I see a lot of publishers copying and pasting from the analytics page. Now I have rarely monitored this, preferring instead to check my transactions against my own site stats. But having done so, I see that it is very flaky and inaccurate. Some affiliates are even showing as having made sales with zero hops! Others have a lower number of reported hops than my site has uniques. I know that a screenshot of the analytics page looks like the closest thing to proof but beware, because in my opinion this data is not always accurate. What are other people's experiences?
People will confuse your post with the cb-analytics.com site. So what you're saying is publishers aren't just faking earnings, some are faking conversion rates etc to get more affiliates. It's dirty but yes, many will do.
Yes! It got me worried until I read the post body I try to keep CB-Analytics.com data as accurate as possible! As for sales with 0 hops. One good explanation can be that hop happend on one of the previous days and user converted later when there were no hops. Clickbank reports hops, sales and refunds by date when each event took place rather than by the date of hop which lead to sale or refund. Most users convert withing minutes but there are some slow ones and this can make stats look funky. Though again I wouldn't be surprised if clickbank lost track of hop or two.