Clickbank ripping of affiliates - Someone filing charges against clickbank

[halyda]

so far, I don't make any sale through click bank...but it never make me down...I will always try and try...

[Steve Shannon]

They also allowed users to close their accounts now. I suppose customer service was getting busy with the requests of people closing their accounts out of protest.

Try to close your account...

When you click the "close account" button you get a popup message that states, "Are you sure you want to close your account? This action is irreversible! Any money still in your account will be forfeited. Click OK only if you are certain."

So, now they're not going to pay you your remaining commissions if you decide to leave them?

Anyone know if this is a "real" or "veiled" threat?... I'd like to close my account. I'm done with them.

Steve

[iron1]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Well, low and behold, I went to the sales page, clicked on pay now and what
do you think it showed at the bottom of the payment page?

Affiliate=none

I had this happen a couple of times myself just checking my links under almost the same circumstances, but I had something very strange happen just 2 days ago.

I was building an affiliate landing page for one of my writers for a clickbank product. And when I got to the end I went and checked all the links in the same manner to make sure his link was on the order page and instead of his link that I hard coded into the page, it was replaced by another affiliate link that said affiliate=shawn87 or something like that. Don't quote me on the aff id...That may not be the exact link that was there because I didn't get a screen shot or anything and it just in a split second magically turned into the affiliate link that I had put in to begin with.

I absolutely know I saw this and re-tested it many times before I zipped up the file and sent it to my writer. And I had him test it as well and it has been fine ever since. This has vexed me extremely, anyone with an opinion on this ...I'm all ears

[webpagesrus]

This dosen't surprise me, with so much corporate greed and corruption anymore....
By the way I have had similar problems with CJ....

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by Steve Shannon

Try to close your account...

When you click the "close account" button you get a popup message that states, "Are you sure you want to close your account? This action is irreversible! Any money still in your account will be forfeited. Click OK only if you are certain."

So, now they're not going to pay you your remaining commissions if you decide to leave them?

Anyone know if this is a "real" or "veiled" threat?... I'd like to close my account. I'm done with them.

Steve

If you would have read the news on the Clickbank site, you would have your answer.
Any balances under $10 will be forfeited when you close your account, to avoid
forfeitures above $10 you can find your answer here:
https://www.clickbank.com/account_fa...unt_question_7

[jhn2001]

How about cookie stuffing here ? may be the conversion were taking place in someothers affiliate id ?

[Steve Shannon]

Originally Posted by Wayne

If you would have read the news on the Clickbank site, you would have your answer.
Any balances under $10 will be forfeited when you close your account, to avoid
forfeitures above $10 you can find your answer here:
https://www.clickbank.com/account_fa...unt_question_7

Already read it. But that's not what the popup says.

That's why I was hoping for some clarification from someone "in the know". I emailed CB first about closing my account and they told me to go this route. I questioned them about this discrepancy and have heard nothing back.

Maybe I'll just click "OK" and if the money vanishes I'll write it off as a business loss and move on. Fortunately it's not a huge amount (but it's over $10). Oh well...

Steve

[helpmePPC]

I have a hard time believing they could pull this off often. There are too many voices that would rise in protest.

[jasonl70]

re:cookie stuffing

If someone clicks on your hoplink and then procedes to purchase the item, then no amount of cookie stuffing can take that sale away from you. The last site to set the cookie wins.

If they decide not to buy yet, and surf around the net before returning to purchase, then yes - a cookie stuffer could overwrite your cookie. OR, they could just as easily click on someone elses link, and you legitimately lose the sale

[jasonl70]

Originally Posted by helpmePPC

I have a hard time believing they could pull this off often. There are too many voices that would rise in protest.

I hear lots of voices protesting

[LB]

Originally Posted by jasonl70

re:cookie stuffing

If someone clicks on your hoplink and then procedes to purchase the item, then no amount of cookie stuffing can take that sale away from you. The last site to set the cookie wins.

If they decide not to buy yet, and surf around the net before returning to purchase, then yes - a cookie stuffer could overwrite your cookie. OR, they could just as easily click on someone elses link, and you legitimately lose the sale

There are browser toolbars and other malware that will drop their affiliate cookie in as the link is clicked or displayed in the browser.

You can only guarantee you get credit for a sale if on the checkout page it says "affiliate=yourID".

[Charles E. White]

Originally Posted by ArthurRose

You should get some glasses. I see lots of proof.



You got it all wrong man! Cookie stuffing might work only if after they click on your hoplink and then do not buy and start visiting other cookie stuffed sites and then buy. If they click on your link and buy immediately or do not visit any cookie stuffed sites, you are good to go!
Purchasing the product through affiliate link and not getting credited is not enough proof for you?

Where exactly did you see verifiable proof? What you seen is where one person said he was ripped-off! Then all of a sudden the FBI is involved, this would have absolutely nothing to do with the FBI! Give me a break! Next, he'll have the CIA involved too! You not being from the U.S.A., do you actually know what the FBI Does?

[Doug English]

Originally Posted by Charles E. White

Where exactly did you see verifiable proof? What you seen is where one person said he was ripped-off! Then all of a sudden the FBI is involved, this would have absolutely nothing to do with the FBI! Give me a break! Next, he'll have the CIA involved too! You not being from the U.S.A., do you actually know what the FBI Does?

I'm not accusing Clickbank of any wrongdoing and I don't lend any credibility to this ripoffreport complaint (anyone who is filing a lawsuit does NOT make posts about it on internet forums), but in case there is some kind of intentional fraud, I think you are wrong about your FBI statement. This kind of thing is exactly what the IC3 was created for.

[danhughes]

There is no kind of Cookie Stuffing that could cause this to happen. It's possible that Malware is to blame, but the Malware would have to be really crappy if it was stripping all affiliate ids.

There is absolutely no question networks in general shave leads... Ask a blackhatter if they have ever got credit on all their fake leads and they will laugh at you. If your making up bogus leads then you know how many went through!!

Many times networks will try and legitimize it by calling it scrubbing, but at the end of the day it's financial manipulation.

In my mind Clickbank is the problem.

If their system is inadequate, then it has been for so long that at this point they are negligent.

Or they are shaving leads?
It may seem like they have nothing to gain because they just a payment processor of sorts... but it wouldn't take much.

You're a publisher and sell 1000 units. Clickbank tells you that only 50% of your sales were from affilaites as opposed to the 75% you were expecting.... are you going to complain??? Heck no... are you going to start auditing your sales v's fulfilled orders? No way... not unless something was waaay off. Not to mention that downloaded products are tough to reconcile at best.

2, 3, 10 orders a day of popular products multiplied by all the transactions they do each day... That's a lot of money... But apparently not enough that they can't hide behind words like Blackhat, spyware, antivirus et al.

Imagine if Visa or Mastercard "lost" transactions for retailers... That's what affiliates face every day.

[Charles E. White]

Originally Posted by Doug English

I'm not accusing Clickbank of any wrongdoing and I don't lend any credibility to this ripoffreport complaint (anyone who is filing a lawsuit does NOT make posts about it on internet forums), but in case there is some kind of intentional fraud, I think you are wrong about your FBI statement. This kind of thing is exactly what the IC3 was created for.

Doug, you're absolutely right! This is my day for being a dumbass I guess.

[hbsjcd3]

Cookie stuffing, malware, spy software......the grassy knol? DO I smell Clickbank conspiracy?

[johnsamuels]

I would have thought that Clickbank would get paid the same amount whether it was a straight to merchant sale or through an affiliate... Don't they just take a percentage of sales processed through their site?

I have actually first hand experienced the phantom blank affiliate phenomenon, but i do not think it is clickbank doing anything on purpose, more likely their system is outdated and overloaded.

No need to sit back and take it though, offer a bonus to customers when they forward you their receipt of purchase. Then you can really see if sales are being dropped, and how many.

[W.P. Allen]

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

G.

uhm...you sure about that?

Affiliate marketing is a billion dollar business and its foundation for tracking commissions is built upon very fragile browser cookies. And there are many ways in which a cookie can get "eaten" and you lose a sale. Google it. You can find tons of discussions on blogs and other forums about the frailties of affiliate cookie tracking.

So what would I do? How about replacing cookie tracking with server side tracking? Although this presents similar problems.

Sigh...

[GeorgR.]

you are always talking about cookies stuffed or eaten...but we're talking about situations where we SEE that the cookie HAS been set properly - otherwise your ID wouldn't even show up on the clickbank checkout page.

The problem is (according to the allegations) that despite proper set cookie and displayed affiliateID sales are being made and NOT credited.

Furthermore, i agree...it seems that everyone can go on ripoff report and can write whatever they want - without a need of proof. I also agree that "FBI" and whatever institution is totally out of place here - making this rather non credible and sound more like a rant of some angry affiliate.

The big problem with clickbank is actually that we affiliates have NO real means of tracking at "point of completed purchase" - we can only track as far as whether someone clicks a hoplink or not...but we can NOT put our tracking code on the actual "purchase completed" page since this is out of your control.

I could install tracking on some sites and can make statistics "XXX people clicked out to the vendor page"...but never know how many really purchased from clickbank.

[Stallion]

Nothing will ever convince me that Clickbank isn't having problems and isn't pulling strings behind the scenes. I'm not saying they're shaving or any other libelous statement. I'm just saying if I have a great week with lots of sales, a new pay period starts and I get 7 straight days of zeros (with the same traffic) and I send a complaint email and sales magically start 6 minutes after they reply to it and tell me that the problem is on my side.

I can't trust any system like this. It's officially outside the range of statistical probabilities. If Clickbank was an investment firm, it would of already been investigated by the SEC because of the statistically improbable returns.

[GeorgR.]

then the solution can only be that a "super affiliate" with relatively steady sales monitors it and documents it.
If someone usually makes $1000/ish sales a day and can PROOF his traffic and how he experiences statistically VERY unlikely drops in sales (for days in a row). ANY big affiliate could monitor this and relatively easily "document" those things.

Same with the documented purchases which never show up.

But the rant on ripoff report does NOT convince in that regards.

[Jasim]

It is pretty scary to think we have to waste valuable time checking up on the ones we all are making money for. I know I was promoting a hot new product last summer and my article was in 3 place on the first page of Google for over a week and never got a sale. I then changed my format and resubmitted to other locations and started making money but while I was at the head of the pack I got nothing

[tedmauro]

I made a sale on click bank a couple days back. The sale was made from a link that I am not sending traffic to and the analytics report shows zero hops and one sale.

[hbsjcd3]

Now that we are about Clickbank, are there any other affiliate networks you folks think are ripping off too?

I think Azoogle an Neverblue are ripping me off, although I can't prove it.

[Harvey Segal]

ClickBank has now posted an official rebuttal on the Ripoff Report

Click here

Harvey

[Charles Butler]

This is interesting... is there anyone on the forums not being affected by this?

[iron1]

Originally Posted by Harvey.Segal

ClickBank has now posted an official rebuttal on the Ripoff Report

Click here

Harvey

This report really must have ruffled some feathers over there. Although there response was clear and direct, I think it was a little vague considering all that's at stake.

[Stallion]

Originally Posted by iron1

This report really must have ruffled some feathers over there. Although there response was clear and direct, I think it was a little vague considering all that's at stake.

It's just another vague response by CB. No substance at all, not that I would expect any substance from any business on ripoffreport. The only thing that comes to mind is "doth protest too much". It must be getting to them. If only they'd channel that energy to fixing the PROBLEMS.

[hbsjcd3]

Originally Posted by tx82

The only part of all this I find fascinating is when people are saying that when they create a new CB account sales increase.

How would changing your Clickbank ID cause sales to increase? It makes no sense. A new affiliate link is the same as your old one isnt it?

Ive never been more baffled.

I guess, they mean that the old affiliate might have some recording problems with the CLICKbank API....thats the only reason I can think of.

[Ephrils]

Both Clickbank and Neverblue have put out new Affiliate Agreements. Normally, not a big deal, but the timing seems odd.

[Davion Wong]

I have sent them an email with the statements showing the drop in hops per sale to Clickbank for their investigation. You guys may want to do so too.

[Stallion]

Originally Posted by Davion Wong

I have sent them an email with the statements showing the drop in hops per sale to Clickbank for their investigation. You guys may want to do so too.

What's the point? They're not going to fix it. If they wanted it fixed they would of done it a long time ago. My account has been butchered and I've really got into them with their so called support. There last one told me they wouldn't be able to help me anymore because I wasn't "professional". Than they had the nerve to tell me they're professional, polite and honest.

I wasn't professional because I refused to believe them and stated I could prove their payment process was broken by simple statistical analysis that shows a completely improbable scenario. Seriously a full week of sales to a full week of zeros. Like how could they not deny a problem.

They're useless.

It's time for Atlas to shrug. All the affiliates need to dump them, move on.

[jgand]

There is a lot of this going around, i'm sure its not just clickbank.

Very difficult to track this and get good information for things you should be credited for. I'm always skeptical about these programs.

[Robert Herrie]

My thought is as follows:The company is HUGE and for them to attempt to filter off other peoples sales in a niche where there are more talented gurus using the system then there are actually administrating or building the system (CB)..Would be very clearly stoopid in fact blatant ..Especially when the owners of CB hit it the biggest of all of us combined. That is no false statement in itself..But here is the problem ..WHAT IF???And there have been much crazier accusations in the world then this..My own opinion for what it is worth ..This could definately be true VERY TRUE and i would not even consider letting this go ..In fact the FBI is probably the only place you would be able to go...And whoever said this earlier t"they would not tell him that they were doing an investigation(FBI)" Thats true they would not .But i believe if they have a credible complaint or in fact more than 1 complaint ,They will definately look into this..And lets face it ..The pay checks of many thousand people and major companies come from CB..So if this just turns out to be coincidence. In which it very well might be.But if it turns out to be a coincidence then it would not hurt anyone to let the FBI do a little investigating to keep CB on their toes in case they really are doing this ....
OUT

[jasonl70]

Originally Posted by LB

There are browser toolbars and other malware that will drop their affiliate cookie in as the link is clicked or displayed in the browser.

You can only guarantee you get credit for a sale if on the checkout page it says "affiliate=yourID".

Yeah, but that's not really cookie stuffing - it's outright hijacking, and it's a lot more common then people think since they are allowed into programs by various companies (Commission Junction allows them).

[hbsjcd3]

I guess you should stop focusing on Clickbank and get on with your promoting....there nothing you will do. They are a giant, like Google....I guess its there road or the highway.
In order to keep my sanity in this business, don't sweat the little stuff anymore

[Steven Wagenheim]

Here is the reply I just got back from Jennifer at Clickbank regarding this
issue and one I was having that was similar.

Hi Steve,

Thank you again for providing us with information to help us research the affiliate problem you reported. Our technical team researched the hops and hits to the order form through the IP address that you were using. There were 7 total hoplinks made from your IP address between March 5 and March 7. There were also 3 hits to the order form from your IP (two were for creation7 and one was for easyo). In all 3 cases, "swagen" was tracked successfully as the affiliate. There were no hits to the order form from your IP address in that timeframe (or any time after March 1) for which the affiliate was “none”.

It is possible that your ISP changed your IP address on the day that you saw [affiliate=none]. In this case, we’d have your queries under another IP address. However, for thoroughness we did check all hits to the order form for "creation7", and did not see your user agent appear in any order form hits where [affiliate=none].

If you see this happen again, please let me know right away! Check your IP address right after you see the problem, and capture a screenshot if you can. Any additional information you can collect will help us track down any potential problem.

The message we need the forums to hear and remember is that ClickBank is only successful when our clients are successful! Our vendors are more successful when our affiliates are successful! The key to ClickBank’s success is our AFFILIATE DRIVEN marketplace! If there is a problem, we are devoted to finding it, but from what we have researched so far, the system appears to be working correctly.

ClickBank has been in the affiliate business for over 10 years. We have sent out over one million checks to our vendors and affiliates for a total of over one billion dollars. We continue to see increased affiliate driven sales. In 2008 we achieved 75% affiliate driven sales; our best year ever. As you know ClickBank makes exactly the same amount, whether an affiliate is credited with the sale or not. We just want to see overall sales increase and we all win. We are looking forward to sending the next billion dollars to our clients.

There are always legitimate circumstances when affiliates believe they should have earned commissions that were not credited to their account, and there are also periods of sales fluctuations. So anytime you or any of your contacts have concerns, please give us the opportunity to research and respond to the concerns. If there is an issue, we will work quickly to make sure you are receiving the credit you have earned. It is through your hard work that we all succeed! Please provide any specific information or links to videos to research@clickbank.com with the subject “ClickBank Commissions”, and we will look into the problem!

This is really important to us, so feel free to post this message or part of this message to the forums!

I appreciate you working with us all of these years and trusting me to help track down any problems!

Thanks,

Jennifer
V.P. Operations
www.clickbank.com

[Frank Bruno]

Why would they need to track your ip address? Are they insinuating that they also track by YOUR I.P address as well as using cookies?

I'm not quite understanding whey they would need YOUR I.P address....

Also the last part of her message is quite "canned" meaning that they have this message ready to fire out to other affiliates who are also having tracking issues. Again supporting suspicions of in house tracking issues.

Frank Bruno

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Frank Bruno

Why would they need to track your ip address? Are they insinuating that they also track by YOUR I.P address as well as using cookies?

I'm not quite understanding whey they would need YOUR I.P address....

Also the last part of her message is quite "canned" meaning that they have this message ready to fire out to other affiliates who are also having tracking issues. Again supporting suspicions of in house tracking issues.

Frank Bruno

Frank, I am sure part of Jennifer's message is canned to address a common
problem, but I have known this girl for over 6 years and have spoken to
her many times on the phone. When she heard that I was having a
problem, she had her tech team jump on it right away.

It is in their best interests to make sure that everybody is happy. As
she stated, 75% of their sales come from affiliates. So why would they
want to piss them off?

It doesn't make any sense.

I'm not saying there aren't problems, but if there are, it's not something
that they've been able to identify yet with any certainty. Even I can't
duplicate the problem I had that one day and believe me, I've tried.

Ultimately, each person is going to believe what they want to believe. I
choose to believe that they're doing everything that they can within
reason to make sure their system works properly.

If I'm wrong, in the final analysis, it's Clickbank who is going to suffer.

And I think they're smart enough to know that.

[Frank Bruno]

My perspective is that they are tangled in their own system thats now antiquated which now has serious issues.

I.P addresses change like the wind. This is particularly inherant of using wireless connections where everytime you connect they give you a new I.P address.

Back in the "days" with CB when they first got started they use to issue refunds everytime an I.P address was a duplicate address without them realizing that ISP's had thousands if not millions of users on the same I.P address.

Another words if they saw any orders come through that had the same I.P address they would disallow all of them but one. Freakin rediculous.

I lost thousands and thousands of dollars from CB because of this. At that time they were one of very few CC companies online. Another company took me for 7k before they went under. Good thing PayPal came out just in time and stepped in to level the game for cc processors. Back then there was very little aff marketing.

Sounds like they might have some sort of auto system in place that ignores or ditches duplicate I.P addresses like in the ol' days

Who knows.... only CB knows.... and time will only tell to what will come with them....


Frank Bruno

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Frank Bruno

My perspective is that they are tangled in their own system thats now antiquated which now has serious issues.

I.P addresses change like the wind. This is particularly inherant of using wireless connections where everytime you connect they give you a new I.P address.

Back in the "days" with CB when they first got started they use to issue refunds everytime an I.P address was a duplicate address without them realizing that ISP's had thousands if not millions of users on the same I.P address.

Another words if they saw any orders come through that had the same I.P address they would disallow all of them but one. Freakin rediculous.

I lost thousands and thousands of dollars from CB because of this. At that time they were one of very few CC companies online. Another company took me for 7k before they went under. Good thing PayPal came out just in time and stepped in to level the game for cc processors. Back then there was very little aff marketing.

Sounds like they might have some sort of auto system in place that ignores or ditches duplicate I.P addresses like in the ol' days

Who knows.... only CB knows.... and time will only tell to what will come with them....


Frank Bruno

Frank, the only reason they asked for my IP address was so that they
could see what hits came to that hoplink from that address and then
see if any of them resulted in affiliate=none showing up. In my case, none
of them did, though it is possible I was on dialup that day and had a
different IP.

I don't think Clickbank tracks sales by IP, though I won't swear to that.

I guess only they know the answer to that question.

[Chris Monty]

I hadn't really heard of these issues until very recently. This will make a good blog post tomorrow. I can't wait to see how this will turn out.

[Stallion]

As
she stated, 75% of their sales come from affiliates. So why would they
want to piss them off?

It doesn't make any sense.

That makes sense if Clickbank is a standalone business. It is not. Keynetics owns Clickbank. Keynetics owns Kount. And they own some other businesses, run out of the same address listed for Clickbank.

Keynetics goal is to make the most money and that may or may not mean the most profit from Clickbank.

Kount (kount.com) does payment processor fraud software. If I was doing fraud software I'd have to test it right? Since we're in an economic slowdown, you can't test it against past data. So you split test it on Clickbank, which is your live testing ground.

Makes sense right. You wouldn't sell software you never at least tested right?

If Clickbank needs help finding the problem with their business, they can take a look at my account. Butchered is the only word to describe it.

Since they're so damn stupid. Yes, stupid. They've alienated me forever.

[Peter Soos]

Watching the news...they must be 'jinxed' by the association with the word 'Bank'...The feds will probably bail them out...(pun intended).

I don't have anything on clickbank as of now but it seems that a LOT of bad stuff goes on there. Not a very warm feeling. Thanks for sharing.

[GeorgR.]

i posted on some place, they need to make it mandatory for vendors to have code on their thank-you pages so affiliates CAN track real sales.

There are very FEW vendors which actually povide real sales tracking for their affiliates, some of those in the "reverse phone" niche.

In other words: Those vendors provide a way for affiliates to use a tracking code (eg from google adwords conversion tracking) and to use this on THEIR (vendor) sales pages - so affiliates get really notified and can track real sales upon completed purchase.

MOST vendors do not provide such tracking, and this is bad. The stats are THERE (every vendor sees hops and whatever affiliate makes a sale) - HOWEVER, the affiliates need to have access to this also! We are the ones spending big sums on advertising...so what can be better than real tracking??

[yoshiko]

Clickbank is at it again with my account. Three days without sales when I have been revived with sales for the past one week. Sad. Its a roller coaster ride with them.

Anyone having the same problems past few days again?

[LB]

The problem with 90% of the people complaining is that they don't have statistically significant data to make the logical leaps they're making.

If you're selling 10 items per week, then that is not nearly enough data to come to any sort of conclusion.

I'm not saying that CB is or isn't anything.

But when I see posts like, "I made 3 sales last week and now nothing for 6 days..." it's not helping your cause.

[SteelDanno]

Yeah. With news like this going around. There's got to be some happy competitors (paydotcom, ejunkie, payloadz etc.)

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by yoshiko

Clickbank is at it again with my account. Three days without sales when I have been revived with sales for the past one week. Sad. Its a roller coaster ride with them.

Anyone having the same problems past few days again?

nope...its going great the last few days.

[RazorElite]

Originally Posted by Frank Bruno

Why would they need to track your ip address? Are they insinuating that they also track by YOUR I.P address as well as using cookies?

I'm not quite understanding whey they would need YOUR I.P address....

Also the last part of her message is quite "canned" meaning that they have this message ready to fire out to other affiliates who are also having tracking issues. Again supporting suspicions of in house tracking issues.

Frank Bruno

Didn't Clickbank announce last year that as part of their improved tracking, they will track IP addresses as well. I think thats what I remember.