Clickbank Vendor Stealing Affiliate Commissions?!?!

I do not know what this "Supplemental tracking" system is based on. Go to any CB site through a hoplink then clear your cookies and refresh. I bet the tracking ID is gone..

Maybe they found a way to let the cookie pass through some programs that block cookies, but i don't think they resolved "Clearing Cookies" issue.

 

Tried with IE:
Visit through my affiliate hoplink, clear cookies, visit through regular link. Supplemental tracking seems to work (my original id there).

Tried with Firefox:
Visit through my hoplink, clear cookies, visit through regular link. Supplemental tracking seems to NOT work (my original id NOT there, affiliate=none).

So according to this quick test, the supplemental tracking is working with IE, but not Firefox.

If someone can confirm my results, we have an explanation and a possible resolution.

 

I just tested in 4 other vendors in IE. The hoplink ID was erased in all 4 when cookies were cleared and page was refreshed. Did you refresh in your test?

 

Yes, I closed the browser and went straight to the store.unexplain....

Both tests were the same and I'm running ie7.

Will run the test again later. Something just came up.

 

You have concluded your post with a pat for the suporters of this optin theory.That I feel is not in good taste. The person who started this thread is also one of your affiliates and he found the product worth marketing and might have put a lot of effort into it. You need to appreciate that the novice,the newbies are a distressed lot and any thing that give a suspicion of looting their empty pocket would be resisted and despised. You need to be a little bit sensitive to this issue. For that matter every vendor on this forum.

BTW I do not market any product with an optin. That was my philosophy from the very begining. Write or wrong , I had no ocasions to complain about my vendors!

 

Everyone has their own style, and way to structure their sites. I for one LOVE opt-ins, and even encourage my traffic/campaigns to fill them out (as an aff). Yes you should contact your vendors to have full transparency, and yes those optins can work both for you, and or against you.

There are many benefits to having an optin (which I'll save for another thread but they are obvious) if the vendor is in their right/moral/ethical state of mind. The odd sale you lose due to cookies, would have been lost with or without a form. If the vendor IS stealing, you should have done a better job finding transparent offers (if they steal on forms, it would make me question how else they might steal - and there is a TON of server side scripts that can influence clicks/cookies/sneaky shit). Just because there is no form on the page, don't assume it's 100% leak free..

I like in-line forms though, no flyins/popouts/slide ins... Those are just annoying. If it's ON the page, and it's a vendor you trust/know, the optin works in your favor. And hey, what's stopping YOU from having an optin on your campaigns, why aren't YOU capturing this data yourself if it's so sensitive?

I have easyclickmate on a few of my sites, and use the rotater function when there is no cookie or traffic comes directly to the site, and also have aff's reach out sometimes thinking I'm scamming, and I have to address this in a similar way... FloodRod, simply add a disclaimer on your AFF page that says you use easyclickmate and rotate ID's on direct visits (I even add most of my aff's ID's to the rotator, so as a bonus all direct sales go to the more active aff's anyway)...

.02.

 

Well ...... I do hear you, Hank, but you're asking a lot from them. Maybe you're a little more optimistic than I am?

I take the view that if they're not even willing/able to provide really efficient affiliate tracking, expecting them to weed out vendors who steal from their own affiliates (when they have, themselves, no real short-term financial incentive to weed them out, after all!) is perhaps asking too much out of life! You can't expect them to do it "for the good of their own long-term reputation and public image" because everything about what passes for "customer service" with Clickbank already tells us clearly that they don't understand that concept at all!! The reality is that only having some true competition from someone actually providing the exact same service that Clickbank pretends to provide, will change their behavior and attitude, in my opinion.

 

So if we rely on the Supplemental hoplink tracking of 2007-05-01, and this easyclickmate software sets your ID or a random ID, are you not interfering with the flow by setting these?

I'm assuming this script is unable to interface with Clickbank's backend system which claims to be a "new technology that will accurately track hoplinks and award correct affiliate credit for most instances where cookies are not set".

Yeah, I know. Most, not all.

And Alexa, I'm only optimistic that it "can" be done since I come from a technology background, not holding my breath that they will due to the reasons you state.
Only competition, or a lawsuit, will force them since they apparently are unwilling to act to protect their affiliates without these external pressures.

 

**Actually yes, it does, re the secret key and their api functions... won't say it helps with tracking, but it doesn't affect it in a negative way (well, it pisses off or scares away new aff's that don't understand it, and it isn't explained on the aff page).. When you click 'buy now' on the easyclickmate sites, it doesn't go to 1.pay..., it goes to the ezcm system, which is the same for the new way you create hoplinks with their system. It even lets you cookie your traffic on your landers legally...

Essentially yes, if every single affiliate used the ezclickmate hoplink structure not the normal CB holinks, they would be able to track and drop cookies with less concern (hard to explain unless you understand the script, and thus, if the script does fall in the wrong hands it can be used to do wrong or cheat the system too).

There are other scripts out there that you need to worry about more than this one, as this one is a transparent godsend imo for aff's/tracking/cookiedropping... i.e. things you'll never know unless you have access to your vendors server: server side stuffing on every 4th visit from google search only, or every 3rd yahoo visit from their ppc engine, or your vendor gets infected with a trojan and gets his sales page injected with other random redirects/hard to pinpoint sneaky scripts to play with the CB system under the radar. Sometimes it's your machine, or it's adware like zango on your customers machine, or its the vendor being shady (or looking shady like here even in best intention mode)... Again it's best to actually reach out to your vendors directly, have open communication with them, avoid BS and if they are sneaky, they will be less likely to steal from YOU because they know you have dealt with them directly.

 

Not familiar with this software so can't speak to how it interfaces with the backend "cookieless" tracking.

But, even assuming that it does work, do we just trust that this all works better than Clickbank's tracking?

Seems like the prudent thing is to just leave the natural traffic flow alone, and not set any external IDs.

This is why ClickbBank needs to "systematically" fix this once and for all. We put people on the moon, after all, don't tell me there's no solution to this.
But as Alexa said, "they're not even willing/able to provide really efficient affiliate tracking", or even pretend to try to fix, tracking and enforce fairness (using technology).

 

It still uses cookies, as an affiliate you don't need to know the secret key/api stuff it's just for the vendor. Everything is left to a per case/per vendor/per affiliate relationship basis at this point. Naturally with so much shit in this industry, adding a gray area third part tool leaves plenty of room to raise an eyebrow.

*Never trust anyone
*Always double check your business relationships
*It's not as automated a business as it first seems
*Assume guilty before innocent...

... . .. ...is probably the way most think, including me - but the more you play in this game, the tighter your circle gets and the easier it is to weed out bullshit. Technical 'if/then' statements re a script is a small piece of this puzzle, to newer players yes it's probably best to simply use good ol' original aff.vendor.hop.clickbank.net - once you get the hang of things/people/leaks/good vendors, trust me (pun intended) you'll appreciate scripts and tracking like this.

**EDIT:

Agreed.

 

NC, I trust you, that's not an issue, and most of your products have treated me well.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here though.

I spent 10 years working for a major bank, engineering Information Security and tracking/monitoring software, that's why I say that they are able to fix this, they just don't due to lack of pressure.

In this case, I'm referring specifically to the 2007-05-01 "Supplemental Hoplink Tracking", which states that it's a "cookieless" supplement.

I have verified that this works, in IE7 at least, by turning off cookies, so none can be set. The affiliate ID still tracks, somehow, on the backend "without cookies" on my browser.

Sooo. How can it "still use cookies" if I'm rejecting them in my browser setting?

What am I missing? I want to learn, and maybe become an Vendor.

 

My bad, "it still uses cookies" was referring to the script mentioned above.

I disregarded the 2007-05-01 stuff, and wouldn't trust a cookie free system (as you're probably seeing it won't work in all browsers/versions/OS's...). I don't think cookies are going anywhere anytime soon, and I don't think there is going to be a 'new revolutionary' way to track anytime soon, but agree that they can probably technically fix/upgrade/enhance their tracking. Personally, I actually enjoyed the previous/older analytics tracking only because it was more up to date for a vendor (i.e. you saw everything with no more than a 40 min delay, now it's 3 hours for me). As for aff's tracking their clicks/campaigns/ensuring cookies get dropped, there will always be leaks/unexplainables (no pun floodrod).

Anyway, yes the CB tracking isn't 100% and they should def be putting more resources into it.

 

Great, so now if this script inserts your/random affiliate id into the picture, does that not interfere with their "cookieless" supplemental tracking, reliable or not?

Obviously if it's unreliable/broken, we can ask them (CB) to address and fix.

But if the affiliate ID switcharoo is on the vendor's server side, "even though the cokieless system [might] have tracked properly", utilizing this or other scripts, then there is an interference issue and that's wrong.

Wrong, because the script wasn't aware of how/if the referral was being tracked by the Supplemental system.