scratching my head.

[Chri5123]

I have seen alot of threads about Clickbank tracking problems over the last few weeks.

You can say it is the recession or people not working hard enough etc...

My view is this thread does confirm there is a problem.

However discussing the problem here will not fix this problem, I think we should contact CB and as someone else said in this thread forward them a link to this thread.

Also send them your affiliate link for a product that is having this issue so they can say firsthand.

The only problem is it could be spyware software, different browsers and a host of other things.

Hope this gets sorted soon!

Chris

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by Dlocks

ht tp://YOURID.turbulence.hop.clickbank.net/
ht tp://YOURID.freetattoo.hop.clickbank.net/
ht tp://YOURID.x360fix.hop.clickbank.net/
ht tp://YOURID.languages.hop.clickbank.net/

FF 2.0: Affiliate ID = none
FF 3.0: Affiliate ID = correct

IE 6.0.: Affiliate ID = correct
IE 7.0.: Affiliate ID = correct

[Steven Wagenheim]

I just heard from Jen at Clickbank and she is working on this issue. They are
aware of it.

[greenovni]

Hey Steven, Tell her to look at this test. [affiliate=none] Can cookie stuffing be the answer?

[W.P. Allen]

What's the likely outcome of all of this? Class action lawsuit? Clickbank bankruptcy? An overall change in the affiliate sales tracking structure?

A lot of people have probably lost a lot of money...

I know I have...

I went from a minimum 3 or 4 sales a day to maybe 3 or 4 a week. Should I expect some sort of reimbursement or should I fold it up and move on to a company that won't screw the pants off of me?

This blows...

[kenkos68]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

I just heard from Jen at Clickbank and she is working on this issue. They are
aware of it.

I posted part of the problem in the "An idea to test clickbank problems...." thread. (can't make the url clickable as I don't have 15 posts yet)

I see now that the proper cookie replacement is being done. To test with browsers, you need to clear the cache and cookies.

-Ken

[Sylvia Meier]

Okay checking my own CB product it worked fine on all 3 of my comps all browsers. Tested a few others and IE came up no aff on all. It may just be the products I tested but the ones I checked where the publisher hides aff link worked, the ones that did not work all had the aff hoplink shown. Anyone else notice this trend?

[Steven Wagenheim]

Here is a reply I just got back from Jen:

"ClickBank did have an issue with a portion of the hops from approximately 11:00 am yesterday morning until 8:30 am today where less than one-third of our total hop traffic was not tracking properly. The issue was corrected earlier today, and more information will be available soon."

I'll let you know if I hear anything else.

[JayXtreme]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Here is a reply I just got back from Jen:

"ClickBank did have an issue with a portion of the hops from approximately 11:00 am yesterday morning until 8:30 am today where less than one-third of our total hop traffic was not tracking properly. The issue was corrected earlier today, and more information will be available soon."

I'll let you know if I hear anything else.

LMFAO..

I don't have a dog in this fight... my game is away from CB mostly now anyways.. where it matters I have replaced CB products..

but this just reeks of crap.. after all this they admit that a problem occured in only 24 hours.. what about the previous months.. my arse....lol

Peace

Jay

[Lindsay Brynn]

Well it is good that the issue seems to be resolved. I checked my sites and they seem fine.

I do have a couple promoting STF. What was funny about yesterday is that I did not make any sales for it but I got a couple hops from a page that had no hits via Google Analytics, which I thought was a little weird.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by JayXtreme

LMFAO..

I don't have a dog in this fight... my game is away from CB mostly now anyways.. where it matters I have replaced CB products..

but this just reeks of crap.. after all this they admit that a problem occured in only 24 hours.. what about the previous months.. my arse....lol

Peace

Jay

Jay, I just report the news, I don't create it.

But I hear where you're coming from.

Hey, did you get my PM I sent you the other day?

[JayXtreme]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Jay, I just report the news, I don't create it.

But I hear where you're coming from.

Hey, did you get my PM I sent you the other day?

lol.. dude.. my rant was aimed at CB, not you

Yeah.. got the PM.. good to hear and I'll get back with you tonight sometime

Peace

Jay

[Giggle]

No wonder my sales are lower than expected. Thanks for the info. I'll have to test all my links

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Here is a reply I just got back from Jen:

"ClickBank did have an issue with a portion of the hops from approximately 11:00 am yesterday morning until 8:30 am today where less than one-third of our total hop traffic was not tracking properly. The issue was corrected earlier today, and more information will be available soon."

I'll let you know if I hear anything else.

FYI, I tested it on all versions of all my browsers and the problem has now been corrected (at least for the scope of identifying the affiliate ID on the checkout page).

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by shab

well im not surprised. economy is bad and they needed the money badly so they steal your commissions for themselves.

I think that's way out of line. I'm not the world's biggest Clickbank fan, but to accuse them of intentionally stealing commissions is beyond the pale. They may well have problems with their system, but that's different from intentionally rigging it.

We've already seen several things that can prevent the affiliate from getting credit, such as their browser blocking cookies.

It would be nice to see a more scientific test of this. If you know a vendor, buy their product through an affiliate link, especially if it says "none" on the page - in that case, the vendor should be getting credit for the full sale.

Some people seem to be assuming that "affiliate=none" means Clickbank is keeping the commission.

BTW, a lawsuit is a joke. Class action suits take years, and even when they are successful, by the time the lawyers take their fees, the "winners" are left with pennies. Seriously, if you think you've lost 10s or 100s of sales in this process, you might get the commission from one sale as your share of the lawsuit, years down the road. And that's assuming you win, which I don't think would be that easy unless it can be proven CB did something on purpose to cheat people.

[jasonl70]

Like thers, I averaged 3 or 4 sales a day, every day, for many months.. then *poof* - maybe 3 a week. Nothing else changed - sam enumber of opt-ins to my list, same emails, same # of click throughs from my emails.
Things turned around for me some what a few weeks ago, but I've noticed over the last day or so that I can rarely even access CB w/o the page(s) timing out on me. Again, makes me wonder how much money has been left on the table
When testing some of the links posted here, 75% of the time the order page just times out on me and never even displays.

[Bryan Zimmerman]

Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood

I think that's way out of line. I'm not the world's biggest Clickbank fan, but to accuse them of intentionally stealing commissions is beyond the pale. They may well have problems with their system, but that's different from intentionally rigging it.

We've already seen several things that can prevent the affiliate from getting credit, such as their browser blocking cookies.

It would be nice to see a more scientific test of this. If you know a vendor, buy their product through an affiliate link, especially if it says "none" on the page - in that case, the vendor should be getting credit for the full sale.

Some people seem to be assuming that "affiliate=none" means Clickbank is keeping the commission.

While I'm not saying they are purposely taking our commisions, and maybe they are not getting a dime of it at all, but that is not the point. The point is that money that should be going into our pockets is not. They get paid by the vendor, the vendor gets paid but the person who actually did the work did not. If that happend in a normal job you would have a full on riot. I agree that we should not start claiming they are stealing.....but somebodys got more money than they should and I can understand why they said it. And to come out with some crap answer about having a problem from 11:00 yesterday until 8:30 this morning is ****.

I would suspect, and I could be wrong but I bet this has been happening for a while. I just happend to check yesterday at a time when it showed {affilate=none}. Now had I done that an hour later maybe it would have worked and I would have never known, but how many people check all their hop links three or four times a day? Not many. I bet we all will be doing it more now! The only reason I even checked it was because I just started the campaign yesterday and wanted to make sure it worked.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Here is the latest email I got from Jen at Clickbank:

> Partial Hoplinks Disruption

> From 10:00 a.m. PT on 2008-11-12 to 7:30 a.m. PT on 2008-11-13
> ClickBank experienced a minor system issue. The issue was resolved
> quickly and did not affect sales. A small number of affiliates have
> not yet received appropriate credit for a portion of their sales,
> however we expect to have those credits posted within the next 48 hours.
>
> Thank you for your patience. Please contact Customer Service if you
> have any questions.

I'll update you on anything else I find out.

[jasonl70]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Here is the latest email I got from Jen at Clickbank:

> Partial Hoplinks Disruption

> From 10:00 a.m. PT on 2008-11-12 to 7:30 a.m. PT on 2008-11-13
> ClickBank experienced a minor system issue. The issue was resolved
> quickly and did not affect sales. A small number of affiliates have
> not yet received appropriate credit for a portion of their sales,
> however we expect to have those credits posted within the next 48 hours.
>
> Thank you for your patience. Please contact Customer Service if you
> have any questions.

I would be surprised if they actually could retroactively account for lost affiliate sales when people have tested this and said the cookies were not even being dropped in the first place Why can't they at least be honest about this stuff?

I'm sitting on a fat zero for the day

[liban]

I'm also late to this thread. I'm a vendor, and one of my Clickbank accounts is set up exclusively for three of my affiliates. All sales that come through that account come through affiliate hoplinks for these three individuals.

Yesterday I had 2 non-affiliate sales out of 7. From 10-1 until yesterday, I had a total of 4 non-affiliate sales out of 138.

This tells me two things. For this account, at least, it definitely looks like there was a problem yesterday. But there has not been a problem previously. I watch this account closely, and if there seems to be a problem, I owe it to my affiliates to find out why, and to compensate them accordingly.

[wilization]

Has this issue being resolved yet?

[Louis Raven]

I know a Clickbanker that doesn't honor commissions but can't name and shame 'cos he's a warriors and rule no.1

Oh well, just be on the lookout.

Louis

[Dlocks]

Originally Posted by wilization

Has this issue being resolved yet?

Yups, one week ago:

clickbank.com/account/systemLog.htm#2008-11-13

You could also test some of URLs mentioned in this topic to see for yourself that this issue has been solved about a week ago.

[stevecl]

Anybody else having problems with clickbank today? not showing any hops at all so far and that is highly unusual.

steve

[artgirl]

Has anyone else been having issues with your Clickbank id?

My sales has tanked recently on all of my niches!

[Mike Hill]

All of the ClickBank links work fine for me... could it be that everyone's software is out of date? Try clearing your cache and old ClickBank cookies and try agian.

Mike Hill

[Charann Miller]

I'm promoting Strip That Fat and my hoplink is intact. Just went all the way through to the payment page and there it is. Whatever the problem seems to be I hope it all gets sorted soon.

[Peter Johnston]

This is typical. I'm getting too many reports of the same thing happening. Rather worrying..

[Bryan Zimmerman]

Originally Posted by Rannie1

I'm promoting Strip That Fat and my hoplink is intact. Just went all the way through to the payment page and there it is. Whatever the problem seems to be I hope it all gets sorted soon.

It has been worked out. I posted this about 2 weeks ago and I'm pretty sure from what I've heard that clickbank was aware of the problem and fixed it. Just to be safe I have checked all my affiliate links about 4 times a day since this thread was started and they have all checked out fine. So you should have nothing to worry about. Always safest to check them once in a while though.

[nick5014]

Most of my affiliate links seem to be working (but my sales have gone to 0).

Two products worried me - one said no affiliate and the other, "The truth about 6 pack abs" had someone elses clickbank id on the sales page the first time i tested. It went through to the squeeze page with my id at the top, but then had some other guy taking the money for it, so thats a bit worrying. I did test it two more times afterwards and it had gone back to mine, but still..

[Dlocks]

It went through to the squeeze page with my id

And you used the official standard clickbank url? So you used YOURID.PUBLISHERID.hop.clickbank.net

[nick5014]

Originally Posted by Dlocks

And you used the official standard clickbank url? So you used YOURID.PUBLISHERID.hop.clickbank.net

Yes, was the official clickbank id. Generated it from the market place.

It has gone back to my affiliate id on the sales page now but i have the other persons clickbank id written down and will send clickbank an email about it. I guess it could be that i had someone elses cookies stored on more pc?

[Aaron Tan]

I suppose even big companies can have "errors"...

So it's best that we diversify our portfolio of affiliate commissions...

I am diversifying mine in at least 4 throughout the different directories namely : clickbank, Cj, Neverblueads, Paydotcom and of cos Paypal!

Hope you guys would consider "diversifying" too...if you are at the mercy of just one company....

Gd luck!