I have seen this for a lot of time now. There are many publishers using this method to steal affiliates' money. I have seen several products with gravity upwards of 50 which are using this method to rob affiliates. Earlier I ignored this. But I'm really fed up of this clever "Stunt" by the publishers. Believe me, This Really Costs sales & Never Ever Promote A Publisher Using Such "Stunts" or Techniques.. What It Actually Is: There is a link "Affiliates" under every clickbank Ebook Home Page. But what hurts us & robs us of our money is a link like "Affiliates - Make $$$ With this Ebook" or "Make Money Selling This Ebook" or "Earn $26 with this E-book" and so on... It is even worse when the link "Make money selling this E-book" is located just below the Order Now Button. I agree that the buyers are not marketers and don't have knowledge about selling online or Clickbank. But when they click such a link, they are shown the exact steps they need to follow to save 75% on a product. At least, 1/3rd of the people will then buy through their own links and our commission is lost. I have confirmed that it is TRUE: Recently I tried to confirm my beliefs. I was promoting a product with 75% commission and getting a conversion rate of 1:45 After i watched the sales page carefully (and actually read it), i came to know how appealing the link "Make money online selling this ebook" was. I immediately stopped promoting that site & instead started promoting another similar site with a little "affiliates" link at the bottom. My conversions improved to 1:35 over the next 10 days. Now, it may be due to the sales page. But you can't dispute the fact that Publishers should never encourage visitors to buy through their own CB affiliate link. How Publishers Gain from that Link: 1. Get Fake Gravity 2. Get More Sales Not only on the Home Page, there is a big link "make money selling this e-book" on many Exit Console Windows. So Watch Out! My Advice to affiliates is that Don't Promote any product which steals your commission in such a way. For Publishers: If you are doing this, please stop. Even if you didn't do it intentionally, make sure you have a Shorter Affiliates link far away from the Order Button. For anyone who still thinks I'm wrong, please shed some light. Wish you Success, Jacky8
Quite true actually. If a webmaster wants to promote their program/product they'll usually hunt down the affiliate page.
I'm sure it depends on the product. For the majority of non internet marketing products, most of the consumers don't know enough about affiliate marketing to understand what it is or how they would go about doing it. PS - why would you call this "stealing"? If a would be customer becomes an affiliate and buys the product, the vendor gets the same amount of commission as they would if the customer bought it from the original affiliate link. The vendor doesn't gain anything here - so the practice of putting the affiliate signup link near the buy now button is not an attempt to steal, just an ignorant mistake.
It need not be that way. People like Darren Rowse, Brian, Yaro and all promote products. The buyers are more than aware of the conditions and even affiliate marketing. Yet they buy through their links. The reason being its too much pain for most people to just go ahead, create an account and buy through links. Believe me, most people who even do affiliate marketing do not do that (Which includes me as well).
I agree that putting a link saying make money selling this ebook is too much. But I also have a link to my affiliates make, but its no where near the order button. Its on top of the page in the nav bar and it just says "Affiliates" http://copythatgame.com/ What does everyone think about this? Do you it is okay?
I agree that in just a few cases, the vendor may be doing it "unintentionally". Whatever, this is wrong & affiliates must stay away from such a product. We have a lot of products to choose from & we affiliates don't have to stick to such a vendor. Just think about it: You go to buy a product. You are just about to order, and you are shown a banner "Make $$$ selling this product". Most people will click it and take a look. If they manage to understand what it is all about, they will definitely try buying through their own link!! Who loses money here? Only the affiliate who send traffic. Vendor gains Gravity which makes provides him more visibility, popularity & even more affiliates. There may be some people who would buy for $13 but not for $47. So the vendor makes even more sales (I don't have a problem with this)
People from a particular age group & income range will surely check out the "Make money selling this e-book" link. A lot of the buyers are technically sound & know how web 2.0 sites work. It won't be a big deal for them to create a CB account & get discount on the product. Yes, your link is perfectly OK. Having just an "Affiliates" Link is fine. What is important is that Publishers shouldn't encourage buyers to Click on the Affiliates Link by having Anchor Text like "Make Money Selling this E-book" or "Webmasters - Make Money" or anything like that.
Very well said.I will look at the products which I am and will do as per sugessted by you.thanks a lot for the suggesion.
Clickbank actually has conditions setup for payments to affiliates. For example, you need 5 different credit card numbers and a visa, mastercard, and paypal purchase. These variants ensure that one person creating an affiliate account for the sole purpose of a discount will never receive their commission. As for the ebook owner, why shouldn’t he market his own affiliate program? That is probably his biggest income generator.
I don't think its that effective for the "in hurry" buyer sometime he doesn't even completes the sales letter however many make money products buyers are already in affiliate marketing and might already have cb account so its always good idea to hide the link
I wouldn't just simply walk away from the vendor. If it's a product I'd by interested in marketing I would try sending them a message, "I would be interested in marketing your product, but I have concerns about your affiliate link. Here's why.... blah blah blah." If it's an unscrupulous vendor he'll ignore your message. But I would think most vendors do this unintentionally and your input would be valuable to him in securing more quality affiliates. You really need to stress to the vendor the fact that you will work hard to bring customers long term, as opposed to customers who get disstracted by the affiliate program and buy once through their own link; Resulting in a single short term sale.
That's really unprofessional of the vendor, putting a link 'make money with this product' at the bottom. It can decrease conversions, and the vendor shouldn't really be trying to recruit his potential customers to be his affiliates. He should try to make them buy. What I do is simply put a subtle link at the bottom of the page named 'affiliate', so only the ones that are really looking for it(the affiliates) will find it,
This is, indeed, one of the "leaks" that sales pages can have. But not one of the biggest. It's not as if people can realistically open their own clickbank affiliate account just to use it to buy one product, you know, because of the "customer distribution requirement" (which actually exists specifically to prevent people from doing this and earning anything from it). It's more of a problem in some niches than others (such as "internet marketing advice" and "make money online") because those are people more likely to be willing to open a clickbank affiliate account anyway. It's not as if you can realistically hope to make a sale on your affiliate account to someone who already has their own affiliate account anyway, you know? But it's a good plan to email the vendors of these products pointing out the error of their ways. All that said, this isn't nearly as big a problem as clickbank vendors having an opt-in on the sales page. For many professional affiliates that's a huge "no-no". Personally, an affiliate-page link on the sales page won't stop me from becoming an affiliate for a product with no other sales page leaks and nothing else wrong with it, but like many others, I wouldn't dream as an affiliate of touching a product when the vendor has an opt-in on its sales page! PS These vendors with affiliate-page links showing aren't actually "stealing" in the sense that they benefit themselves, anyway. From their perspective, it doesn't make any difference to whose affiliate-link the sale is credited. So it's not exactly "theft" anyway, to be fair!