I apologize if this has already been covered here. I did use the search function, but wasn't able to find anything on the topic. Here's the scenario I need help with. Let's say a vendor places a product for sale in the marketplace and urges affiliates to market such a product by having an affiliates page on their main site. I spend time and money getting my hoplink out on the internet as an affiliate. The vendor then decides to remove the product from the marketplace or discontinues the product. My hoplink continues to function in one of several ways: a) As though all was well with the original sales page (my affiliate id at the bottom of the payment page). b) The vendor switches to an optin where they try to collect names and sell products and keep 100% of the commission. c) The destination is another product from the marketplace with my ID replaced with the vendor's. Obviously b and c are tough for an affiliate to catch, and Clickbank needs to figure out a way to stop this type of theft. But in the case of A above: 1) Am I still making an affiliate commission or does it all go to the vendor? 2) If I still make a commission, how do I verify how much since it's no longer in the marketplace feed? 3) What is to prevent a vendor from changing the commission or removing the product between feeds? 4) Is there any kind of verification process after the initial clickbank product approval for changes? Shouldn't the hoplink be immediately disabled once a product is removed from the marketplace, is "Sold Out", etc? Hank
If the vendor removes the product from the marketplace, you still get commission. If the vendor discontinues the product, then nobody gets any money because he's not selling through CB any more. Obviously if he sets up with another payment processor, you won't get any money. It sucks, but products do go out of business occasionally. The best way to avoid being caught out is to promote products that have some history.
Where do I verify this though if it's not in the Clickbank Feed? I trust the vendors but like to verify everything since it's my money I'm spending to advertise. I also can't budget my expenditures properly if, for example, the comission was 75% before it was removed but is now close to 0 since I have no way to know that this drop happened until after I've made a sale. That's the thing though, just as one example, MAGICBOT reaches gravity 374 in just a month, then drops out of the marketplace. The hoplink is still active and tons of affiliates advertising it through ppc, probably not knowing that the product is "sold out", replaced by an opt-in to the vendor's list, followed by a redirect to other products for which the affiliate will make 0 commissions. Why should this affiliate hoplink continue to be active since clickbank knows no commissions are payable? And when this happens, shouldn't Clickbank disable their affiliate hoplink, not continue to provide traffic to the vendor? I've seen some vendors point their destination URLs to their own hoplinks for other similar products, stripping the affiliate's id. Doesn't seem like there's any type of verification after initial approval on Clickbank's part. This is obvious, and I try to do just that, but I've found that even these sometimes resort to cheating on their way to extinction, trying to make just a little more money on the way out, at the affiliate's expense.
Check out the vendor product CBCLONE, and there's tons of these in the marketplace. Use your own affiliate ID. Why does Clickbank allow this type of product into the marketplace? Hank