"People, everyone is talking about tracking problems but this is hardly the case. As a publisher of several products I can say that sales are down in general - its just customers are stopping on the checkout page." Then if people go to checkout page I think it's not economy cause at least they were insterested to buy and saw price before that. You also wroted that customers e-mailing you that they can't order anything cause of some error on checkout page, right ?
Yes thats right, obviously because of this economy situation sales are somehow affected. But if people click on the "buy botton" then they are interested. If a lot of them does not buy thers something wrong and THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG. Just an update on what happened: Since sales were a lot lower with so many clicks (and so many customers complaining) I purchase my own product to test if everything was fine (and if sales are being tracked accordingly). I did this for around 4 times in a week period (Using different browsers, different products of mine, different time periods when sales were unusually low) - and then suddenly clickbank blacklisted my credit card and couldnt make any purchases anymore. So far so good, clickbank fraud system was at work, however after that event, sales went way much down than ever before. I contacted clickbank and then they said that they White listed my credit card - and guess what? sales started to flow back again more than before. So basically when clickbank blacklisted my credit card, their fraud system set the fraud detection level of all the products that my cedit card was involved into much higher - which resulted in a lot of perfectly valid credit cards being rejected.
I think the best products get sold no matter what stage the world economy is going through.. I believe you will succeed in getting conversions no matter what the conditions are: If you are able to bridge the need gap and give leverage to other people... If you are able to market your product to your target market in a very well deifined and meaningful manner.. If you are able to deliver more than what you promise to your customers.. If you have a product that does not require people to be persuaded enough to buy your product because what your offer certainly makes an impact anyway to them... In fact during tough conditions only the fittest and the strongest survive... others die down very easily... So if you are having wierd sales fluctuations, you need to rethink on your product somehow or maybe you require to rethink on your marketing strategy.. you can't be selling an icecream to someone who wants a candy.. you got to sell them candy... you've got to be clear of who you are selling to.. And more, you got to make sure you do enough research before you choose to make and sell a product... Don't get into whats hot and what's not, it doesnt work.. you want consistent money and you require to provide more value consistently than the monetary sum you receive from your customers... choose to sell a product that definitely provides consistent value.. that will give you a high "orgasmically" on clickbank LOL Also to point out, you also require to make sure your payment gateways are compatibel on all browsers.. better give your product site to an expert at designing such sites.. you require that people fill in their payment details in no time.. so you start hitting sales in a zap moment.. If you like the posts, give me a rep. Thanks. PM me if you require any kind of assistance. Add me on skype. Omshanti
So many problems are happening and still a lot of people are still making a killer with Clickbank. It's so wierd...
Really interesting Web_18 ... I think you have found a possible answer here! If a fraudulent (or alleged) transaction gets flagged the product gets put on high alert for a set period of time, which raises the bar very high for transaction processing. I would imagine that one of the parameters factors in the product age and reputation. I'm going to research this angle further. Thanks
Yes thats more or less what it looks to have happened. Since you are going to do some research im sure this link will help you a lot: http://www.kount.com/ Its the clickbank fraud system. the clickbank mother company offer it as a service for third parties as well - thers a lot of info on how it actually works.
here's another confirmation from clickbank: i bet same happens with your server ip as well. so once someone has tried to use a stolen cc or paypal account on your website or even been mistakenly flagged for fraud your other legitimate sales will blocked as well for some time.
Ok so I understand sales might get blocked for a period of time, for stolen cc`s or fake paypal accounts etc, but do they finally get tracked or what ?
That is the dumbest thing I've ever read in my life. What do they mean by "don't try to enter customer's purchase information on their behalf"? How are they going to find out, whether it's the real customer or you? I may have misunderstood it, but at the moment that is seriously BS.
Why do you think anti fraud measures are dumb? Very simple to do really. Customer lives in Location A Card is being used from Location B A is 10 to 10,000 miles away from B This raises an issue with the card issuing company and brings up a fraud alert., which can then cause a customers card to be frozen. I had the issue with paypal and the paypal card, after 8 days of withdrawing $400.00 from my bank ATM, I went to a different ATM to withdraw with Paypal and my card was frozen instantly. I had to call Paypal to find out why my card was suddenly frozen. It turns out the bank included a $2.00 processing fee on top of my $400.00 request which to the system made it appear as possible fraud since the amount was over their daily withdraw limit, set by Paypal. While it appeared dumb it was done to protect me ultimately..... And that is all clickbank is trying to do is stem losses. I still believe it is economy based loss of sales. I don't see why when every other industry is being hit for losses people here at DP still want to live in disbelief that things went south and insted prefer to blame CB. Read the frigging papers and listen to the news, JFC! Every car dealer that closes costs each community a huge amount of loss in advertising spend, little league support, and jobs for salesmen, office people and mechanics. No sales of cars = no sales of gasoline and this in turn hurts those with jobs in the gasolin industry. No cars sold = no oil jobs, lube jobs, less use of tires etc = less jobs for people producing these items or using them = no jobs = less homes being built or sold No homes being built or sold = no wood pvc electrical plumbing windows doors etc being sold = home depot lowes needing to cut back = jobs go bye bye... jobs go bye bye = nobody buying clickbank energy saving ebook... Not a hard concept to grasp.....
What about if I take my neighbor's card, who lives next door and purchase a product? That's what I actually meant. What's the difference if he does it, or me?
To be honest I didn`t even bother to read that bit, I`m not buying here I`m selling it`s a difference.
Well then it would not trip any filters. But looking at your affiliate sales how many are from near your area and how many are not? I would bet 90% are from out of state. I check mine and I get about 5 to 10% of customers from my state but most are quite a few 100 to 1000 miles away. Plus you were making sales daily?? if I have read right... and this issue seems rather new... so it would not seem likely you started running into Credit Card processing issues suddenly but are merely suffering like many others trying to sell anything. This is how bad things are; I've seen ads for car dealers offering two new Dodge trucks for the price of one. that's crazy but shows how slow things are... Why can't I live near one and have enough cash lol???
I`m off the financial crisis discussion.. let think positive I`m not from the states, however I`ve heard some deals yesterday for HUMMERS, one for the price of two, now that is an offer !
it's actually quite simple. one of my customers was declined for whatever reason with his ip apparently flagged for suspected fraud. after speaking with them, they wanted me to try and re-enter their payment info on their behalf, which resulted in my own ip being flagged as well. fair enough i'd say. this is what i expect from every anti-fraud system. the only thing is i suspect they don't only flag individual customers' ip's but the server ip as well for some time. this might be the reason behind all these 'weird fluctuations' Sem-Advance, even though i agree with what you're saying here to some extent, i think you're missing one important point of this thread. we're trying to figure out the reasons behind FLUCTUATIONS here, not behind decreased sales. how do your theories explain 50 sales today, 5 tomorrow and 50 the day after?
From what I have read is 50 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 1 - 0 - 0 I understand your thoughts about fluctuation but every business has them. There are more variables than can really be tracked with any real accuracy. As for the ip of the server being hit...the sales would still come through eventually and with the right Hoplink, the publisher should still get credit.
and you as a serious business owner should still try to identify and track as many variables as possible. that's why publishers come here and report unusual amounts of sales w/o hops instead of feeding there affiliates with recession b/s while still cashing in, because they know it may hit them in the long run. just an example. i want to know my variables and account for them (even if they are not clickbank related). blaming the economy is too easy, but it doesn't explain why my sales of non-essential luxuries (which people are supposed to be cutting back on) are growing and my sales of other products are in decline. see my point? your micro and macroeconomic theories don't apply to each and every case so there's no point in trying to make everyone believe in your car/oil/job concepts. this is what essentially these threads are for - share experiences to try and identify any trends or problems (even if there aren't any a.t.m) at an early stage to save people money. remember how many people raised suspicions about the missing hops before clickbank admitted it themselves?