Clickbank Sales Tanking

I think out of everyone, you're my favorite person on this forum. Every time I see you post, you're calling someone out. I love it!

 

Lets explore the logic behind your claim that clickbank is greedy and stealing sales.
I own a membership product on clickbank for a long time now,
every sale equals one new member in my database.
if clickbank shave sales i would easily spot members in my database which
have not been accounted for saleswise.
this has never happened...
meaning at least from me clickbank has never shaved sales.
Makes sense?

 

Yes, this would make sense from a vendor's perspective.

Can you also perform this same analysis from an Affiliate's?
I think this would help a lot of people.

Seems that the issue is more of a system not working type and not intentional cheating. Usually happens whenever they make a change, which is typical of technology organization with a poor or non-existent quality control system.

That's the only way I can explain why, in my case at least, Clickbank sales are sporatic and conversion percentages are inconsistent, but sales for similar products from other networks/independent vendors stay consistent day in and day out, recession or not.

 

Thanks. I just wish more people actually read the post rather than writing a stupid generic response which makes no sense and wastes everyone's time.

 

some people don't understand "consistency" in terms of affiliate marketing...

 

I really think that the problem with this tracking lies in the affiliate not getting credited, and the full price of the product, minus cb fees, dropping into the vendor account. I do think that opening new accounts does make a difference, as I have been running thousands of quality hops over a night's worth of time into one account(that wouldn't log sales) and opened a new account(which then did log sales), and then switched back to the old account, and no sales logged.

This was with several thousand hops of quality traffic, no economic swings, sporadic hop volume, etc. I've also contacted CB via e-mail and had accounts accounts turn back on as Supper and Gort mentioned.

I've also promoted products where I receive additional commission for a customer who makes a subsequent purchase after the main offer. And....in some instances, I have been credited for the second purchase and not the first. So, the money for the first sale is going into the vendor account...or......space.

 

Now that makes much more sense to me.
I think we have 2 major problems with CB,
the first one being errors in the credit processing (causing the processor to deny perfectly good credit cards) which create large
sales gaps in the rush hours and many order form submits without sales (and i have seen this happen on huge accounts many times these last few years).
The second is affiliates not credited properly for the sales.
i own both a vendor and an affiliate account and yesterday my vendor
account got x2.5 more sales without an affiliate (250% more then average)
which was very weird and on the other hand my affiliate account did horribly yesterday as the conversion ratio dropped almost by the same factor as above.
this can explain many things but can also be just a coincidence (though i doubt it).
I think that a mix of both the above stated problems is the issues most
of us are having with CB,
sometimes both happen at the same time while other times only one of these or non which in turn will cause intermittent sales patterns on clickbank for both affiliates and vendors.

..." have been running thousands of quality hops over a night's worth of time into one account(that wouldn't log sales) and opened a new account(which then did log sales), and then switched back to the old account, and no sales logged. "
i think that this can be explained if clickbank uses multiple servers to handle the hops for affiliates/vendors
should you be lucky enough to fall on a server with not many issues you will have no problem ,
by switching an account you are actually switching between servers thus avoiding the issues of the server for your original account.
(of couse this is just a theory of mine)

 

Late night on Oct. 22 I changed out to another account that I don't use often, and sales started coming in. Don't tell me Clickbank wasn't screwing me over... I don't believe it was a coincidence either.

 

yeah but how do you know if you just waited another day the sales might have came anyways?? I have never came across that problem. I think some people just over analyze too much, they look at their accounts and check their stats too much!

 

My sales tanked today. $100 today so far from an average of $500 a day last week... wtf

 

Funny...I did a little experiment. I switched back to my previous account and sales were zero....I return to the second account and sales come in. Seems pretty conclusive to me that either something is wrong at Clickbank or they have targeted that account for shaving.

 

That may very well be true, but all you have is a forum posting saying that it happen. It's not very credible and many people are not gonna believe you. You should do your experiment again and record and video it this time.

 

LOL. He doesn't have to prove it to anyone.

Gort: Just keep it on the "good" account and enjoy the sales. I believe your story about the sales between the two accounts, but I still don't understand why Clickbank would shave? Clearly the vendor can determine how many people have downloaded the product this his own logs...so CB couldn't get away with shaving from vendors.

 

meh show me a video!!

 

No he doesn't, but he's the one that started the thread about it and then turned it into an investigation, nobody has had a problem as severe as the one he's had with his clickbank account, I never have, so its kind of hard to believe. If its true, this would be very good evidence that clickbank is shaving or either have really bad tracking system and just giving the full sale to the vendor from his work, of course it is Gort's decision if he wants to do this with video and risk losing sales again.

Thanks for stating the obvious, I'm sure Gort and everybody else already knew to stick with the account that brings in the sales.

 

We should make sure to get the FBI involved as well!

 

Now that's a good theory!

 

I think it sucks that CB still uses cookies, in this day-and-age.
Fifteen year-old technology, upon which all affiliates depend.

I wonder how many people click on an affiliate's link at work,
read a little, then purchase from home?

John

 

Affiliates not getting credited and the vendor getting the whole amount is not the issue.

Simply go to http://www.cb-analytics.com and look at the "referred graph" , it shows the number of sales that were referred (made by an affiliate) . Most products usually have a referred percentage of around 90%, which means 90% of the sales were made by affiliates, and 10% percent were 'no affiliate' sales where the vendor gets the whole amount

 

As per http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/137532-clickbank-again-4.html (post 183) :

Hi,

As a REAL 7 figure CB vendor and affiliate I KNOW there are some issues with CB tracking.

For example, sometimes I will see an affiliate get credit for the front end product and NOT get credit for the One Time Offer, even though the customer is redirected by Clickbank directly to that OTO and the product has the same hop id etc.

It's an issue. I have spoken with Clickbank about it, but even for me, a vendor, I am unable to pay that affiliate the commission they so rightly deserve. The fact affiliates are in most cases anonymous means its impossible to pay that out.

NOW, I WILL STRESS.... THIS HAPPENS RARELY, SO DON'T ALL FREAK OUT

Im just stating it because it does prove that there is a problem with their tracking system... but then again, every one knows that.

As a vendor too, I find it frustrating when I have large gaps of sales. Traffic is consistent, just sales stop. Now, sure, that can be coincidence... but imagine getting 20 sales an hour... and then not getting any for 5 or 6 hours straight. And then have them suddenly start again. Is that a coincidence or a CB issue?

Just some thoughts for you all.

Cheers,

Supermania l