Your Product in Clickbank Marketplace = You Get Screwed

I used to do that back in the past, although I only did that for products I got a free copy of to actually review. Unfortunately it is easy for people to do that now a days and with wordpress and many automation plug-ins they can even take user reviews that are already posted and post them on their own review site. That goes for any Affiliate Commission website. That's why I like to stick with the reviews I find here.

Dude ... those guys had to actually create the video. And if you think doing this is so easy then why not do this:
1) Create your own "review" video, post to youtube, get it to rank
2) Create your own "review" google+ plage and get it to rank
3) Create your own "review" facebook page and get it to rank

If you do this FIRST, then you'll have advantage and the first FOUR links can all be controlled by you. (your main product page probably gets #1 and the other 3 above get 2-4)

And let me be clear, getting upset at someone because they have helped you to sell your product ... not smart.

And if you really think you're getting screwed then get your own merchant processor and set up your own affiliate program. You can then create your own rules that say "you will have your account canceled and all commissions suspended if you try to rank for any keyphrase related to the product name, misspellings of the product name, the name of the product creator or misspellings of the creators name."

Now you have control.

If you want to use clickbank then you KNOW that people are going to do the review videos. This isn't screwing you, this is them trying to be smart and make some sales.

This isn't them screwing you, it's them HELPING YOU make sales.

Don't ever complain when someone helps you make money, it's bad for your business ... UNLESS they are doing something that makes you look bad like spamming or lying about your product.

They are promoting your product and giving you free traffic, money, and buyers on your list...

Be grateful

How are you getting screwed, they are making you money. If you don't want affiliate's making you money, then promote the your product yourself

This is not true at all, people do whats called lunch jacking, but still they talk good about the product and make a sale so why should you be mad?

Hey Paul,

If you don't like what the affiliates are doing to promote your product then you can create your own review sites... As very few affiliates will give the product as good of a review as you.

If you are tore up about paying a commission to an affiliate then maybe you might want to seek out another "career" as affiliates are a big part of any ClickBank vendor's business...

But seriously - why don't you just create your own reviews and out rank the "junk"?

Cheers,
Coby

P.S. You can also use the "white list" option at Clickbank to keep certain affiliates from promoting your products. But this won't help the reviews that are already out there.

I sell a product in the Clickbank marketplace and so far from Googleing I have not found any pages that look like spam. Of course the product is pretty new and perhaps that hasn't shown up yet.

However, as a purchaser of clickbank products myself I have purchased products that are good and products that are junk, and as an affiliate as well I would not not recommend a product that I do not use myself.

I know everyone doesn't do that, but if I am an honest affiliate of CB products isn't it fair to say that at least some people out there have the same values as well?

How can you tell, first off are they reviewing a product that they have not actually purchased or used themselves? Ask yourself that first off when reading a review. Other people are usually smart enough to do so also.

I agree that nobody wants their reputation tainted by a spam review, but give people the benefit of the doubt that it is the spammer who will not be trusted in the future for a crappy review, not necessarily the maker of the product.

If you have a great product that delivers value and a customer realizes that then how does that hurt your reputation even if they purchased your product through a review page that was spam at the top of Google SE results?

I chose CB to handle my affiliate program for me because I am not capable of marketing and attracting affiliates myself (I work a full time job) and having a listing in the marketplace is a great way to gain exposure for new affiliates.

No, I don't want spammy affiliates, but I don't have time to tend my affiliates either and I have to trust that it will be the value of the product that will win the customers approval and trust of me in the end rather than the page his purchase came from.

It would be great if CB would ban spammy affiliates, but honestly how could they possibly tend all what is it, 500,000 affiliates for every product and every link from every page they have created? Who has time to tend that many people.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to set up a place within a vendors account where the vendor could remove/ban certain affiliates from promotion if they find a spammy review. OR have the vendor agree to certain affiliate program terms and conditions (set up by the vendor) before they are allowed to promote a product. That may help. Of course there will always be those who abuse the system, and there is no "one size fits all" solution that will fix every scenario.

Just focus on making a great product and gaining your customers trust for yourself and that is what will matter in the end.

I think I'm missing the point, why am I getting screwed by using clickbank to sell my product?

Did you know you can whitelist your affiliates in clickbank so you have control over who can promote your product? Problem solved

I knew those affiliates were screwing me by giving me money.

I even ripped up the paycheck I god. And those affiliates thought I was actually going to use the money!? HA

If it's so easy then go try and do it yourself. There's a lot of behind the scenes kind of stuff that goes on with those review pages.

SEO isn't like it was in 2009, these guys spent a long time figuring their stuff out, and it involves a little bit more than just straight up spam links.

Is it Clickbanks fault that these people have figured out how to game Google's search engine for these terms? How is this suddenly Clickbanks problem?

If you want to be more selective about who your affiliates are going to be then of course, don't use clickbank, I think that's a given with the way they do business.

I just don't get the problem here, how is Clickbank endorsing this? Are they ranking the sites? Should they be shutting them down? Did these people do something wrong or illegal?

Dear Mr. Wolfmmii (if that is your real name)...

I'm not arguing rather or not the reviews are "appropriate"...

Since we don't know the product being discussed we both are only guessing at the situation...

But what we do know - is that this product has many reviews - otherwise there would be no need for this thread...

So, even if the reviews are NOT appropriate, they are still there. There is only one way to remedy this - create more content to out rank them... (like reputation management in the offline world)

The vendor should also work with CB to ban the "spam affiliates" (this we agree on), but that does not remove the reviews because unfortunately Google and Clickbank don't really compare notes on what is and isn't appropriate...

Cheers,
Coby

P.S. You might want to double check how to quote folks as your last post suggests that you don't quite understand how the forum formatting works. It just makes things easier to read and understand when formatted correctly.

I have no problem with you Tom...

You quoted my post first (a small percentage of it, rather) - I simply replied...

That's how a forum works

But you do take things a little far sometimes to try to prove your point... (the $40 to $20 WSO debate thread and the Affordable Act Care thread are good examples)

Cheers,
Coby

P.S. When it comes to "post count" you might have the slight edge on me... But when it comes to number of times "thanked" I have edge there... I'll take quality over quantity any day!

P.P.S. I see you fixed your quotes in post 16. Easy to read now. And you missed 3 "/" in quote tags - not 1.

Bulk Reply

You say: "They're helping you make money, how can you complain?!"

Actually, they're not. They are fake, robotic reviews. But NOT ONLY reviews, it's also stuff like: "Download for free", "COUPON CODE HERE!!!", "SCAM OR LEGIT", "FREE DOWNLOAD"... etc etc.

They're click-baiting the customer who is ALREADY INTERESTED in the product, to click THEIR link, before purchasing.

Like, Wolfmmii, said: "It makes you look bad"

I agree; when the customer looks for your product, and finds so much junky, obviously-fake sites... that's not helping!

Some say "They earned it, because they learned how to rank on Google"

They are mooching off the INTERESTED CUSTOMERS TRAFFIC WITH FAKE ROBOTIC, WEIRD-LOOKING SITES... They're gaming google to GET IN THE WAY OF THE CUSTOMER WHO ALREADY WANTS TO BUY....

They're not creating interest, not bringing new customers, not doing ANYTHING IN THE SALE PROCESS....

They're getting IN. THE. WAY. of the sales process. It's a big difference.

They're not contributing, they're just landing right before the purchase phase.

Slin makes a good point: How is it Clickbank's problem; these guys learned to game Google. Why would Clickbank be responsible?

The answer is simple: They allow ROBOTS to crawl the marketplace RSS feed. How about that? It's simple. They screwed that up; and I don't see them interested in fixing it.

Some say "Well, why don't you just whitelisting!"

Once your product is crawled by all those junk robotic sites; it's kinda too late.

Why? Because if you block them using the whitelisting tool, something worse happens:

> the interested customer lands on their site; clicks the link and BOOM! They land on the Clickbank's Error page: "This affiliate is no longer authorized to promote this product".

So, my friend, put yourself in the shoes of your customer: They want to buy and land on a weird 1999-style html ERROR page... they don't bother to understand that the affiliate is blocked. They just think something is FISHY (maybe the product is no longer sold!)

I tried that, it makes things worse.

Like others have said, if it bothers you so much, put up some real review pages/sites using actual testimonials from your own customers and dominate the first page with your own content.

Problem solved...

A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding various points here.

The OP is talking about when people are Googling your product name - which means they are already aware of your product and most likely want to find YOUR webpage.

And instead they find some junk "review" sites or "Is this a scam" stuff.

Those type sites serve little value if someone already knows your product. They serve little value at all tbh as the reviews are made up to get sales.

All they are doing is putting a barrier in front of your customer who will either end up clicking an affiliate link which means you pay commission to an affiliate who did little to earn it OR your customer gets put off by the poor quality site and garbage review they've found and decides not to buy at all.

I've been guilty of doing launch jacking and fake video reviews myself in the past so I'm hardly one to talk but I can see what the OP is saying.

Another point people seem to be missing is that you can choose who to approve as an affiliate on Clickbank though seems very few vendors do. I can only think of one product I've applied to in recent years where it wasn't auto approve.

LOL - Some of your guys are a bit too defensive, but that's just a personal opinion.

That aside, I'm a very active 'Reviewer' of CB products and specialize in SEO to rank those reviews. I also hate the 'Is it a scam?' or 'Get it free' titles that some affiliates use in their 'review pages,' but that's just life.

I'm going to issue a little warning to you Paul, and this is something you need to seriously think about before you step on your own dick and lose the total investment in your product all together.

From An Affiliate's Perspective

SEO's like myself spend thousands of dollars a month on link building servers, domains, hosting, design and development. We test and test, burning through hundreds of domains until we find a great loophole to exploit with Google.

More than just the bills and invoices involved, our time and effort can sometimes be extraordinary.

When I do get our formula down, I will build a review (or review site) out and rank it. If the product converts particularly well - I might build 2 or 3 such sites so that I cover the most space possible.

While you complain that someone clicks on an affiliate's link and then gets credit for the sale - have you ever bothered to ask yourself what happens when someone reads a good review that motivates a sale but instead of clicking that affiliate's link the customer instead just goes straight to your page and buys?

The answer - that affiliate who wrote the great review just got screwed out of a sale they deserved. Of course, I don't see you trying to justify that. (Who is short sighted now?)

So - this is a two way street.

You're going to have trickster affiliates getting sales they may not deserve but there will also be good affiliates not getting what they deserve either.

So that's one thing...

Now here's where you may step on your dick...

Let's say that one of these 'trickster' affiliates built out a site or two, ranked them for every longtail variation of your product's name and is pulling traffic.

You decide that you don't like what they are doing and ban them. Good idea?

Think about it...

They've already invested in a site (or multiple), they've invested in the SEO, they are pulling down good traffic - and you just killed their ability to monetize that...

What do you think is going to happen? Do you think they will just go away?

LOL....

Maybe, but you are really rolling the dice. What happens if they change their sales copy to trash your product and instead recommend one of your competitors that is willing to pay that affiliate? Have you thought about that?

They will now be pulling hundreds to thousands of unique visitors a month for your product's name - telling them how much your product sucks while at the same time recommending a competitor.

And you know what... that might sound really horrible, but I personally don't blame the affiliate for that.

You knowingly put your product up for affiliate sales. In good faith, they developed a plan and made their investment to generate sales. For you to pull your offer back at the last minute because you were somehow offended flushes their investment down the drain.

Just because you want to take money out of their pocket doesn't mean they don't have to eat anymore. They've still got to put food on the table and you damaged their ability to do so.

But by this point in time, they already have leverage over you. They can talk directly to your potential customers and tell those people not to buy from you. What do they have to lose by doing so? What are you going to re-ban them? LOL

I mean come on...

You are risking a lot by ******* with people that have control and contact with a huge portion of your customer base.

You need to think about their leverage in the situation before doing anything that harms them at that point.

It might not be fair, but neither is putting something up for affiliate sale and then yanking the rug out from underneath them because you don't like something.

It seems very true. Clickbank really need to take some steps to ensure proper presentation of products by their affiliates through Vendors instructions.

Paul, I completely disagree with you on this. You're obviously angry.

You can't blame Clickbank. It actually takes a lot of work to build and rank videos and blog posts that offer "reviews". The creators are actually earning their money legally.

They promoted the product and got paid. Good for them.

Now, I do agree that calling a video or blog post a "review" when in fact it's really just an attempt to make a sale -- is bending the truth a bit.

However, how can you say that the reviewer didn't give his/her honest opinion of the product? You don't know what was in their hearts when the created the "review" of the product.

Uncle C. J.