Suppose you are browsing around and get to a www.example.com which describes some cool product that will probably help you in your marketing efforts. You go to www.coolproduct.com, read it and decide that it's definitely for you. So you proceed to the purchase page. Then you realize that it's ClickBank purchase page and at the bottom it sais affiliate=www_example_com_owner. Would you: a) proceed with the purchase and let www.example.com get his commission? b) First go to yourid.coolproduct.hop.clickbank.net and then buy saving yourself 50% off the price?
Most existing clickbank publisher may opt for the second option. But honestly I dont think 95% of net users doesnt know anyting about the clickbank, so it should not matter.
IMHO it's legal to buy through your own hoplinks if you have considerable volume of normal sales. In my case I'm referring to product targeted at ClickBank affiliates. So most of the target audience definitely knows what CB is and how to replace affiliate cookie.
I believe there had been gazillion threads on the topic. Yet I'll post once more: http://www.clickbank.com/affiliate_faq.html#aff_question_24 Please for the rest of the thread let's consider that it's legal. Discussing legality of such an action can be done in one of the existing threads
Well, I would use my own clickbank id... why? because I never click any ads and would not waste the money of that other clickbank affiliate by not purchasing through his/her aff link.
I am new to clickbank, however, any product I promote and sell, I would first purchase and make sure I am promoting a good product. Therefore, unless I am given a copy of the product to test, I would use my own account to purchase.
I think that there are more then 14 affiliates reading this thread so I'm going to put a little call to action here: please vote The vote is anonymous. It would be interesting to see larger statistics.
Been there done that got the .... you all know what I got LOL. Give it some time, soon you will be slapping landing pages without feeling the need to read the material being promoted...
As long as it didn't become a habit, and was a one time thing, I guess I'd buy it through my own unless i found it through a PPC ad in which case that preson spent something to earn something. I've gotta honour that.