I have been noticing lately that 2 of my most popular clickbank items (that sell well) haven't been getting alot of traffic lately. I buy domain names with Godaddy and forward and mask to my clickbank hoplink. Something made me go to my one site (it is a government auto auction) and has always had pretty good conversions. I went through the site like I was going to order the product and when I got to the order form page, it showed affiliate=none. That worried me so I went through with the order to test it and I didn't get credit for it. I went through my 10 other sites and 8 out of 10 of them did not do the redirect. I went back in and redid my hoplinks with clickbank and had to put them back into each domain (which hopefully will fix it) It takes at least an hour to update in godaddy and could take up to 2 days. I am feeling nauseated thinking about the sales that I have lost. I also don't know how long this has been going on. Luckily, my most popular one didn't lose it's hoplink Has anyone else had this problem?
can you elaborate how do you forward and mask clickbank hoplink. I mean do you just redirect the site to the hoplink or what?
Were they originally working and then you just noticed the drop in sales? I'm wondering if there was a problem with the original URL you fwd to
@ lazyfrog- I am with godaddy and you have an option to forward and mask. For example, my one site that has done well is buyingrepocars.com. It forwards to my clickbank hoplink and it masks the hoplink. When people click on the site, it reads www.buyingrepocars.com and doesn't show the hoplink. @ Ryanray- yes, they were always working. I always preview my site when I set it up and test it. The only thing that spiked my attention was that when I was checking my clickbank stats, I was barely showing any to that site. I always had at least 10 or more clicks on that hoplink a day. The product converts well and I started seeing no clicks on that site. When I tested it yesterday, I noticed that the affiliate=none on the order page. I always go to the order page to make sure that my affiliate name shows. I had to go back into each site with clickbank and regenerate my hoplink than go back into godaddy and put it in the forward and mask section. I tested my sites today (as godaddy's changes take anywhere up to 2 days to show up) My sites were back with the affiliate code on the order page and now I just checked it and it shows none again :-(. The clickbank hoplink that I regenerated was different than the one I put in originally. If you have sites like this, you may want to go in and check them periodically. I know I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. I wil definately be testing my sites more frequently now. I now have to figure out what the issue is here.
OK, so I am really getting frustrated with this issue. I keep going in and regenerating my hoplinks for a few of my sites and changing them in godaddy. It goes back to my affiliate code than changes back to none again in a few hours. On one of my products, it changes back to my code than a few hours later shows another affiliate's code. Basically, I am going in and updating my hoplinks every 5 hours or so. I am very concerned and definately don't want to keep doing this. I logged a support ticket with clickbank but haven't heard back yet. Has anyone else at all had this issue in the past? I feel like the hours upon hours that I have spent researching and writing quality articles is being wasted :-( I have no clue whether this is an issue on clickbank's side or godaddy's or if someone is basically just stealing my links. Any honest insight would be very much appreciated.
Sorry to hear of your issues but that's a weak strategy IMO. If you have a good keyword domain name, make the most of it by developing it to get even more traffic, don't mask the URL.
dcristo- I started that 2 years ago when I was new to affiliate marketing. I worked very hard to write quality articles on these products and don't feel that it is fair for someone else to reap my rewards. Considering I have alot of good quality articles going around the web for 4 of them 8, (the other 4 expire in February and I will not be renewing) They haven't had a good conversion rate but my other 4 do (and I don't feel it fair for me to lose them) I worked very hard researching and writing unique articles (not stealing and spinning other's work) I do now build my own sites and blogs. Again, It may be weak but we both know it is a very common practice in the internet marketing world. I am looking for input from others that have had the same issue (to help me solve the issue) not criticism on my work. Thanks
Hey I am just trying to help, don't get personal. You know what they say "work smarter not harder". So you've been doing article marketing and linking to the masked URL in the bio of the articles? Don't worry what you have done hasn't gone to waste, but what I would do if I was you is remove the URL forwarding at the domain account, setup a mini site, and then setup a redirect for the aff link in .htaccess file on your server. This achieves two things. It enables you to presell to the visitor instead of directing them straight to the sales page. Plus you also have more control of the affiliate link.
Thanks. That's a good idea and I think I will try that. I apologize for getting testy, I'm just frustrated this evening :-( Thanks for the input
That's the odd part- It's different products but it's not happening with all of them. I have 10 domain names with godaddy (that are bought domain names that forward to a clickbank product) 2 of them are fine and working properly. 7 of them keep changing me to affiliate=none after a few hours of me regenerating the hoplink with clickbank for the product and updating godaddy. It will go back to my affiliate code on the order page for a while than back to none. One of them keep changing to someone else's affiliate code. I am showing hops to them in clickbank stats though but that may be just from me changing them back than testing them. As I said, I am mainly concerned with the four of them because they do have decent conversions (the other 4 are expiring in February anyhow and I wasn't planning on renewing them so not as concerned about them and don't have as much work put into them) I am going to do what you suggested with the other 4. Luckily, my two best sellers are the ones that are still working properly.
There shouldn't be any reason to have to regenerate the hoplink to get it to work. Hard to say if anything more sinister is going on without knowing more. If you PM me the products that you seem to have issues with tracking I can test it if from my end if that helps.