Can a Clickbank Merchant Avoid Paying Affiliates?

I recently had an adwords campaign that was promoting a Clickbank merchant.
This campaign consistantly was paying me a 50% profit (spend $100 make $150 gross).
Anyways, one day this week, all of a sudden, no conversions!!
I thought maybe it was a fluke so I went another day...NO CONVERSIONS!!
So I stopped my campaign and contacted the merchant and asked if they were having a reporting glich or if the had cancelled their affiliation with Clickbank.
The responded by saying thier sales were the same and they hadn't changed their site and they were still clickbank merchants.
SO, I tried one more day of adwords....nothing.
I'm done with this merchant.
Is it possible for a merchant to trick clickbank and avoid paying it's affiliates?

 

I am not familiar with the way clickbank code is set up, but in theory, it should be very easy for a merchant to defraud the affiliate network. All he would need to do is bypass the tracking code in his order page and the network wouldn't know if there was a sale.

One of the benefits of working with an affiliate network is being confident that someone is watching over the merchants. I've had problems with joining merchant affiliate programs directly, generating sales, but not getting the check. If you suspect foul play, you should let Clickbank know, I am certain that they wouldn't want any dishonest merchants to be part of their network.

 

with Clickbank, an affiliate sends the customer to the clickbank hop link, then the customer is redirected to the appropriate website, and then the customer goes back to ClickBank and is tracked because of cookie placed on the initial landing to the ClickBank hop link.

I do not think that it would be frivilous to cheat CB affiliates.

mahno, what ELSE changed? maybe the website changed so that it's converting worse?

 

No, I went to the website and checked to see if anything had changed...it stayed the same.
I think I will notify Clickbank and maybe they can check the code in their confirmation page...guess that's all I can do.

 

paste the destination URL from your adWords campaign into a browser, then navigate through the merchants site and make a purchase.

You should see the sale in your CB stats within 30 seconds, and then you can get a full refund by submitting the form here, and using the subject line 'I would like to return a product'.

That way you'll know for sure if there's an issue or not.

 

you don't need to buy the product to see that it worked. once you get to the CB sales page just go to the bottom of the page and check to see that "aff = " has your nick next to it.

 

What hapnd did you get your problem solved by clickbank??

 

I would still place a test order just to see that things are working properly.

Have your click thrus dropped or changed

What I would say is give it a few more days and then drop it.
If you do get evidence that you are being ripped off by the site (that's what it would be) report imediately to CB

John

 

It would be next to impossible for a merchant to do that because traffic and conversion is handled by Clickbank. Of course, if the merchant tries to bypass CB by having his/her own payment system, this would be an issue. But this can be checked by going through the purchase process to check if they really do go through CB.

 

Dan's tip is the most accurate way of making sure any affiliate is up to some dirty pool. Kudo's to Dan and some green rep.

 

I just made a purchase and the transaction went through immediately!!
I dont understand how the site could convert so regularly then suddenly dry up?
I'm going to try them one more time.....I hope I get a couple of quick sales just to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Thanks everyone for your responses!!

 

A Clickbank Merchant has no control over the paying of affiliates. Money is automatically spilted during payment.

 

Agree with Edwinsoft, merchants can't bypass paying affiliates as Clickbank controls the entire process. Automatically when a customer visits the website, a cookie is dropped on the customers computer. If the customer has his browser to disable cookies, then no cookie will be dropped, therefore Clickbank will not recognise a referral from an affiliate, therefore you won't get paid.

 

Your basing this stuff on daily trends? Give it some time!
Holidays, clickbank crashes (yeh rare but still), weather....theres heaps of things which affect how many sales you get a daily.

If your paying 100$ in adwords fees for a 150$ turnover, i'd have to suggest it may not be the best converting product. It most likely sounds like it has alot of competition. What is it's gravity rankings etc?

Some of the major products I advertise through CB are roughly:
product a: spend $8 return $100...avg cpc 47 cents
product b: spend $4 return $14.40...avg cpc 10 cents

Comparing stats daily and deciding to giveup after a day may not be the best decision. I compare my stats weekly, and the specific stats i stated above from those 2 products are over roughly 4 grand of adwords expenses.

 

may be, prices of goods on your vendor's site were encreased by vendor?
(sale ended)

 

Since ClickBank controls the traffic routing, I don't see how they could cheat you either. By the way, Google Success, thanks for sharing your numbers. I appreciate being able to compare