Can I direct link to order form clickbank ?

Yes you can but you must get the vendor's permission.

Advantage:
- you can write your own sales page

Disadvantage:
- The normal hoplink takes priority over this link: therefore you will not get commission if the visitor has previously gone through another affiliate's hoplink

- The link does not set a cookie: therefore you will not get commission if the visitor later returns to the site without using that link

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I think some sellers would not like you sending people straight to their order form as it bypasses their sales message. This can cause problems for a vendor if the affiliate is incorrectly representing the offer or misleading people (whether intentional or not). It can cause refunds and other problems.

I think no matter how you choose to do your presell you should always still be sending people to the sales message created by the product vendor as that is what they want potential customers to see before buying.

I always send my traffic directly to the CB checkout from my own self hosted sales page. My sales page only mentions the product description/price, no silly hype like most CB vendor squeeze pages.

I also set the cookie, so anyone that says the cookie can't be set just doesn't know how, it's not because it can't be done. It's not complicated (Google it).

The reason I bypass vendor squeeze pages is most are just a scam filled with unnecessary crap like email optin forms. I don't have a problem with vendors collecting emails from affiliate traffic as long as it's done after the sale. I've even seen Adsense on one CB squeeze page (fail).

Also, it's just poor judgement to promote a product outside of CB, then send the traffic to a 2nd sales page (vendor squeeze page) & then on to the CB checkout. For every hoop you force traffic to jump through, odds are they'll bail before they finish a checkout transaction. Multiple sales pages just confuses the whole process.

I don't know about anyone else around here but I aim to get paid for my traffic.

Yes, many people make a living from identifying great products,
with horrible sales copy, and then writing their own self-hosted
sales pages, and direct linking to the order form. You just need
to make absolutely sure that you do it properly.

I bypass many vendors sales pages when I am sending over
already-sold traffic and the vendor's sales page would just
"un-sell" the customer.

Willie

Hey folks,

I'm not going to debate the ethics or benefits involved with using this process, instead I'll just tell you how it's done and clear some of the questions about setting your affiliate cookie then direct linking to the payment page.

Whether you do it or not is totally up to you and I refuse to bear any responsibility for what you do.

First off... how it's done. There are several, but most people focus on one of a couple standard ways.

First is to put a 1 pixel iframe on your page that loads your CB generated hoplink into it. Thereby setting your cookie on the viewers computer without them ever seeing the original vendor's sales process.

There are 2 major problems with this method, as I see it:

First, Clickbank don't like it. According to their rules (as of the last time I read them, which was a while ago) you can't display any of their pages in an iframe. Although I'm not entirely sure if they consider the sales page hosted on the vendor's site counts as "their" page.

The second major downside is that the viewer has to have javascript enabled for it to work. But the majority of folks do, so it's not that big of an issue.

The other most commonly known method is to load a 1 pixel image on your page that links to your hoplink.

This works a little differently than the iframe method but the end result is the same, your cookie gets dropped.

Since this method doesn't use use the iframe it's a little safer from a terms violation point of view, but there are a lot of people who disable images in their browsers. So there's that to consider.

It's up to you which method you use. Personally I use an image link on a redirect page to drop my cookie when the visitor clicks my order link not when they land on my sales page.

I would like to point out that we are doing a little hair splitting here. The OP was asking if it was possible to do and any up or downsides. Well, the real answer is that it IS ok to direct link to the checkout page, and you can still set your cookie along the way without violating any terms.

Bypassing the vendor's sales copy is just another technique you can use in your marketing. In the end you still have to decide if you want to use it.

But I would caution you to make sure that your sales copy and marketing doesn't make any promises that the product doesn't deliver, and any terms and conditions (refund policy etc) you display to the visitor going through your sales process must match clickbank's policies.

In other words you can't specify "No Refunds" or claim a 365 day guarantee in your sales process when clickbank clearly offers a 60 (sometimes 90) day refund policy.

Hope this helps.

Tony.

P.S. Here is a link to an interesting wiki article about cookie stuffing...
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing

"It's up to you which method you use. Personally I use an image link on a redirect page to drop my cookie when the visitor clicks my order link not when they land on my sales page."

How do I of this Tony?

You are better off building a list as you have an asset you can work with

Direct linking will only serve to bring in short term profits with nothing else to show for it

that will actually violate clickbank's policy and will have your account banned if the vendor turns you in to compliance,you will need to use the cb affiliate hoplink

As a buyer I would prefer to see the original sales page. This is based on my own experience where affiliates tend to skew the original sales message and go in a different direction that's totally irrelevant to what the product actually is or does. I really hate these.

As an affiliate, it would be far easier and better use of time to find an offer that converts well in the first place and then letting the vendor handle the hard work of selling the product. Rather than helping the person make a sale, I rather find offers that can sell so I just need to focus on delivering qualified traffic. The amount of time spent in recrafting an offer could be used to finding more offers to work with.

you will need the guys confirmation

Why do you want to do a direct link to the order page? How does that persuade the client to buy?

You can do that, but my question to you is why exactly would you want to bypass the vendors sales message to the potential client?

Do you have a sales letter, or sales process/funnel to send your leads through?

Most people won't buy something that know nothing about if they get sent straight to the order page.

I mean how many times do you walk up to the register in the grocery store and give them money before walking around the store and looking for want you want?

Hope that shines some light on your question.

To the top, and beyond!