Clickbank Vendor Stealing Affiliate Commissions?!?!

I just discovered a Clickbank Vendor Stealing Affiliate Commissions.
He is overriding my affiliate link. This is outrageous!

I want to reveal his identity but I'm not sure If I'm allowed to do that on this forum. I'm looking forward for your comments and suggestions.
Michael

 

Best to let us know who he/she is so other affiliates don't get ripped off by this person!!!!!

 

I'll make a decision based on the comments. If it's ok I could upload a Video screenshot on youtube. You'll see exactly how he's doing it.

 

what is this? can u kindly explain more about it. and its better if you tell us that person name.

 

Just paste the damn link....we can quickly tell if he's overwriting or not!

 

Watch this video and let me know your thoughts:
youtube.com/watch?v=0sVuFm9J9kc

 

My thoughts are I just wasted 2 minutes watching your stupid video.

You could have just said unexplainable.net was the site in question , of which the vendor frequents this forum.

I tried using my affiliate link and had no problem at all.......

newb!!

 

Well floodrod is on this forum, but the video you posted doesn't prove stealing.

He may have a script to use his ID as affiliate if no cookie exists. Some vendors do this with rotating ids to boost gravity.

Vendor is not responsible for affiliate credit if customer cannot retain a cookie e.g. if they have a virus or something or just cleared their history. That's why CB needs to improve their tracking to use more than just cookies.

 

Newbies Posting Silly Threads?!?!
This is outrageous!

 

Free tip: you'll get more YouTube views showing how to stuff cookies rather than delete them.

 

Hi All,

I run the Unexplainable Store.. If you visit the affiliate section, you will see we run Easyclickmate. This is the script that allows our affiliates to link to individual products. It's a great script..

We just upgraded to version 8.6 which has a new feature. users can specify what accounts to credit if no cookie was set. It really makes no difference which way i set it because either way, it ends up in one of my accounts.

I never overwrite hoplinks. Your video shows my script assigning a default id because there was no affiliate. but your video doesn't show any over-writing of hoplinks.

feel free to verify the legitimacy of the script at easy biz tools website. if this concerns affiliates, I'll set it to default. That's how i play, honest and up to date.. Atleast i try to keep up to date:-=)

 

Actually, I want to share a little tip for affiliates. I was hesitant about sharing it because I may piss off some shady vendors, but i fully believe vendors should do everything they can to prevent sale loss for affiliates.

Tip- Always check that the vendors 404 page isnt isn't hoplinked. If the vendor is hopping 404 traffic on the clickbank sales site, you are losing sales.. 99.9% of affiliates would never even catch this..

If the 404 page is hoplinked and your surfer clicks a broken internal link, your cookie is history. If the surfer checks the /downloads directory to see if he can get it for free, you lose the cookie. Or a slip of the keyboard and your referral types a bad page address, your out! The vendor should redirect 404 traffic to the main page without over-writing the hoplink.

Hope this helps some

 

floodrod, you will lose a lot of affiliates by using this "shady technique". You are also losing your credibility.

What about those banners on your main site: unexplainable.net ??

1) I send a visitor to your store using my own affiliate link
2) That visitor goes to unexplainable.net and clicks one of those 2 banners
3) My affiliate link is overwritten!

 

Wow that's pretty funny having a newb come in here and make accusations which are WRONG and then talking about credibility.

If you use the clickbank hoplink the vistor is sent to store.unexplainable.net and there is no overwriting of cookies there which blows your first accusations away....if they purchase anything you will be credited, if for some reason they decide to go to unexplainable.net they will have to physically take the "store" prefix away from the URL and yes if they did go through all that hassle and happen to click on the banner in question yes the cookie will be overwritten but why would they??......I think your just reaching now because you look stupid coming in here accusing a vendor of STEALING and being proved wrong

 

It only happens all the time, Michael. (Even if not actually this time?!?!)

Sorry to sound unsympathetic, but if you've chosen to become an affiliate for a product whose vendor has an opt-in on the sales page, enabling the vendor to contact by email the prospective purchasers whom you, as an affiliate, have produced with your time, effort, experience, trouble and expense ... well, you get what you deserve. Sorry, but that's how it is. That's how it's always been. It's not changing any time soon.

When I first started off as a Clickbank affiliate, I became an affiliate for 7 different products, all of them high gravity products with an opt-in on the sales page. To cut a long story short, it turned out that this was happening with six of those seven products.

It was when I learned about this and swore never to be an affiliate again for a product with a vendor's opt-in, that I started making a living.

By the way, you shouldn't use the word "stealing". Clickbank allows this. It's not illegal and it's not even breaking Clickbank's terms of service.

Think again!

 

Ohh! Alexa is the house! Haven't seen you on any forums for a while!

Anyways I must disagree about the "opt-in" issue. Yes, unfortunately some shady, small time crook vendors DO send e-mails using their own affiliate link.

All the serious vendors send out e-mails with straight link to their site so if you as an affiliate set the cookie a month ago and the potential customer never manually cleared it - then you will still receive your commission.

Vendors who overwrite affiliates cookies get kicked out of CB sooner or later.

Just my $0.02 from my 2 years of experience with Clickbank.

Alex

 

Thanks that you came forward . For quite a while I was mistaking Alexa s for You.

 

Sorry, but that's just crap, Alex.

All 6 of the ones I myself found doing this are still actively selling their products (and other newer products, too) there a year later, and they're not "shady, small-time, crook vendors" either - these are successful, well-known, high-gravity, high-popularity products.

Clickbank allow this.

I wrote and asked them, offering them evidence of 6 of their biggest, most popular vendors doing this - and that was just out of the first 7 products I promoted, remember - and they (eventually) replied telling me perfectly openly that this "isn't disallowed" (as they put it). Check with them yourself if you don't believe me.

To be honest, I actually think they're right to allow it, because they can't police it or enforce it anyway, so why would they want to take on responsibility for it by having rules about it? I don't altogether blame them. I have several criticisms of Clickbank but this isn't actually one of them, I would do the same in their position.

The solution to this common situation is dead easy: just stop promoting products with a vendor's opt-in.

But don't try convincing me, or this forum's members, that this is some kind of "rarity". It just isn't, and if you imagine so, all you're demonstrating is your own naivety.

 

I too have had similar exchanges with clickbank, with similar results as Alexa.

My opinion, however, is that they should act decisively to combat this and other types of affiliate theft. They "can" do it, but if they can't, they need to at least "try".

If they knowingly don't act, they are negligent. No different than any physical product vendor would be found negligent if their product knowingly caused harm.

michaelanthony247 might have found a general problem with CB which might explain the cookie clearing issue.

Don't know if anyone remembers the supplemental hoplink tracking, but if I recall, that was supposed to fix the cookie clearing issue.

Perhaps they broke this in one of their recent "updates".

Supplemental hoplink tracking!

2007-05-01

ClickBank is pleased to announce improvements to our hoplink tracking. Tracking hoplinks and affiliate credit with cookies is 100% accurate in the vast majority of cases. For some percentage of customers, however, cookies do not work for tracking. In these rare instances, customers either have cookies turned off in their browser, have utilized new browser security and/or privacy parameters, or have other software installed on their computer that prevents ClickBank from setting a cookie at all. We have developed a new technology that will accurately track hoplinks and award correct affiliate credit for most instances where cookies are not set. This new technology works hand-in-hand with our current cookie-tracking system to ensure proper credit is awarded to referring affiliates.

PS: Floodrod, could Easyclickmate interfere with this Supplemental tracking?

 

Ok, I don't see why because it is only filling in blank fields, but if it's that much of a concern, I removed it. It doesn't matter to me either way..

Unexplainable.net writes 100's of original articles every month and has been for many years. I'm not allowed to track my own conversions through a hoplink? That's ridiculous. Surely you can see the need to track my own hoplinks for optimization.

Your not seeing how Unexplainable.net works in reverse to fuel affiliate sales.. Our biggest searched keyword is "Unexplainable Store". Every day thousands of my visitors see the Unexplainable Store brand through Unexplainable.Net and end up googling for it later on. This means the Ad's with that keyword often get the sale credit.

Judging every vendor like you are is just silly. It's proven that a properly designed newsletter IMPROVES CONVERSIONS. Sure there are bad apples in the bunch, so definitely inspect the apple before you take a bite. But it's good practice to recognize the components that help you profit.

Actually, the Unexplainable Store will not even do any JV's while your cookies are active. never-mind over-write hoplinks in newsletters.. We have 60,000+ subscribers and could profit heavily from JV's, but we don't because we respect your cookie. No other products will be promoted in newsletters while any cookie is still in it's 60 day lifespan.

But since this a concern, I am designing a duplicate version of the store with NO optin which affiliates can link to if they choose. I wouldn't link to a store with no newsletter, but if that's what you want to see, I can make that happen.

You ask me to remove my default Clickbank ID when no cookie is set,--- OK. NO PROBLEM, ALREADY DONE. But in reality, this made no difference to anyone.

You ask me to remove the OPTIN- -- OK, I WILL OFFER AN OPTION FOR THAT TOO.. Even though it's ran honestly and affiliate conversions will decrease..

Asking me to remove my hoplinks on my own article site is one demand I will struggle with. I pay upward of 30 GRAND a year to 1099 contract writers and staff, which helps brand the name. This in-turn drastically raises the search volume for the Unexplainable Store, and allows affiliates to earn more commissions from PPC.. It would be foolish not to use Clickbank's analytics to track the site's productivity. The more people I aware of the Unexplainable Store, the more searches there are for it.

The system works. Show me another clickbank vendor who sells "Brainwave Entrainment" and who's affiliate sale statistics are in the same ball-park. You can promote some other one page site if you want with no optin, and no effort made by the vendor to stimulate sales. Then go ahead and compare your earnings data with our program.

BTW, I appreciate all the nice people who are standing behind me.