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Affiliate is requesting a tracking pixel on my site, should I?

by sam808
7 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
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I've never had this come up yet, but I received this request today from one of our affiliates asking me to put a tracking pixel on our thank you page for them. Our product is exclusively on Clickbank, so shouldn't this affiliate be using Clickbank's conversion tracking?

Below is what they're requesting, is this OK to do? And not a security concern for us?

The reason I’m contacting you is because we currently have campaigns up and running promoting your product on various search engines but do not have conversion tracking in place. In order for us to optimize our campaigns for this product, we need you to place our tracking pixel on your thank you page. This will help us improve the ads and also guarantee more relevant traffic to your product.

As soon as I hear back from you, I'll send over the pixel tracking code that we need implemented on your thank you page. Please understand that if we cannot get this integrated for any reason, we will not be able to continue promoting your product.
#affiliate #conversion tracking #pixel #requesting #site #tracking
  • Profile picture of the author mojojuju
    Depending on what is meant as a "tracking pixel" or a "tracking code" by him, having it on your thank you page may provide this affiliate with some information about traffic to this page which you may want to stay private.

    Originally Posted by sam808 View Post

    Our product is exclusively on Clickbank, so shouldn't this affiliate be using Clickbank's conversion tracking?
    Yes. Clickbank's conversion tracking is very adequate. You could find out from him what he thinks his tracking code can do for him that Clickbank's conversion tracking can't.
    Signature

    :)

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    • Profile picture of the author sam808
      Great points, Mojojuju. I emailed this guy and asked that question, here is his response. He is with a company called Tuguu.com, which seems to be a Spanish master affiliate maybe, anyone ever hear of them?

      His response makes me more confident in his ability to generate sales for our CB product, but I am still unsure about giving him the ability to know about every sale I make. Could he somehow learn all of our customers or drop a cookie on their machines? Could he hijack our sales? Could he hijack my domain?

      Here's his response:

      Basically Clickbank can tell us what TID is converting, but advertising on 7search which is a SEM platform, we need to know what converts on a "keyword" basis. This is the only way we can filter out negative con-converting keywords and focus more on the winners. All this info will be made available to use on 7search once the pixel is placed. The second part of the code includes our Piwik script code, this is an additional analytic platform we use similar to Google Analytics and can help us filter some more and improve our ads etc...
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      • Profile picture of the author mojojuju
        Originally Posted by sam808 View Post

        His response makes me more confident in his ability to generate sales for our CB product, but I am still unsure about giving him the ability to know about every sale I make. Could he somehow learn all of our customers or drop a cookie on their machines? Could he hijack our sales? Could he hijack my domain?
        Let me explain it this way... As a Clickbank affiliate, here's why I might like you to put my tracking code on your Thank You page:

        It will let me have a record of each and every sale that is made on your site. Whenever a sale is made and the customer is sent to your Thank You page, it will trigger my tracking code and log a wealth of information on my tracking server. It doesn't matter if I am the affiliate who made the sale or if it's another affiliate, or no affiliate at all - I will have access to that information.

        This will let me know how many sales your site is making. Maybe if I'm impressed with your sales volume, I will create a competing product of my own!

        I also know that "with every transaction, ClickBank passes nine query string parameters to your Thank You Page". They are:

        ClickBank receipt number (cbreceipt)
        Epoch time of the order (time & seconds)
        ClickBank item number (item)
        ClickBank proof of purchase (cbpop)
        Customer name (cname)
        Customer e-mail (cemail)
        Customer zip (czip)
        Customer country (ccountry)
        Affiliate nickname (cbaffi)
        Vendor variables (up to 128 bytes)



        All of this information would be picked up by my tracking code. Whether or not I was the affiliate responsible for the sale, I would get to know all of your customer's names. I would get all of their email addresses.

        Also, of interest to me is that I would get the zip codes and countries of your customers. Then I'd be able to focus my marketing in those regions.

        Another good thing is that with every sale, the nickname of the affiliate who made the sale will be passed along in the Thank You page url. This information would of course be sent to my tracking server. Then I'd be able to find out which affiliates are making the most sales and I could spy on their marketing efforts and hopefully wipe them out of business.

        See what I'm getting at?

        The only way you could guarantee the most privacy and respect for your other affiliates is if you only show the affiliate's tracking code for sales that he made. That would be easy because all you'd do is show his code when his affiliate id appears in the query string for your thank you page.

        That's the only way I'd do this if I were you as it would ensure your privacy and the privacy of your other affiliates.

        Originally Posted by sam808 View Post

        Here's his response:

        Basically Clickbank can tell us what TID is converting, but advertising on 7search which is a SEM platform, we need to know what converts on a "keyword" basis. This is the only way we can filter out negative con-converting keywords and focus more on the winners.
        Wrong. If he doesn't know how to find out what converts on a "keyword" basis using Clickbank's TIDs, then he needs to step up his game. On the other hand, if he doesn't know how to get full benefit from Clickbank's excellent TID feature, then he's probably unlikely to know how to spy on your sales and those of your affiliates as mentioned above.

        If he insists he needs his Piwik tracking code on your thank you page, you could do it without much worry by only showing his tracking code when HE makes a sale in the way I described above.
        Signature

        :)

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        • Profile picture of the author sam808
          AWESOME Mojojuju, you brought up some very good concerns! Sounds like someone could do a good amount of business if they could talk enough merchants into adding a code to their thank you pages...

          We'll definitely do a separate thank you page for this affiliate.

          Sam
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  • Profile picture of the author sam808
    This doesn't go into more detail than Mojojuju did, but it's the reply from a Clickbank customer service rep, in case anyone is interested in Clickbank's official response:

    Thank you for your inquiry! Adding an affiliate provided script to your thank you page is an activity that ClickBank strongly discourages. Also, placing a tracking pixel on a vendor's Thank You Page is not a reliable way of tracking sales as the total visits can be inflated by previous customers coming back to the page if they have it bookmarked. Thus, an affiliate might think they are generating more sales than they actually are.

    There have also been occasions on which the affiliate has asked for the vendor to add a pixel script for nefarious reasons, which could bring some security issues to your website.

    Any relevant tracking dad for affiliates is already at their disposal via the information provided on the analytics page of their account.

    If you or the affiliate in question require any further explanation or details in regards to this matter, we would be more than happy to assist.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brennen Noble
    Tell em to buy my WSO and use prosper202 instead of trying to place pixels lol. It uses PayPal's IPN to report the conversions and information is ONLY passed by the IPN when THAT affiliate makes a sale so it's completely safe and only records the dollar amount and TID.

    http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...-campaign.html
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    Over 2400 Warriors Use SoreThumb On Their Sites, Do You?
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  • Profile picture of the author ronc0011

    Very interesting thread I have bookmarked it for future reference.
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