Hi everyone, I have a problem and you might experienced it too. I wanted to test my affiliate links. When I click on my affiliate link I'm redirected to the merchant website. Sometimes I can see my ID in the "hop=MyClickBankID" in the url field, sometimes not. In the 2 cases, when I click on the order link and the clickbank order page opens, at the bottom is written "[affiliate=none] instead of [affiliate=MyClickBankID]. This happens with each of my clickbank links. Can you see the same ? You can imagine how many lost commissions for everyone. A quick search on google showed me other people claiming they have this problem with IE and Firefox.
Hi InFlames, This can happen for different reasons at different times. Can you reproduce this bug reliably (aka, is there any single sequence of steps you take to make it consistently occur)? If so, maybe we can help you out. -T
Well, all I can say is I just click or copy and paste my clickbank link in the url field of my browser. Then I go to the ordering page of clickbank, I see the [affiliate=none]. So the question is : do you experience the same ? Telmari : I just clicked on the Day Job Killer link in your signature. Then click your affiliate link from your squidoo page. http://www.dayjobkiller.com/?hop=telmari correctly appears in the url field. Now I click "order day job killer now" and the [affiliate=none] is still there. You wouldn't have a sale from my purchase if I really ordered. So I think it's not a link problem. Look at this thread http://www.associateprograms.com/discus/sutra89737.html Thank you for helping.
Very interesting - it seems people from a variety of contexts have this problem, mainly as a result of spyware programs that seem to block cookies? The link you pointed out above displays just fine for me, with my aff.ID in the box at the bottom correctly. So, maybe we can take this apart and figure out what's actually going on. Which browser are you running? Do you have any anti-spyware programs currently running? Have you accepted Clickbank or 3rd party clickbank cookies before or in the past? -T
Okay, I'm using IE6. I just saw that clickbank.net was in the blocked sites list (confidentiality tag of IE6 options). I removed it from the list, do the test again and...[affiliate=telmari] appeared in the clickbank page. So now, it works. (No, I didn't buy DJK, sorry, just for testing.) I never noticed that clickbank.net was the domain for the payment process. I don't know how this was in the list. But a lot of potential buyers may have this "problem". Anyway, thank you for your help and time.
Good call, I think it is definitely something regarding 3rd party cookies vs 1st party cookies depending on the site. Working on a work around right now. (I know a lot of other people are experimenting with this on other forums, but I don't usually like to take other people's word as much as my own research) - I'm hoping to find a foolproof way to make sure if the person is going to buy through my site, they'll have my cookie locked in, for sure, no matter the browser or spyware/blocked list/etc setup. -T
yes, this happens to me all the time. that is the reason why i have been doing other affiliate programs, i get a lot of "ghost sales", the google conversion tracking states you have made many sales but they do not appear on your clickbank stats. i know it's not the vendors messing around, since it's been happening with many different vendors and some other clickbank friends.
Today, I updated spybot search and destroy. I "immunize" the system and it adds "clickbank.net" in the list of the blocked websites in IE... Then when I scan, it detects the clickbank cookie as a problem. Spybot is maybe not the only anti spyware remover to do this, and we're just losing commissions for this "not real problem".
I did some testing as well, and it seems like spybot definitely is the problem. My testing with IE7 seems just fine to me - the Clickbank cookie only gets blocked if you reject 1st party cookies (basically, cookies off) or if you add Clickbank.net to the blocked cookie list. -T
Most likely not. Here's the problem: To get the commission on a Clickbank sale, a few things need to happen. 1) The user needs to click a link to (yourID).(merchantID).hop.clickbank.net 2) User or user's browser needs to accept 1st party cookies in general, and more specifically be accepting cookies & http traffic connections to/from Clickbank.net 3) User needs to purchase product with yourID set in their Clickbank.net cookie. The problem is currently that SpyBot and several others do one of several things preventing step #2 from happening- -They set the Clickbank.net entry to 127.0.0.1 in the browser's HOSTS file, which in essence causes Clickbank.net to never be found by the browser -They add cookies from Clickbank.net to the browser's permanently blocked cookie list -They add information to the registry preventing Clickbank cookies to properly be set. So, a user with Spybot or one of these other programs can go through with steps 1 & 3, thus purchasing the product, but without step #2 in place, you'll never see the commission or the sale. Thus, unless the Clickbank cloaker has a way of forcing a clickbank.net cookie with your ID onto their computer, it won't unfortunately make a difference. Hopefully, Clickbank will realize that this affects many affiliates soon, and find a fix. I wrote them recently explaining the problem, and got a generic "Hi, we've heard it's a problem, but our statistics show our sales are steadily increasing" kind of letter. -T
If not try this...I was having the same issue in testing my aff links. Firefox would be fine, IE7.0 was not allowing any aff refers to come thru. no matter waht I did...UNTIL I did this: goto Control panel > Internet Options > Privacy > click on "sites" I had a bunch of domains in there for protection. Don't know if it was from spysweeper (av software) or from spybot S&D. Click on remove any clickbank items in there; Then Click on Add Site; Add www.clickbank.com, and www.clickbank.net Restart IE, test; Let me know if it works for you; Also go into spybot and any other virus/spyware proggies you have and check the protections, remove any reference to clickbank.... Regards! Kevin
I noticed CB has added a news item about Spybot S7D in there, any resolves for this issue? I wonder if they can just rename their cookie to clickbank2.com or something if that's kosher to do...? Regards Kevin
Yeah, that's the issue - we're afraid that this is the case on other peoples' computers as well, and that, of course, they won't be reading this helpful information -T