Making sales of products I don't promote, then getting refunds

by Eduard
6 replies
Hi. Please tell me if these ever happened to you and what you make of it. I happened to me 3 or 4 times in the last few months.

You go into your Clickbank account and you notice you just got an affiliate commission from the sale of a product you're not actually promoting. You go into your analytics and you see that you only have 1 or 2 hops for that product. Odd...

A few days later, you see a refund for that product and the affiliate commission you made gets lost. Easy come, easy go.

The first time I made a commission like that, although I didn't understand it, I was very happy. Now that I've seen the whole pattern occur a few times, I just find the whole thing annoying.

My guess is that this is a strategy some sellers use to get your attention as a potential affiliate to their product. But I'd love to know your thoughts on this, and also if there is something I can do to stop these 'fake' sales.

Your feedback is much appreciated,

Eduard
#making #products #promote #refunds #sales
  • Profile picture of the author hannahlist
    Those are probably upsells/downsales of the products you ARE promoting.

    When a prospect buys something, they get an upsell page

    Some sellers share the sale with their affiliates.

    The same applies to downsales - ie., the prospect doesn't want to buy the main product
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    • Profile picture of the author Eduard
      I understand what you're saying. The thing is, these vendors have Clickbank vendor IDs I don't recognize. If these products would be upsells or downsells, the ID would stay the same, so I would recognize the vendor by it.
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      • Profile picture of the author hannahlist
        Originally Posted by Eduard View Post

        I understand what you're saying. The thing is, these vendors have Clickbank vendor IDs I don't recognize. If these products would be upsells or downsells, the ID would stay the same, so I would recognize the vendor by it.
        Actually, that's happened to me.

        The upsell was for zero payment with a rebill.

        For every refund, there were about 4 that went through fine.

        The rebills went on for a long time too.

        I only saw the vendor ID of the upsell/downsell.

        I don't see the vendor who uses them for upsell/downsell
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  • Profile picture of the author nicolasmd2112
    This has happened to me as well. Except in my case, i made sales from old affiliate links that are still floating around on Google. I don't exactly remember promoting the certain products i get commissions for, but i do remember setting up niche sites, blogs, and content articles to drive traffic to many places, so it doesn't bother me that much.

    Every now and then there WON'T, be a refund, and that's a pretty cool
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  • Profile picture of the author erob
    Yeah I would say its probably from links you have floating out there around the internet in one way or another I often get clicks on products that I forgot that I post on a old blog that I have.
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    • Profile picture of the author Eduard
      Originally Posted by erob View Post

      Yeah I would say its probably from links you have floating out there around the internet in one way or another I often get clicks on products that I forgot that I post on a old blog that I have.
      I see your point. However, I keep a very good track of the very few products I promote or have promoted as an affiliate. Plus, it's not just making sales I don't recognize that boggles me. It's the recurring pattern of 1 sale I don't recognize and 1 refund a few days later.
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