I don't get it. If they were robbing you wouldn't it show their affiliate ID instead of 'none'?


Andrew

If the link from their course were to the same product, yes.

Oh I see, this other product is in a totally different CB account. Sneaky.

If their sales page were lacking, that would be an option. In this case, however, the only thing lacking on their part is character.

Did you use your own affiliate link to get to the vendor's website during this test? Sometimes a vendor will show a different landing page depending on where the visitor is coming from. Also, if a visitor goes through your aff. link, signs up for the course, and then clicks a link in the vendor's e-mail, you should get the sale providing that the vendor doesn't put their own affiliate link to restuff the cookie, and that the visitor is still using the same computer (and didn't click on somebody else's link, etc.).

Suzanne

[DELETED]

I recently went through the cb marketplace pretty hard looking at several hundred sales pages (closer to a thousand actually).

It was very eye opening what some vendors are doing to switch out referral id's and avoid paying affiliate commissions.

For example, you wouldn't think that clicking a privacy policy, contact me or view more testimonial link should overwrite your referral id but that is something that some people are doing now, among other things.

i think this subject deserves MORE attention since it is crucial for affiliates!

I am actually thinking of compiling a list of CB vendors which "feature" pop-ups with email opt-ins at their landing page.

STAY AWAY FROM ANY OF THOSE VENDORS.

If they offer the site visitors a "incredible deal" via "please enter your email popup" its likely that affiliates dont see anything from those sales.

Furthermore, popups are BAD if you are doing Adwords.

Again: Check your vendor's landing pages. Dont let them rip you off with those subscriber popups!

alexa, you know so much about CB its sometimes scary

But if they use some "hidden" way to run a hoplink eg. on the "contact us" or "privacy page"...isn't this almost as bad as cookie stuffing? Its certainly not a "valid" hoplink in compliance with CB Tos if i go to "contact us" and get a new cookie served which overwrites the other one.

I have been with clickbank for over 6 years, this past month was my best by far for affiliate sales and i would I guess I sent traffic to sites were at least 90% of the sales pages had opt-ins.

You will leave a lot of money on the table by not promoting good sites opt-in or not.

Trader54, sorry but you'll have to go through them all yourself if you don't believe me. I don't have the time to go back through and search for you. I didn't log them for future reference.

It does happen, believe it or not.

I even emailed one guy about it and told him that I wanted to promote his product but couldn't do so because of this and he said that it was something he was testing and that he would email me back if/when he changed it.

True story

[Yeah I didn't think you would have one]

lol, some people.

Switching cb id's on links is fairly benign. If you have a hard time imagining that could happen, the next thing I write will probably make your head explode.

Ever heard of cloaking?

Imagine you sign up to promote a product.

There's a script in place that whitelists your url when you sign up and every time you login to check stats or to get banners (in case you login from multiple computers) so that everytime you visit abc.html to check the page, the server shows you abc.html but everyone who is not whitelisted sees xyz.html which is an entirely different page or one that does not contain your referral id or even a different payment processer.

This is nothing new and has been used by product vendors for years. I didn't look for this when going through the hundreds of pages you want me to go back through and am not saying that any clickbank vendors do this but it does exist and has for years.

That's just the tip of the iceburg of what can and does go on.

*sigh*

No, my story has not changed. The switched id's on those urls did happen.

The second part I added regarding cloaking is what I said that I was not looking for and did not find when doing my research.

Two completely different and seperate issues.

You seem to bent on arguing and there really is no need for it.

A. It did happen
B. Just because I won't go through hundreds of pages trying to find examples for you at your demand doesn't mean that it didn't.

Man, I can't believe some of the stuff people try and pull. My opinion of CB in general is lowering by the day. They seem to attract a lot of bad people. Not all of course, but lots of funny stuff going on over there.

Trader54, what I said was that it was very eye opening what some vendors are doing to switch out referral id's and avoid paying affiliate commissions.

A small part of that is switching id's on those links I mentioned. There are other things going on to include what the OP was referring to.

Also, to clarify... I like Clickbank. I like them a lot. They direct deposit money into my account every week like clockwork and where else are you going to find such a huge collection of products to promote so easily.

Just as a rule of thumb, with thousands of vendors it is a little naive to think that out of all of them, there are not a few with less than stellar ethics. It happens in all walks of life and in all professions.

I'll let you have the last word.

This is either a coincidence or someone is reading this thread but I just got an email today from one of the people I emailed when going through the marketplace.

My email

Email I received today

This particular one is a slightly different scenario than I mentioned above but CB ID switching nonetheless and just one of the different ways I discovered it being done.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I think this one was actually a link to another of their products or someone elses and not actually ID switching per say but still a little devious to say the least as the link was very prominent directly beneath the order button.

I'm with Harvey... If it's the vendor, I don't see how
it is showing [affiliate=none] unless they are sending
the traffic to a different account all together.

Is this the case, Kelly?

If not, then my guess is that it's Clickbank's fault... they have had
many tracking issues in the past and I have recently began
noticing things that lead me to believe those issues are coming back.

I hate when they do that. I never do that to my affiliates I capture the affiliate Id for who referred each lead . and in my e-mails the links are customized with the affiliate's id of the affiliate who referred the lead

I sippose the mooto of the story is do a little bit more research into the vendors before you spend your precious time building their business. They are very short sighted.

Why oh why would a vendor be so cheap as to rob affiliates? Don't they realize they are cutting their own throat? I guess not.

C'mon, Scott, you know that short-term gain is what makes the world go round!


Just ask any elected official.