I've seen publishers do this, how is it done? I checked through Clickbank's FAQ and read no mention of it or whether it's legal or not. Any information on this?
This information could be quite useful from the affiliate's point of view. It is somewhat a lengthy process by which the visitor is lead to an article, then to a site using the bio and further to the sales page, and ultimately to the payment page. Quite a lengthy process indeed. You would need a pretty determined visitor to make the sale and not quit in between the process. No doubt the conversion is not something everyone can boast about. Anil Pandey
do you mean you've seen affiliates do it? publishers don't need to do it since they own the sales pages. how to do it - something like affiliate cloner can do it. Or just become a publisher yourself.
Ugh, I thought this would be simple. Okay, I'm an affiliate (that was my mistake referring to myself as a publisher, sorry). I want to use Clickbank to sell one of the publisher's products/services. However, Clickbank's hoplink takes my visitors to the sales page, not the checkout. I was wondering if it would be possible/legal so that my visitors could go straight to the checkout instead of the publisher's sales page, and how this could be done. I've seen other affiliates do it before.
Not going in to its merits, there could be some demerits as well. Nobody knows more about the product than the publisher himself. He develops the sales page in tune with the product. The sales page actually goes through the merits of the product again (the visitor may have followed some link to arrive there, hopefully yours as an affiliate) but from a different perspective. No affiliate would be in a position to actually comment on the product if he has not used the product himself. All he can do is to provide an overview of the problem faced by the visitor and the probable solution available in the product. The publisher just enforces this information from the product point of view which is not possible for anybody else to do. Dont know if skipping the sales page altogether would be a good idea at all, unless you can synchronize the article information with the actual product. Anil Pandey
Once in awhile I will direct link to the order page, but if the publisher converts decently 2%+, than I'll link directly to the sales page. The reason is simple... they've done their homework (hopefully) and have improved the conversion rate on their sales page so why should I waste my time doing the tweaking that they've already done for me? However, some publishers simply don't know how to write a good sales page. I only direct link after I've verified that their sales page sucks because I may be able to convert better... and I have on several occasions. As for it not being possible... well that's a lie. It's pretty simple if you have a good HTML background; however, that's not a secret I'll be sharing because it will quickly get abused.
Honestly as a publisher I wouldn't mind if an affiliate did this as long as they contacted me about it first, but I don't know if it is something that would work given clickbank's tracking system.
Yeah, it's possible to link directly to the order page and insert your affiliate id, I just whipped up a quick page to test if it would work. As a publisher I wouldn't mind it either as long as it's not spammy.
Just thought I'd pop in - yes - it's totally possible. Yes, you should definitely inform the publisher if you plan on direct linking - reason? If you bypass the sales page - you are bypassing most of ClickBanks needs on that page too (pubs NEED to put contact info, 8 week guarantee, how to download the product, disclaimers etc.) If you bypass all that you could easily get your pub and yourself into heat... There are a few methods however the straightest is to cookie stuff (don't shoot me). Cookie stuffing is not admirable, and it is now a blackhat tactic however if you have full co-op from your pub it should be ok. There was another recent discussion about this here - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=767510 As a publisher of many products I also would not mind if aff's did this however NOT without my knowledge/approval. Best, NC.
If you want to send your customers directly to the Clickbank order page instead of going thru the vendor's sales page, you can use the following code as an example - http://1.interpro_diamondseo.pay.clickbank.net In this example, the number 1 is the vendor's product number. Although this is usually 1, some vendors will have multiple products, so the number might be different. Where I have 'interpro', you'll want to insert your Clickbank affiliate ID Follow your clickbank ID with an underscore, then plug in the vendor's clickbank ID. This url will take your visitor directly to the product order page and you'll be the affiliate that gets the commission.