Clickbank ripping of affiliates - Someone filing charges against clickbank

[PhilG]

I have promoted Clickbank products off and on since 2003 and I can say that these arguments and discussions have ALWAYS been around. Unfortunately, there does seem to be some serious issues with Clickbank, but again, that seems to have always been the case and little is ever done to improve it.

Sadly, I tend to feel that the PayDotCom experiment has not worked out as well as it could have. And so until there is a viable alternative we are stuck with Clickbank.

I don't see why someone like Commission Junction or SearchFeed or even Yahoo haven't jumped into this market with a serious program to compete with Clickbank. I can understand that some of the bigger names don't want to be associated with some of the scammier programs out there, but with proper background checks and balances it seems to me that someone like Yahoo or even MSN could come up with a program that not only competes with Clickbank but also Adsense.

Imagine a program like CBsense.com or CBadspro being run by Yahoo. That would be sweet.

Just my 2 cents.
Phil G

[garyv]

Ok - maybe I'm missing something here, but whether or not an affiliate ID makes it through to the sales page - Clickbank still makes the same amount of money on the transaction. This person said that they bought using their own affiliate ID. The only way that they could prove that CB was shaving money, would be to contact the merchant of the product to see if the sale actually went through on their end or not. Because the only way clickbank would make any extra money would be to cut off the transaction, even before the merchant sees it. Because even if the merchant makes the sale, clickbank makes the same amount on the transaction.

My vote is that there are multiple problems:

1st we know for a fact that there are some security softwares out there that block the clickbank cookies. - There have even been some versions of internet explorer that block clickbank right out of the gate.

2nd there's the Google factor. Anyone that's been around long enough, and has familiarized themselves w/ google's ever famous algorithms, knows that it can be the cause of extreme variations in your traffic - and not only the amount of traffic, but the quality of traffic you receive. So one day you could be receiving thousands of interested visitors, and the next day you'll receive the same amount of traffic, but all from countries that don't even read the language of your webpage. - Which would explain affiliates going from a lot of sales to none, with the same amount of traffic.

Then there's of course the cookie stuffers and adware type. Software sitting on your computer, because you thought it might be nice to get photoshop for "free". The software that says "hey I recognize that purchase you're about to make as an obvious clickbank purchase because of the obvious hoplink". And then changes out the affiliate cookie.

Finally - there probably is a glitch in clickbank's own software or servers that will once in a while drop the affiliate from the equation. - Personally I think they could do a little better of a job communicating to us that they are working on our concerns.

[Floyd Fisher]

Originally Posted by Fabian Tan

The way I see it, here are the problems:

1) Most product owners won't admit they are getting 'free sales' from affiliates. Most will just take 100% of the sales. They don't even know which affiliate was supposed to be credited anyway. If they can get free money, they will take it.

2) If the page shows affiliate=youraffiliateid and you still don't get credited, you won't know. The money may be going god knows where.

3) It may not be that out of the way to suggest that the economy has some part to play in this. That said, faulty tracking isn't helping matters. You could be making $1000 per day, but what happened to say the other $300 that didn't get credited to you when it should have been? Again, who knows where the money went.

People were happily cruising along in spite of lost sales because the conversions were still reading well. Now, you add in the economy with this faulty system and you have a recipe for underachieving sales.

Fabian

Here's the million dollar question: How do you fix it?

Let's not gripe, let's come up with a solution together.

[LB]

1) Most product owners won't admit they are getting 'free sales' from affiliates. Most will just take 100% of the sales. They don't even know which affiliate was supposed to be credited anyway. If they can get free money, they will take it.

If you look at the top products on CB their referred percentage is typically 90% or more. This means that last 10% is going to include people that order through organic search results and those who order the product direct from the merchant (PPC and other ads) etc. This 10% would have to also include affiliate sales that weren't credited properly and the 3% or so of people who have javascript/cookies blocked.

So in short, I don't see the huge numbers people are talking about being credited to merchants with no affiliate commission.

Either the affiliate sales are being hijacked (by either the purchaser themselves or parasiteware) or sales are not being processed at all...which is what I've experienced. Certain days CB just doesn't seem to process sales properly.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by theyoungmarketer

What is the most popular spyware/adware/anti virus program out there?

Maybe there has been an update on the most popular that has started blcoking out the cookies?

its not an AV program issue - otherwise the affiliateID wouldnt show up in the first place. I also know for sure that Kaspersky doesnt cause any problems.

[Stallion]

A week of sales and than a full week of zeros is not an issue of spyware, virus scanners or cookie blocking software.

[Doug English]

A few people here have made comments about what Clickbank would have to gain by passing a sale thru with 'affiliate=none'. Just a shot in the dark here, as I'm not quite sure how their fees work, but...
From a faq on their website, their standard markup is 7.5%, but if the sale is from an affiliate, the markup decreases, for example, its only 2.5% w/ a 66% commission.

Does the affiliate 'eat' the rest of the markup to make up for the difference, or could this be a potential benefit for Clickbank? An extra 5% of even a fraction of the volume they do would be a huge number...

[tedmauro]

I have been following the arbitrage conspiracy. Clickbank has by far been the best money producer so far. We have been using Adwords for almost all of our traffic. There are some big differences now and then between the clicks shown on Adwords and the clicks on Clickbank analytic report. There have been some pretty big differences in Adwords click reports and many of the CPA networks reports as well. We had one campaign showing hundreds of clicks and a couple sales on the CPA network site and Adwords shows like 5 clicks. Maybe all of this is the affiliate software.

[Tyson Faulkner]

I have a solution! Allen of the Warrior Forum should
create a clickbank type site! Then the forum members
could help moderate which programs are real and
which are scams, all while knowing that it is a
trustworthy affiliate site!

=P

I do wish there was another reputable company doing
an affiliate type site though. I'm not saying Paydotcom
isn't, I don't have any experience with it.

But competition in these areas is always good.

Tyson

[PotPie Queen]

This all kind of throws me.

I am a vendor and an affiliate for Clickbank.

As a vendor, I can look in my stats and see everything about a transaction.

For example:

This is what my stats look like for a standard/non-affiliate sale:




This is what a sale looks like thru an affiliate:



This is what my stats look like when someone enters my product page thru one hoplink and ends up buying thru another (hoplink switched)




If an affiliate of mine had consistent traffic but experienced a suddenly lower sales ratio, I could give them an idea of what I see happening.

I can also easily compare my traffic stats to my Clickbank vendor sales stats and SEE that each and every sale was credited properly.

What I CAN'T do anything about is if a consumer clicks an affiliate hoplink and their computer software (or whatever) prevents a hop link from being dropped. But, once that hoplink is clicked and accounted for, I CAN account for any activity after that.

Also, each unique download package that goes out after a purchase is tagged with the Clickbank receipt number, customer name, AND the affiliate that was credited (if applicable).


In my humble opinion, if the affiliate in that "rip off" report was making that much money for a vendor, WHY didn't he/she contact the vendor and ASK what was up from their end?

I am, BY FAR, NOT a "power vendor" on Clickbank, but if one of my affiliates had concerns like this, I would be all over it. If my records show the affiliate was recorded as getting the commission - both on my traffic stats AND on my Clickbank vendor stats, and the affiliate shows they DIDN'T get it... that would be PROOF of a real problem.

Surely I am not the only vendor that can track these things? I'm just a little drop of water in the big vendor world....lol

In my opinion, if Clickbank wanted to do something that would REALLY protect their affiliates, they would do something about being able to buy thru your own hop link. My affiliates work hard and it saddens me when I see their link just swiped away and replaced by another.


Just my two cents.. with pictures =)


Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

[Trader54]

Originally Posted by PotPie Queen

In my humble opinion, if the affiliate in that "rip off" report was making that much money for a vendor, WHY didn't he/she contact the vendor and ASK what was up from their end?

I am, BY FAR, NOT a "power vendor" on Clickbank, but if one of my affiliates had concerns like this, I would be all over it. If my records show the affiliate was recorded as getting the commission - both on my traffic stats AND on my Clickbank vendor stats, and the affiliate shows they DIDN'T get it... that would be PROOF of a real problem.

Surely I am not the only vendor that can track these things? I'm just a little drop of water in the big vendor world....lol


Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

Thanks! Exactly what I have been saying.

[W.P. Allen]

Here's the million dollar question: How do you fix it?

Let's not gripe, let's come up with a solution together.

How about getting rid of cookie tracking altogether and coming up with something more reliable.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by Tyson Faulkner

I have a solution! Allen of the Warrior Forum should
create a clickbank type site! Then the forum members
could help moderate which programs are real and
which are scams, all while knowing that it is a
trustworthy affiliate site!

=P

I do wish there was another reputable company doing
an affiliate type site though. I'm not saying Paydotcom
isn't, I don't have any experience with it.

But competition in these areas is always good.

Tyson

guys, check out REGNOW.COM

In a recent WSO i was talking about them. They dont have things like "health niche"...but superb, superb selection on software and IM stuff. Very professional, MANY products.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by hst151975

How about getting rid of cookie tracking altogether and coming up with something more reliable.

uhm..seems to work with CJ and any other program?

G.

[hotlinkz]

WOW! ClickBank??? Didn't think the economic slump was that bad.

There are a LOT of people who depend on ClickBank income, it would really be a shame if this revelation turns out to be true. PayPal would have a near monoply . Now that's scary!

[MichaelHiles]

It's not like affiliate enabled ecommerce is all that difficult to engineer in 2009.

If someone wants to set up their OWN clickbank, I could probably come up with something pretty quickly.

Of course, there would be a price.

[X]

Mass hysteria is amusing.

You guys aren't listening.

X

[stevecl]

A few other things i have found is that clickbank have credited hops to me from products i have never promoted. Go figure???

Steve

[Marcel Pamphile]

Originally Posted by adamv

I stopped promoting click bank products a couple of months ago. Everytime I think about promoting click bank stuff I read a post like this one and think I'll just stick to promoting other offers.

I'm very interested to see what comes out of this mess.

I've been waiting for a while. Some affiliates on DP have been complaining about this for almost a year now.

[Marcel Pamphile]

btw,

Has anyone split tested these claims using Clickbank and a competitor ?

The results would be interesting.

[Fernando Veloso]

I am just starting my CB adventure as a Vendor and this is scary! Hope there is a solution for this issue.

[yoshiko]

Hi rafmandu,

I just started testing with Commission Junction, SharaSale, and Paydotcom.com. PDC is the lowest of my priority as i had bad experience with it.

Anyone has experience with ShareaSale.com pls comment?

[activetrader]

Originally Posted by Trader54

Are there any publishers that have purchased their own product and not got credited for it?

The other thing is if clickbank was screwing both publisher and affiliate you would think there would be a incident where someone requested a refund from a publisher and the publisher would find out that he never had record of the sale.

I know one of the products I sell as a publisher on clickbank I get a lot of customer feedback and questions. I have never had a case where I got a question from someone or feedback where I had no record of that person purchasing from me. And I been selling the product for about 5 years now.

Has any other publisher run into this?

Interesting. I had someone contact me and say they had a problem with downloading my products. I could not locate their sale record so I asked for it. The person sends me her credit card info but says she does not have a CB receipt. I have yet to hear back, but I wondered if she just didn't know how to buy through ClickBank or she bought but did not receive a receipt.

[Matt Hoey]

Ok so what's the verdit on this? Is there any real proof or accusations made yet so we can see a response from clickbank.

[jasonl70]

I just don't believe all the people like Steven who have seen their affiliate id dropped from the order page are lying...

Nor do I think all the emails I and others get from customers regarding their payments to CB not being accepted are from clueless nit-wits who don't know what they are doing...

It is evident to me that there are numerous problems..

It's not like we are claiming glabal warming is real, or that we saw elvis

[Trader54]

Originally Posted by Matt Hoey

Ok so what's the verdit on this? Is there any real proof or accusations made yet so we can see a response from clickbank.

Lots of accusations but haven't seen no proof.

[Trader54]

Originally Posted by jasonl70

I just don't believe all the people like Steven who have seen their affiliate id dropped from the order page are lying...

Nor do I think all the emails I and others get from customers regarding their payments to CB not being accepted are from clueless nit-wits who don't know what they are doing...

It is evident to me that there are numerous problems..

It's not like we are claiming glabal warming is real, or that we saw elvis

I agree there are probably all kinds of technical glitches and probably happens over most affiliate programs.

I like your global warming comment ... LOL

[cassandra]

What is an alternative for publishers using ClickBank? I just got started with them and also would like to know how we can get new affiliates for our e-book.

[Razer Rage]

Originally Posted by cassandra

What is an alternative for publishers using ClickBank? I just got started with them and also would like to know how we can get new affiliates for our e-book.

paydotcom.com is one.

[Shakul]

If clickbank just shaves 1 sale out of 100 sales, then they must be making at least $1000 per day extra?..lol

[Floyd Fisher]

Originally Posted by hst151975

How about getting rid of cookie tracking altogether and coming up with something more reliable.

You say come up with something more reliable, exactly what would you use?

[JNFerree]

I wonder why the veeps from pepperJam, Hydra, CJ, NeverBlue & Company haven't weighed on this one yet?

Maybe someone should ping one of the VP's from one of these competitive networks to find out if they have an 'educated' opinion or a semi-sinister Sun Tzu counter attack in the works to shave a few points off the marketshare lead CB has been enjoying for so long?

[jasonl70]

Originally Posted by wiper

Where is the proof sales kick in again when opening a new CB account? Didn't see anything yet.

I opened a new account for a new niche I was going to get started in. Nothing was live yet, so I replaced some of my old hoplinks with the new one.
There has been no noticeble change over the weekend.

[stefanjames]

wow. very interesting. I'd like to see what comes out of this as I'm a ACTIVE promoter on Clickbank. Wow again lol

[captivereef]

my individual tracking IDs are not working today? They are all coming through as just my username???


My sales have stopped for the last three days

[yoshiko]

captivereef, the situation is getting more serious and it is beginning to get me worried. I may hold back plans to further market CB products for the moment and see how things turn out... this is getting depressing indeed.

[Eswar]

Ok,

Can any one tell me what other networks those provide digital prodcuts other than clickbank & paydotcom?

If we have a good network, why should we worry about clickbank?

I have very bitter experience with paydotcom. Here many sellers are not paying to the affiliates. They simply make money and run away.

[yoshiko]

Eswar,

I too have been asking the same question. No one has answered.

I too had the same bad experience with PDC. The way PDC works is very different from CB. The Vendor has final say to pay you or to run, unlike CB which manages just about all the financials, which is also not a good biz model as we can see from this thread here...

[grandstar]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Kelsall

Someone in our coaching program is claiming the same thing...

He bought a product that he was promoting with his own affiliate ID and has not been credited with a sale and it has been 2 days.

Why should he use his affiliate ID to buy? He does not deserve a cent!

[grandstar]

Must people always grumble! Clickbank made many IM their 1st bucks and many earn most of their online income from it. Were it to go bust, many would weep.

A boxer once said about Don King- 30% of what he promises to pay is more that a 100% of what other promoters promise to pay.

Clickbank is miles ahead of the rest and they do payout more than 30% of what they promise (obviously). I won't be surprised its up to 90% or more.

Their model is good, though not perfect! If you think clickbank should kick the bucket, do let us know!

[daisuke75248]

hey hes from az lol

does cb even have a number to contact them?

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by Eswar

Ok,

Can any one tell me what other networks those provide digital prodcuts other than clickbank & paydotcom?

If we have a good network, why should we worry about clickbank?

I have very bitter experience with paydotcom. Here many sellers are not paying to the affiliates. They simply make money and run away.

check out regnow.com <--- very good for digital IM related products and software.

I agree, CB would be great if there wouldn't be those problems. As for me, right now my CB sales and everything seems to work.

[BizBoost]

Excuse me, everybody, but maybe I am missing something here. Wouldn't all of this be rather quickly resolved if a few highly active affiliates contacted a product owner and asked them to place a bit of Google Analytics code on their "Thank You" page?

Even if the CB tracking failed, Google would continue to track properly and that would give us all the answer we're looking for, wouldn't it?

Eric

[garyv]

Originally Posted by BizBoost

Excuse me, everybody, but maybe I am missing something here. Wouldn't all of this be rather quickly resolved if a few highly active affiliates contacted a product owner and asked them to place a bit of Google Analytics code on their "Thank You" page?

Even if the CB tracking failed, Google would continue to track properly and that would give us all the answer we're looking for, wouldn't it?

Eric

Often times, if a merchant has several affiliates' google analytics codes on his thankyou page, it will cause false positives. If a buyer looks at several ads from different affiliates before buying, it will trigger all of their analytic codes. Then if he buys from one of them, it will trigger a conversion for every affiliate that he visited.

[tedmauro]

I went like 6 days straight without a sale a while back. I have been getting several sales per day for the past several days. Pretty up and down.

[WebScript]

Originally Posted by yoshiko

Eswar,

I too have been asking the same question. No one has answered.

I too had the same bad experience with PDC. The way PDC works is very different from CB. The Vendor has final say to pay you or to run, unlike CB which manages just about all the financials, which is also not a good biz model as we can see from this thread here...

I don't know of any others that offer payment processing AND affiliate sales.

2checkout.com handles payment processing but I'm pretty sure they don't offer affiliate sales services

e-junkie.com offers payment processing through clickbank, google, paypal and others, and they also handle digital delivery/fulfillment but no affiliate services.

digitalriver handles payment processing and digital delivery/fulfillment but no affiliate services.

I don't have accounts with any of these services but if I got any of that wrong I'm sure someone here will correct me.

I have also had bad experiences with PDC. The way it works, is that the Product-publisher ends up with all the money, less PayPal fees and less PDC fees. PDC provides the publisher with a report of how much the publisher owes to which affiliates. And then, it is up to the "honor" system as to if and how much the publisher pays the affiliates. Of course most PDC publishers are honest but some are not.

[Agent007]

Wasn't ClickBank in the courts the last few years oiver a big case about having merchants that sell bulk email prohgrams? Apparently some company is suing CB for spamming.

Did a search but couldnt get more info quickly as its over a year since I last heard about it. If it cost them millions that would put pressure to syphon funds from sales. Such strain on funds with legal battles can cause people to do strange things too.

Just a possible motive but not evidence of wrongdoing in itself.

[adamv]

Originally Posted by grandstar

Why should he use his affiliate ID to buy? He does not deserve a cent!

He was doing a test to see if clickbank would credit the sale and they did not. He wasn't trying to just get himself a discount. He was trying to see if clickbank's tracking was working properly or not.

[WebScript]

Originally Posted by MaxMoneyOnline

So, this problem is only affecting ClickBank affiliates and not vendors?

It's harder to mess with the numbers for the vendor-portion of the sale. The vendor is notified of each sale and is responsible for fulfilling each sale ... they know (or should know) how many products were downloaded. They are also responsible for support, etc...

But in the cases where there was no affiliate, (Affiliate="none'), it is different situation. Here the vendor should receive the vendor commission and the affiliate commission (the full commission after fees). In this case, it is conceivable that some of the affiliate commission could end up "missing", either intentionally, or due to some sort of error.

[WebScript]

Originally Posted by daisuke75248

hey hes from az lol

does cb even have a number to contact them?

They used to have their phone number on their site because at one time I had to call them to cancel something that I was not getting any response from the merchant ... but I just went to their site and couldn't find a phone number.

If you go to clickbank.com/contact_us.html

They have links to FAQ's and contact forms for different purposes, plus their fax number and address:

To reach us by fax, please dial: 1-208-342-3934.

To reach us by mail, please use the following address:

Click Sales Inc
917 S. Lusk Street, Suite 200
Boise ID 83706 USA

At ripoffreport.com, they show a phone number for ClickBank
(I haven't personally verified this phone number):

THE PHONE NUMBER TO CLICKBANK Here it is 208-472-9500

208-472-9500