Hi Digital Pointers, I'm Here to seek legal advice. Here is my case, IN around November 15,2006 I Started optimizing a websites search engine rankings, This Subsequently led to the website receiving immense amounts of traffic hits. The Point of driving so much traffic was so i can make money as an affiliate. I had found the publisher who i became an affiliate with on the internet company called Clickbank. I had become a member there and seeked to make a little bit of money as a housewife. On August 22, 2007 I stopped driving traffic to the website, the traffic hits capped off at 51,078, Now here is the crazy part, After leading that much traffic, I didn't even have 1 cent in my clickbank account. Now i try to make an equation here, OUt of all those 51,078 Traffic hits,(they were all unique hits) Not one of them bought his stupid, "I'm going to make you rich program"???. I'm Under suspicion That two things could have occured. One, Clickbank commited accounting fraud. Two, The Guy Running the website, Somehow, Did not pay my affiliate commision, every time the program was purchased by my Traffic. Anyway, What Drives me to suspect this even more is the fact, that his website was terminated in October 2007. Now Rumors around the internet say that the website was dropped because of The money back guarantee was not fulfilled, the terms of service etc... no other information is disclosed. I want to contact clickbank, however until I'm about 98% sure, I won't do that. PLEASE RESPOND WITH LEGAL ADVICE, I NEED IT!
If you want to spend thousands of dollars to file a lawsuit based on a belief that you may have been defrauded, go ahead. You'll likely need to wind up suing the affiliate. You're going to need to do discovery and forensic accounting and it's going be very expensive. Do you really want to risk tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees? Even if you win, you probably won't be awarded legal fees, and you'll then need to try to collect damages - which can be near to impossible if it turns out you are dealing with someone who is a crook. It's going to be best to forget about the whole thing, imo. It's not worth the money especially since you have absolutely no proof. It's sorta odd that you kept trying to sell something for almost a year, with no luck, with a single publisher. I would have been gone after a week.
Sadly, what you need is not legal advice, it's practical advice... I agree with mjewel. You can contact ClickBank, but they're going to say that it's the responsibility of the guy who was running the site that you were an affiliate for. You can sue him, but frankly, it's not worth the money. Maybe send him a demand letter, but you have no proof that he's done anything wrong... It's a tough one. It seems that you're between a rock and a hard place since you have no proof of wrongdoing... I'm sorry... Deena ______________________________________________________________________ Any opinions are offered without knowledge of the specific law of your jurisdiction and with only the limited information provided in your post. No advice given here should be reasonably relied upon by you or any third party without consulting an attorney who is aware of all of the facts and law surrounding your situation. Any advice given here is not intended to create an attorney-client relationship in any way.
I mght sue for username infringement Were any of your visitors targeted? How much was this get rich quick thing? Is that 50k uniques over the year? It could be that people just didn't want to buy it. the keywords you were targeting brought visitors who were not interested in the product or too savvy to buy a get rich quick scheme off the internet. I'd have expected some clicks from that many visitors and probably some sales, but I wouldn't say this was hugely outside standard deviation realms. You should read the rest of the advice above and since you have no proof probably best let it go.
Also, you won't get legal advice here, if you want bona fide legal advice, seek the advice of your lawyers. They will be in the best position to give you the legal advice that you need. Here the other members have already given good practical advice, which I do not need to repeat.
Well, Here are my conclusions: 1. I guess, you need $xxx amount to pay a lawyer, if you want to seu, clickbank, First think yourself, do you have that much amount to pay? 2. I don't think, CB has done a fraud with you, they are legit. 3. That traffic may be fake! And there are 99% chances that the traffic was fake, if you just brought the traffic for few dollars. 4. If you think, that traffic was real/natural/organic, then from a seller point of view, even I think, you must have got at least few sales, if the traffic niche/people interest matches your CB product. 5. if the traffic was natural, then you must have made at least $10k from it, if you know how to use it wisely, like you must have collected the email ids of people. 5.1 Suppose you collected 50k email ids 5.2 Build a relationship with these persons by sending them email using aweber 5.3 if you have a good relationship, now after sending non promotional, quality emails for about 3 weeks, you can send them an email to buy your product, i bet, at least 1 person will buy 6. After getting initial 1000 hits, you didn't made a sale, now at that point of view, you must have realized that there was something wrong. 7. You must have placed at least few ads on your site by adsense, and it would have helped us to decide that traffic was fake or not. 7.1 If traffic was real - then you must have got at least 50 clicks 7.2 If traffic was fake - Then 0 clicks 8. In last, i don't see a point is suing CB, but I think, you must have purchased the traffic and the person who sold the traffic may not be legit.
A lot of good points in your post, but I would want to urge caution on the collection of emails. Make sure that they are opt in and not bought off the shelf, or it will be the same thing as the purchased traffic and you may be cut off by your ISP for spamming.
My biggest question, and the question it seems you would have to prove is did anyone actually click the link and buy the product. Can you prove that? Even if you cannot prove it you would have to compile a great deal of evidence to support that some percentage of your traffic would have. This would, it seems, mean validating all the traffic and doing some kind of study to prove that X% of this type of traffic buys the product you were promoting. Not trying to rain on the parade or anything, but I think you would have a very steep uphill battle to prove anyone bought the product and even harder to prove that xxx people bought it. How much in damages are you seeking? It is my understanding you cannot just go in and sue without a dollar figure in mind that is based on something. Obviously some of these figures are just pie in the sky claims by lawyers, but you see what I mean I hope. One last point, it sounds like the company has gone out of business anyway so there is no money to get from them even if you won and could actually track them down. LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This does not represent legal advice in any way, shape, or form and should not be construed as such. I have taken some law classes many moons ago, but this is only the opinion of an average schmoe to be taken with a grain of salt, or maybe even half a grain...
Are you sure your hoplink was correct? With Clickbank, all the sales go through Clickbank itself. It is my understanding that Clickbank does all the reporting, not the publisher. If the hoplink is incorrect, they cannot measure the response and give you credit. Why did you wait until you had 50,000+ unique visits to question providing traffic to the publisher? And why did you wait another year to think about doing something about it?
I can picture what would happen already if you did sue. Judge: What were you trying to promote/sell? You: Get rich quick eBook Judge: Those are risky and mostly a scam. Lesson learned. Case closed.
I doubt it will even get pass the stage to the courts. Such cases are normally dismissed before that.
Like everyone has said here, it probably doesn't make financial sense for you to sue. The legal system makes it very difficult on the little guy (you, in this case) to win in this type of situation.
I Appreciate you all caring and giving me advice, most of it was useful. Most of you decided i should not sue, mostly because of legal fees, However i wonder if any lawyers would work on a contingent fee, doubt it. Litigation will probably take a very long time, due to the number of subjects involved in the case. I'm not sure whether i could have made $0 on the traffic, or $400,000, Money is just part of what gave me some persuasion to file a suit, Second is he is a crook, he deserves to be in jail. If any of you wish to check out his website, which has been dropped as i mentioned earlier, the site is www.ultimatewealthpackage.com. I appreciate all your advice, good or bad, If you guys still wish to provide me with advise legal or non-legal, please do.
well if you have that much of traffic why not use Google adsense and put your ad space for sale and advertise in forums like here , its better