Commission for not promoting on CB!

[Prashaant]

Somethings definately wrong with Clickbank's reporting. I wake up this morning hoping to see a few hundred $$ in my a/c... and what do i see?

a $3.28 commission from a product I haven't even promoted - RCFORMULA! And NO other sales! This is strange. I rarely have a day with no sales... not to forget the $300 spent on PPC.

Anyone experiencing the same?

[prodozoan]

Clickbank has been crazy lately..

I go for days without sale, although my traffic has been consistent and have been selling regularly earlier.
At times, I get 2 purchases from the same customer. It is ok when it happens once, but it has happened 4 times in the last 1 month and that is weird.


Ajith

[homebizbuilder]

Hi, such funny things do happen. But watch out. Hopefully it is not refunded. It happened to me. As for spending hundreds of bucks on PPC, what I can only say from my own experience is that sales conversion has been rather weak for these 2 weeks.

Now we can only hope that people will start shopping as the days draw near to Christmas.

Originally Posted by woracal

Somethings definately wrong with Clickbank's reporting. I wake up this morning hoping to see a few hundred $$ in my a/c... and what do i see?

a $3.28 commission from a product I haven't even promoted - RCFORMULA! And NO other sales! This is strange. I rarely have a day with no sales... not to forget the $300 spent on PPC.

Anyone experiencing the same?

Originally Posted by prodozoan

Clickbank has been crazy lately..

I go for days without sale, although my traffic has been consistent and have been selling regularly earlier.
At times, I get 2 purchases from the same customer. It is ok when it happens once, but it has happened 4 times in the last 1 month and that is weird.


Ajith

[chris_surfrider]

A $3 commission on a $97 product seems suspicious.

I also "earned" 2 commissions from RCFORMULA today on one of my CB accounts.

Makes no sense. I've never promoted this and I don't use stuff like HyperVRE where my aff links get embedded in other people's content.

I can only think of 3 possibilities:

1. Some sort of backend tagging. Unlikely.

2. Someone has a similar aff nickname and they messed up(?). But again, highly unlikely since this isn't an isolated incident...

And -

3. The merchant (or someone) is running manual sales through a variety of aff links on CB in an effort to generate "sales" and perhaps gravity to game the Marketplace listings engine.

Maybe I'm wrong - but that's the only thing that makes sense.

Although you'd think the "Earned per sale" quotient would be a little weak at $3 or so.

I'm honestly perplexed.

-Chris

[chris_surfrider]

Also - maybe they're using something like EasyClickMate to run multiple products with one account. Hence the $3 commission on a (seemingly) $97 product.

But it still doesn't explain the mystery "commissions".

-Chris

[Prashaant]

Update: I just got another sale from rcformula... $3.28 commision. This is getting really strange... either someone does not know what they're doing... or it's some CB reporting problem... Btw.. other sales are coming in ok..

[Alp Bozkurt]

Create a new CB account and test it with the same traffic. I remember someone has solved the same problem this way.

[Prashaant]

but what do i check for? other sales have started this afternoon..

[Harvey Segal]

woracal

What is the Item number of these sales in the Transaction report ?

Harvey


.

[Prashaant]

its 2. this is probably another landing page the owner created.

[Harvey Segal]

Originally Posted by woracal

its 2. this is probably another landing page the owner created.

This is another item in the account.

If you click on the payment link http://2.rcformula.pay.clickbank.net
you will see that it sells for $7


Use the ClickBank Calculator
http://www.clickbankguide.com/calculator.htm
and you find that 60% commission on $7 does equate to $3.28

Harvey

[Prashaant]

ok.. but that means someone else is using my cb id to sell? Strange... not that I mind the "free" $3 sales...

[chris_surfrider]

Yes, the issue isn't the commission amount.

It's the fact that we're getting "commissions" out of nowhere, and for products we are NOT promoting.

-Chris

[Seattle Mike]

Earlier this month I got a $17 commission for something I was promoting a year ago. The product website has been offline for 4 months. So I don't know how they could buy it this month. Too bizarre.

[RevenueRabbi]

it might be that someone put up a page and misspelled their user id so it has yours instead...

[chris_surfrider]

Originally Posted by BizBooks

it might be that someone put up a page and misspelled their user id so it has yours instead...

Not if this is happening to multiple affiliates.

-Chris

[JoshuaGM]

Have you guys checked with Clickbank? Rather than going the long way round to find out why and how you were rewarded with a commission of a product you didn't promote, might be easy to just write them directly.

Let us know if anyone does find out more.

God bless,
Josh

[JoshuaGM]

Found this info on CB Affiliate Tools page:

For example, to make a hoplink to the Marketplace, use "Marketplace" as the PUBLISHER name in your hoplink:

May not be the exact thing that is happening. But do let us know if you get any reply from CB.

Hope this helps!
Josh

[Kay King]

Something strange. RCFormula is a product on CB (but not the one the OP shows an order for as that refers to a forex product).

The CB info lists RCFormula as $3.27 commission - but the product page shows as $97 price!

Can't find the forex product on CB. Let us know what you learn about this - sounds interesting.

kay

[Victoria Gates]

I cringe now everytime I see someone still paying hundreds for PPC, I found a method where I simply dropped the whole ppc idea completely because it works better. If anyone would like to know what feel free to send me a message and I can let you know. Just a fact.

[Harvey Segal]

Originally Posted by Kay King

Something strange. RCFormula is a product on CB (but not the one the OP shows an order for as that refers to a forex product).

The CB info lists RCFormula as $3.27 commission - but the product page shows as $97 price!

Can't find the forex product on CB. Let us know what you learn about this - sounds interesting.

kay

The items in the account are

1. Recurring Cash Formula $97
2. Impact Forex System $7 (Commission $3.28)

As the commission in the Marketplace is shown as
$/sale: $3.27
it is possible that only Item 2 has been sold

Harvey

[jrsencio]

Originally Posted by woracal

Somethings definately wrong with Clickbank's reporting. I wake up this morning hoping to see a few hundred $$ in my a/c... and what do i see?

a $3.28 commission from a product I haven't even promoted - RCFORMULA! And NO other sales! This is strange. I rarely have a day with no sales... not to forget the $300 spent on PPC.

Anyone experiencing the same?

Hey... that happened to me yesterday too!

Three sales of $3.28 commission, same affiliate ID too.

What's going on?

[jrsencio]

Originally Posted by Harvey.Segal

This is another item in the account.

If you click on the payment link http://2.rcformula.pay.clickbank.net
you will see that it sells for $7


Use the ClickBank Calculator
http://www.clickbankguide.com/calculator.htm
and you find that 60% commission on $7 does equate to $3.28

Harvey

Hi Harvey.. just wondering why this happens for a product I don't promote?

[jrsencio]

Originally Posted by Harvey.Segal

This is another item in the account.

If you click on the payment link http://2.rcformula.pay.clickbank.net
you will see that it sells for $7


Use the ClickBank Calculator
ClickBank Calculator
and you find that 60% commission on $7 does equate to $3.28

Harvey

Hi Harvey.. just wondering why this happens for a product I don't promote?

[Harvey Segal]

Originally Posted by jrsencio

Hi Harvey.. just wondering why this happens for a product I don't promote?

Yes - that is the main question in this thread.
(I'm just trying to answer the query about the commision amount)

I would suggest you
- ask the Publisher if he has an idea
- ask a customer where they saw the product link
(or get the Publisher to ask)

Harvey

[Mike Bogowski]

Hey!

This happened to me too but with 2 different products. Also I had 5 transactions totalling around 15 bucks.

Ill probably go and buy a DVD with this new found fortune :P

[jrsencio]

rcformula is the merchant id for the product Recurring Cash Formula that sells at $97!

I'd hate to think the clickbank system went crazy and our actual sales got mixed up.

[jrsencio]

Hey guys this is really strange, I just checked my clickbank account and got another sale for a product I am not promoting... FXAUTOM and also got a $3.28 commission.

[chris_surfrider]

Yep, me as well. Got 2 sales today from that FXAUTOM...

I promoted FAPTURBO about 2 weeks ago to a forex niche list.

That's the only connection I can possibly make here... maybe these are some strange backend sales being credited to affiliates?

No idea

-Chris

[jrsencio]

Originally Posted by chris_surfrider

Yep, me as well. Got 2 sales today from that FXAUTOM...

I promoted FAPTURBO about 2 weeks ago to a forex niche list.

That's the only connection I can possibly make here... maybe these are some strange backend sales being credited to affiliates?

No idea

-Chris

I don't get it. And clickbank conveniently has no immediate contact details other than a fax number.

For my part I have not promoted any of the products I am getting the $3 commissions for.

[talfighel]

I have no idea what happened to ClickBank. I still see many people here who are still promoting clickbank offers and make money but I also see people here who are promiting them like crazy and are not making any sales what so ever, including myself.

I am amazed that tracking for clickbank is not working properly, yet some make money and others are not.

In the past 2 months I made 1 sale from them and that is weird.

Thank god that I am also promoting other programs other then clickbank.

Tal

[Prashaant]

the mystery commissions have stopped..... other sales have been a lil slow.. but still coming in..

[Matthew Olson]

Looks like one more element added to the CB weirdness that's been going on lately.

That's why I've bailed out on actively promoting CB untill they sort this out. I've put my efforts into promoting CJ products and all is good once again (and getting paid daily is a nice bonus too.)

[Kunle Olomofe]

Originally Posted by ArthurRose

Let's be honest people, Clickbank is either shaving affiliates or going down the drain...If everyone - merchants and affiliates - decides to move somewhere else, it will make them thing double about taking your comission. I personally am witnessing sale drop by at least 4x despite increasing traffic to my landing page.

I agree with ArthurRose CB seems to be going down daily, maybe it is time marketers shift en masse from CB, these horror stories are getting to be way too frequent.

Personally I would never be able to swallow not getting paid after I take time and spend money to send buying traffic to any site.

I really think I'm going to stick with other aff networks that don't keep leaving you out in the cold. They may not pay as much per sale or have as many sexy products but at least you don't get your commissions stolen or simply washed into oblivion which in the end is worse than a smaller commission.

I've just discovered a new amazon beta package that will likely up my amazon affiliate sales anyway, the first time I promoted my sites using it, I got a 20% CTR from just 9 visitors though no sales, it was a test run though as the market I tested on is not really an online purchasing one. But 20% CTR? Makes me wanna explore that more and more than promoting CB for zero bucks no matter how hard you promote.

I suggest you guys shift some of your efforts to other aff networks as well... it may be the wisest choice you make for 2009 and perhaps beyond.