http://www.travelbuoy.com/showresults.php?fid=10&gs=exmvkwd&q=$(idreplace)$&nb=1 Friends, I would like to share my bitter experience I had with Cleafs.com which is an affiliate network. A month back I got noticed from WF that Cleafs.com is one of the leading affiliate networks which offers CPC/CPL programs. I never knew this was a crowd puller. I joined, and started promoting some of the CPC programs. Like other networks, Cleafs also checked the authenticity of the website before approving as a publisher. That is the first phase. Now, I got approved as a publisher and then applied for some of the CPC programs in there. It took around a week or so to approve. I don't know whether it's the merchant or the network who approved this. But still, I got the approval. Then I started promoting the program. All went fine indeed, without any warning or any problem. I made some money doing this. My account looked good. Cleafs pays commission to their publishers first week of every month. Last week when I opened my Cleafs account, I was shocked to see my account balance. It came down to 0.00 (NIL). NIL!! without prior notice or haven't communicated the same via email. When I emailed them, their reply was weird. I hereby attach the email trails.. Hello, I have checked the account and it is correct that your accountamount is €0,- On friday we saw that you had a lot of clicks for the campaign of SRC Cultuurvakanties. Because they dont want people to promote them with a newsletter or such a thing the clicks are deleted. Thats why your amount whent from €XXX to €0,- In the future it is better to contact the merchant for rules about promoting them. Kind regards, Bram Dijkstra Affiliate manager Hello Bram, Thanks for your quick response. I appreciate your business, how do you conclude that I've done newsletter promotion? I've done pure Pay Per Click promotion. Merchant has no where mentioned that these much of clicks must be sent or something like that. How will a Publisher know about this? I work with so many clients across the globe. I'm working with even Yahoo Search Marketing. I have never experienced any problem like this - from XXX Euros to 0 Euro (weird). Usually merchants, if they are not satisfied with the quality of clicks coming, they will contact the publisher with a warning. This has never happened. But all of a sudden from something to nil. This is so ridiculous! I would like to know the exact problem. Regards, Leena Fernandez Hello Leena, I am sorry that this was the only way. If you had as much clicks with a CPS campaign and you generated sales we see the conversive. The merchant also can see if the sale is correct or not. With click campaigns it is difficult to see this. I hope you understand this. Finally I hope you keep on doing business with us but the way which you generated the clicks is not allowed with our merchants. If you have any other quistions about the campaigns dont hesitate to contact me. Kind regards, Bram Dijkstra Affiliate manager Hello Bram, I appreciate your business. How can a top quality growing Affiliate Network like Cleafs can answer like this? Weren't the merchant knew that my website was in English when they approved for the program? I had sent clicks only from Netherlands. It's obvious if you cancel out clicks other than from Netherlands Geo. I expect Cleafs to have a close look at this and roll back my clicks from Netherlands ( you can cancel out all other clicks if it came from other Geos). Cleafs is your network, I can only request for matter like these. What if I work even harder to pull some sales for some CPS campaigns with you and you don't pay? It's not always the money, but the trust I kept in with your network. You can refuse to pay me, but I've no other choice left other than shouting at Wickedfire.com or Digitalpoint forums from where I got to know about Cleafs.com Hope you will come out with best negotiations. Regards, Leena Fernandez Hello Leena, I am sorry to hear that. I wish you the best in the future. Kind regards, Bram Dijkstra Affiliate manager Guys, please tell what should I do now?
Well. I just did a backwards thing. Searching for a company that would fit my needs I just signed up for Cleafs....then I went looking for reviews. I found yours. So, tell me, if you would...What has transpired? Did you get it worked out or did you have to drop them? What happened, I think, is that folks in other countries, especially ones that don't speak engrish think differently. You wound up going through a not so good translator, who probably doesn't understand this whole business very well anyway. His client, brain challenged, in a huff of non-understanding, told Cleafs to pull your commissions. They said yah yah...and did. Then this poor guy, who doesn't understand engrish very well tried to explain something to you that he didn't understand very well in the first place, and which may be indefensible anyway. . It has been my experience that in all cases, the network is going to take the side of their client automatically over the publisher. The language barrier puts yet another firewall between you and the advertiser. You are at the mercy of someone who doesn't habla englaze very well. So, I'd be most curious to learn what you did about this? Btw, the reason I was looking in the first place is that my major advertiser, Tripology, has been deactivated by Commission Junction for the second time in as many months. Don't know the reason why. I do know they convert pitifully. They look good. They pay good. Ought to be good. But you'll serve them a bushel of clicks before you'll see a conversion. I have no clue why they do so poorly...but whatever the reason, it looks like their non converting, non conversing (They don't respond to affiliate mails) ways are catching up with them. Not understanding their end of the business, I have always wondered if they are master click shavers. As you said, in the end, all you have is your trust that you'll be paid fairly. It's not that I don't trust Tripology...It is that I don't know whether I should trust them...and that is their fault. But now, if they don't make another last minute save with CJ, it doesn't matter anyway.
I love that you included all of your emails and theirs - good on you for keeping a calm head and not going cap-crazy or becoming verbally abusive. I'd never even heard of Cleafs until now and I hope that this page about Cleafs.com scam (effectively) gets found easily, especially by people searching for Cleafs.com and Cleafs scam. Why yes, that was keyword spamming - this reminds me of an old thread here where a DP member was ripped off for $2k by internetcloning.com - the keywords were used so much it's now way up there in Google. I'm sorry you may have lost your money for good, Cleafs.com doesn't sound professional at all - but rest assured your post here WILL put others off Cleafs scam and hopefully someone from Cleafs.com will get to read this. I'd encourage you to post this in any other webmaster forums you use or visit as even if you were in the wrong somehow their email exchange is absolutely terrible - zero answers.
One more person in the list of the cleafs victims persons. I actually didn't got the money lost(directly) but, a big BUT - I think they are not willing to pay any money at all (or very little money if at all!!) to there affiliates. These big companies starts making money with the help of affiliates and after some time, when they are a little longer in business they think they can do any thing with the affiliates. Why to pay the commission for 10 sales if commission can be paid for only one sale. Well I have an experience of more than one and half year working with this company. Was promoting the tickets for the concerts from one another company which is also addressed in the same country and city Nederland, Gronignen as cleafs.com and is a merchant by cleafs.com. I believe both have very strong relation ships to one another (if both are not owned by one person). In the beginning as I started promoting this company got two sales very quickly. After that in the next one and a half year no sales at all. Once again as the concerts of the band that I am promoting was announced for the European tour, my site was ranking very high for some of the most important keywords. In the first two days of the announcement of the concerts I sent more than 1,600 visitors(CLICKS) to the tickets selling site through cleafs. NO SALES AT ALL. I thaught WTF*. From 1.600 sent visitors no sale at all is something wrong. Specially when my site is getting VERY HIGHLY TARGETTED Visitors from Google and the site is set to SELL tickets!!! This is not a site where in some corner I hanged one or two banners and people click for fun on those banners, The visitors I was getting were for the keywords such as "Michael Jackson Concert London", "Michael Jackson concert 2009" "Michael Jackson concert tickets" and so on. The page was set to sell tickets directly!! with a BUY button on the end of every concert details. On these BUY buttons were the links to forward the visitors. Well I thaught if a fan of this group hears about that the group is coming to my city, he searched for the related terms and google sent him on my site. Now he looks for the concert in his city and clicks on the BUY button. After that no sales. It is assumable that not EVERY visitor is going to buy the tickets at the spot but there must be some ratio to conversion rate. I decided to call the cleafs.com to my affiliate manager. I said him my name and a little older information that I contacted him before as well if he can remember. He said yes he remembers me. Suddenly I had to break the call up as I got some customer. I said him I will call him back in 15 minutes. After 15 minutes as I called him back wanted to give my information of the site so that he can look whats going on and if the system of tracking have some problem. He said he has alread seeing my account and I have made a sale today. WOW I thaught, waiting since more than a year now and got no sales and now in 15 minutes a sale. I said him OK, I will see whats going on and how it develops in further and cut the call. Including the next day I got a few more sales. After that it was full stop again even if I was sending them around 300 to 500 CLICKS per day. After waiting for a few days I called him back and asked whats going on, people are coming and clicking on the BUY button and no sales. He said they had some tracking problems he will look for the matter if every thing works properly. After calling him I saw suddenly two sales again in the next 15 minutes. The next day I got again one sale and after that again FULL STOP. I waited for one week and was sending the highly targetted traffic to them - NO RESULTS. Well I called him back and asked if every thing is ok. He tried to push the matter on the tickets company. He said if you want to get more sales they can help you to set your page so that you can acheive more sales. I said him BREAK - MAN. My page is actually set as the company selling tickets it self has set. Concert informations in a table and at the end BUY button. I think I know what I am doing - Selling tickets through my site. What do you want to optimize in that. He said he will write an email to the company so that they can contact me. Thanks I said and put the call to an end. Now I was sitting there with more than 3500 visitors sent to the comany and with 7 sales in the whole month. I know in between that there are companies and affiliate networks where an affiliate can acheive up to 45% conversion rates that means 100 clicks and 45 sales. I know this because I searched for these keywords "Conversion Rate" in google and read a few posts posted by respected members who are long term members of some reputed forums related to affiliate marketing. I dont say that I have to have this on my site as well but the conversion rate of 3500 visitors to 7 sales !! is way less than 1% (something like 0.11% or less). So this is my experience with this company named cleafs.com, I will say to all people who are working as webmasters to earn money online and working very hard to get a few sales. Companies like LS, CJ and cleafs.com are PARASITES (search for this keyoword in google). Beware of these Networks and find your self better partners so that your hard work gets paid. The searching takes its time, but if you find a reliable partner it will be way more profitable for affiliates as compared to the invested time. I am still awaiting a cheque from this crook company cleafs.com, as soon as I get that for me is the DECISION made. No more promoting of this company, hope it helps others who are looking for help in case of cleafs.com. Good luck.
Well, I've been working with cleafs & their merchant worldticketshop since 2008 and honestly did not have any problems till now.... Suddenly from a month or so, my stats went dead, but I thought it is some glitch in their system which just do not show the correct stats while everything is being tracked... Ha-ha, no such thing Finally I have emailed them and was told that the tracking system has been changed so no clean URLs (without affiliate ID or session ID) are being tracked! WTF I am promoting a couple of sites like mad and no one cares to tell me that my visitors/sales are not being tracked. That was sooooo noobish from them. All it takes is a short and simple email to let their affiliates change their links - something which seems almost/really impossible in my case due to the fact that after a very good success with worldticketshop's tickets for Euro 2008, I've built a small site(the one in my sig) dedicated to their tickets. Now I end up without an option to link to all particular events, which of course is because of cleafs and not worldticketshop....now I have to use an unique session ID for each event. Then imagine 10 000+ events and how I do that manually & regularly so that I keep 'em up-to date = f. impossible! Do not get me wrong - worldticketshop.com are great!, I'd say the leading ones in the European ticket market and pay huge commissions, but this time cleafs f'ed me up. Never had any issues with them so far but this was not nice.... In that sense can anybody recommend me a good affiliate program for concert & sport tickets where I can easily link to all recent events? This seems to be impossible at euroteam and now I am about to apply for ticketmaster, but as I see they concentrate on the USA market and have no idea what their linking and tracking system is like...
Hi abraxas For directing my visitors to the publishers sites I use "PHP redirects" (a very small and simple method of redirecting visitors to the seller!!) The urls in the front end this way can remain always the same and you can change the urls in back end on these scripts. Naturally changing every url on your site is a pain in the ass, BUT I do this on my all sites and this is the only real option IMO to do this manually. There are many GREAT ones available in the Online market in between to redirect your traffic and to make money. VIAGOGO.com , Seatwave.com, Getmein.com !!! For me Viagogo (with way less commission as Worldticketshop.com) have given me better results than World ticketshop. Naturally World Ticket Shop gives more commission(if they want to give you a commission at all), Your conversion rates will be very interesting to know, which you got through World ticketshop!!! I had very bad experience with them because 1) They are VERY EXPENSIVE from point of a customer view (and in between there are f**king lot of forums where the FANS are weeping buying tickets through Worldticketshop). You will also loose in the long term like Worldticketshop itself has lost many customers and affiliates with asking these high money for the events (Two examples of the price comparisons with others h**p://www.acdckarten.info/tickets/cheap-tickets h**p://acdc2010tickets.com/tickets.php 2) There Service (despite asking the highest prices for the tickets) for some customers is the last you can ever expact!! Read online forums where hell lot of people giving the zero points for buying tickets from them!! (If you will be unable to find the sources let me know!! I will find you many of them!) Search simply in "worldticketshop.com" or "cleafs.com" keywords combined with "fraud" "cheat" or "bad experience" in google and check the first two pages. There are MANY European tickets companies inbetween who can be interesting for you, as I said above Viagogo till now converted best for me(don't forget to let us know your experience if you decide for any of these sites --> viagogo.com seatwave.com eventim or getmein) 3) I promoted worlticketshop also for a long time(I got some conversions with them!!) I have seen your websites, and My websites are as same as yours!! Doing the one and only thing i.e. SELLING TICKETS . Now the conversion rates does matter!! if you make any one 10 sales and they gives you the profit of only 1 sale (the conversion rate drops automatically) OR IF SOME ONE is honest and wants to give you every conversions profit(I don't know or till now I was not able to find one COMPANY ONLINE who is really honest to there affiliates and give all the credit in reality for there hard work - MAY be this is the question of belief how any one believes). e.g. Worldticketshop says they are REALLY True and give the credit of every conversion to there affiliates BUT they have a bad reputation under the fans community and have no REGULAR CUSTOMERS, this means the customers sent by your website are most likely not going to buy any tickets from them because they know the reputation of this company already. You can compare this with AMAZON!! If you send your customers to Amazon.com(with only 5% commission) as compared to a way less popular site like Cheapproducts.com or Goodproducts.com (with a commission of 10% or more), you can think which website is going to convert better for you!!! (This is also known as "PreSelling" technique for higher conversions online) Search for "PreSelling" in google!! Now the question for you as an affiliate is why should you send customers to such a website which is not able to convert!! Why are they not able to make there customers happy!! Why the customer closes the window after seeing the worldticketshop.com in front of them!! Well, I as an affiliate will not promote such people who are not able to do the business properly because it harms MY OWN WEBSITE!!! The people who came before on my site and if they come again through google to my site they will know that I am also a less reliable partner!! NOW worldticketshop are trying to find other methods of driving more customers to there websites (they have created two more websites "w*w.onlineticketsshop.com" "onlineticketsshop.de" and "w*w.budgetticket.de" "budgetticket.nl" where the same fraud methods can restart again!!) Because the customers who already know worldticketshop.com are not going to buy the tickets from this site BUT the two new websites are less known to the people and they can start looting the people and affiliates again from the beggining, till these two websites again get "POPULAR" with there frauds they will again be able to make money with there fraud methods for a few years!! AND after few years when people will come to know that this is the same fraud company who was looting them first with worldticketshop.com THEY will again make two new websites under some another name and start there FRAUD from beginning again!! WOW what a GREAT BUSINESS MODEL !! As an affiliate I will stay AWAAAAAAAAAAAAY from such frauds and wish them to go to HELL with there thief activities. If your are interesting why I have such information than search for "theonlineticketshop.com" (h**p://w*w.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=theonlineticketshop.com&btnG=Google+Search) see the first two pages and read a few reviews!! You will easily know what is the next step of world ticketshop.com --> BECAUSE THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN the theonlineticketshop.com!! the same crooks and thieves will land in jail sooner or later!! so it is better for you to re think to whom you link in future. twikker
Thanks for the reply HollowOMan, I am updating the URLs semi-manually with the find/replace script of dreamweaver, so it is not really such a pain... You are right, the conversions are really bad, I guess mainly because of the high prices of tickets. Maybe I'll give a try on VIAGOGO.com The strange thing is that when they started onlineticketsshop.com and budgetticket recently, they have lowered the commission, but also changed my segment from the now normal 7% to 10%... in any case they are not giving such big commissions as before, which is another reason to move on. I have also saw the reviews - no comment about that.....