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Weird Sales Fluctuations

Discussion in 'ClickBank' started by bl4ckmaN^, Nov 2, 2008.

  1. web_18designer

    web_18designer Peon

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    #241
    You are right, most people in here are marketers and not web applications developers.

    But when you have over 10 years experience in web development - and have been behind projects such as payment gateways, ecommerce stores (that comes near amazon.com in terms of features), applications for the government, recruitment portals, security applications and any possible feature that customers can imagine you would be sure to think like me.

    Clickbank is really basic in terms of functionality, its no rocket science.

    Development can be expensive if you hire some company, but if you have the experience to do it yourself makes everything much cheaper.

    I can develope something with the core functionality of clickbank(Affiliate tracking, Payment Gateway, User/Seller Registration, Reports) in a few weeks - but I have to say that the majority of web applications developers can do the same even if they dont have too much experience.

    I know that many have failed. But they didnt failed in the development aspect of such project, they failed mostly because they didnt had enough affiliates or publishers. PDC have loads of more features than clickbank but the problem is that it does not have its own payment processor and neither a solid middlemen presence - the most important thing.

    There are many open source Affiliate Management scripts already online written in php that can be used as basis and rewriten in a more recent/secure/fast language such as asp.net. Add to them a robust payment processor (Thers no need to develope a payment processor, there are hundreds of 3rd parties that can be used trough their api - the same way clickbank works) and thats all.

    It dosent have to look pretty, it dosent have to have the most up to date features, it dosent have to be fully automated, all it have to do is to track affiliates correctly and process sales.

    It is almost guarantee to be successful if this core functionality is implemented and we have the support of the people in here by starting to use it.

    Still, before anything else we need to find a good payment processor - I already contacted 5 potential companies, lets see what will be their reply....
     
    web_18designer, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  2. CARNANO

    CARNANO Member

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    #242
    Hello everyone! Please read these posts and understand them! They are proof of what's going on with clickbank. I love clickbank as they were the first affiliate network i made good cash with and they have a great interface. It's just when you know the technical side of things and you do PPC it's very easy to see unnatural trends quickly. When you convert 1 in 20 on average across several (not all) campaigns, it does'nt take alot of traffic to realize something is amiss!


    I setup Prosper*202 and tracked incoming and outgoing IP addresses to my site. I also track the timestamp of the outgoing click (affiliate link) to the merchant thank you page's timestamp and it is all within 1 or 2 minutes. All from the same cluckin IP! Prosper*202 and Google Analytics both show conversions, yet CB shows jack.

    So someone tell me how the heck that person can click on my affiliate link, go to the merchant's page, then bounce, click on another affiliate's link, and buy the product all within 1 or 2 minutes?

    I passed Clickbank the IP addresses of my confirmed purchases, and asked them to determine whether an affiliate ID is attached to any one of them. I haven't gotten a response yet. If I see the same affiliate ID on all of them, I'm gonna smoke that sucker. If I see no affiliate link, I'm going to the merchant and asking what the heck. IP addresses, timestamps, and tracking pixels don't lie, so something doesn't add up.


    After reading this thread I looked at my CB redirect page for a 5 day period from November 8-13th. This is my page that jumps right to the CB checkout. These were the stats:

    * 398
    Pageviews

    * 358
    Unique Views


    * $0.00
    $ Index

    You tell me. 358 people clicked the buy button and not one of them converted?
     
    CARNANO, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  3. antantnz

    antantnz Member

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    #243
    Carnaro ... there is always a lot of heresay on this topic so always good to see some people with the analytics to back it up ... await their response with interest!
     
    antantnz, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  4. web_18designer

    web_18designer Peon

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    #244

    As a publisher of several products i save the data of all people that view the thank you page - and I have to say that everyone that view it is shown in my publisher clickbank accounts.

    However, a lot more sales do not have an affiliate attached to them - much more than the norm lately.

    So, when a sale is made the publisher gets it, but the affiliates sometimes does not.

    Apart from that thers an issue with their payment processor/fraud detection, more specifically im talking about http://www.kount.com/ which they offer as a service as well.

    It does not work all the time which results in a lot of valid credit cards being rejected.

    I did a test last time by testing with some checkout pages of mine, I started to buy my own products for testing and suddenly the payments were not passing trough anymore - they flagged my credit card as fraud or something - and rightly so. However, after my card was rejected, transactions didnt passed for around 7 hours on all my merchant accounts.

    It looks like becuase of what i did, all transactions were being blocked on all acocunts that i purchased/tried to purchase from with my credit card for around 7 hours. (The sales on the other accounts that i didnt fiddled with were passing as normal)
     
    web_18designer, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  5. SoCalDude

    SoCalDude Peon

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    #245
    This actually explains allot as some days sale's will start coming in then wham someone gets there card rejected and the whole thing stops until some CB employee probably comes along (after a complaint) and manually fixes it or what ever they do to get the payment processor reset, mean while your losing money and customers.

    Strange thing is you would think CB would want get this fixed as well as they are leaving money on the table too.

    Oh well when you have CB's millions what's a few more million..lol
     
    SoCalDude, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  6. Doron

    Doron Banned

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    #246
    Same here (console game download).
    but today I made a sell after more then a week with no sales at all.
     
    Doron, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  7. jacky8

    jacky8 Active Member

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    #247
    Oh My God! Exactly the same with me. I made a sale today after a week with no sales and 2 refunds.

    A Request to Good Publishers: We have lost our faith in Clickbank. All this noise at all forums can not be dismissed.

    A group of around 5 highly popular publishers should submit a joint application to Clickbank giving them a timeframe to fix their infrastructure. Tell them what you have decided in case they do not fix up. If Clickbank meet the goals assigned to them, continue with them else leave them without a second thought.
     
    jacky8, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  8. bl4ckmaN^

    bl4ckmaN^ Well-Known Member

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    #248
    We got Swerd here....Who else?
     
    bl4ckmaN^, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  9. jacky8

    jacky8 Active Member

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    #249
    I do not know about a lot of them. I think Swerd and Norb are the biggest ones here. Others can be Ripped, Kinitex, Web Designer, The One in Your Signature(Partners Welcome), etc. If the New Clickbank can Get All of the PlatinumPartner Sites, its gonna be a bonanza for it. A very good start really!
     
    jacky8, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  10. terryd

    terryd Well-Known Member

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    #250
    If it's seemingly so simple and I have no doubt to believe that you know what you are talking about, then why does clickbank have so much trouble tracking and would it not be a seemingly simple fix?

    I just can't believe it is a simple as it sounds?
     
    terryd, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  11. bl4ckmaN^

    bl4ckmaN^ Well-Known Member

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    #251
    This is what happens, when companies start feeling "big".
     
    bl4ckmaN^, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  12. arnold

    arnold Active Member

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    #252
    How will you deal with those cookie related issues clickbank is currently facing
     
    arnold, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  13. web_18designer

    web_18designer Peon

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    #253
    You are right in asking such questions, if its so simple why clickbank dont just fix it?

    Well the answer can be simply because when you have something so huge as clickbank with thousands of transactions on a daily basis it gets much more difficult to maintain, add new features or to fix any problems.

    Clickbank is over 10 years old now, and most probably they just build on their current old system over the years and this way it gets bulky - you solve a problem and cause 12 more. From this end I dont blame them, in the development field you dont need much to screw a system - even if a system is build by experts, just add a single idiot developer for a few weeks and he will make it a nightmare to maintain......

    But this is no excuse for clickbank, its not like there are no companies that turned large. In this case they just start the development of a new system from scratch that is easy to maintain. Run both system in parallel and then evantually migrate to the new.

    Apart from this, I'm convinced that clickbank problem are not just these technical issues. In the sence that when sales are weird its probably the Fraud System doing its job - it was developed to prevent fraudamental transaction, and this is what it does even if it reject perfectly valid credit cards too. It keeps everything under control, probably for clickbank its worthed to reject 10 valid transactions with every invalid transaction detected...
     
    web_18designer, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  14. www.infoebookstore.co.uk

    www.infoebookstore.co.uk Peon

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    #254
  15. web_18designer

    web_18designer Peon

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    #255
    I did last time,but they are no good enough in terms of fees. They charge way too much per transaction. They are very high priced compared with most of the others:

    Amount - Fee
    $0 - $4.99 75 cents
    $5 - $8.99 15%
    $9 - $49.99 10%
    $50 - $59.99 9%
    $60 - $79.99 8%
    $80 - $99.99 7%
    $100 - $139.99 6%
    $140 - $279.99 5%
    $280 and above 4.5%
     
    web_18designer, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  16. GeorgR.

    GeorgR. Peon

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    #256
    i had a long streak of ZERO sales a few weeks ago, this was despite the fact that i had MASSIVE PR going on, many new sites, squidoo lenses, article distribution etc... ZERO SALES

    Then came the day with that ominous email from clickbank about "we found a slight glitch which did NOT affect sales"....and from this day on sales are up again.

    Also....you should not oversee that such fluctuations MIGHT also be related to Windows updates...browser updates...or virus checker updates. What if some day Microsoft releases an update which has a new way of blocking cookies...or some virus checker has "clickbank" in the blacklist and blocks all clickbank cookies!

    Thats also a reason cookies could be lost from one day to the other...
     
    GeorgR., Nov 28, 2008 IP
  17. www.infoebookstore.co.uk

    www.infoebookstore.co.uk Peon

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    #257
    What does CB charge publishers again? Am I reading it right at a standard 7.5% + $1 which on a $100 product is 8.5%?

    and on $50 product is 9.5%?

    Have I got my math wrong?
     
  18. web_18designer

    web_18designer Peon

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    #258

    Yes something like that - which is quiet a lot of a commission for an unreliable system as theirs!
     
    web_18designer, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  19. www.infoebookstore.co.uk

    www.infoebookstore.co.uk Peon

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    #259
    I agree.

    So when you compare to Plimus, it is actually better to sell a $100 product there than at CB and about the same to sell a $50 product. Anyone have any experience of their tracking system or payment? I see you can be paid via Paypal which will be better for some.
     
  20. Sem-Advance

    Sem-Advance Notable Member

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    #260
    You have got to be kidding.....

    Extortion, no matter how cleverly disguised.... is illegal and quite stupid.

    If those affiliates leave clickbank there will be less competition for the rest...

    That ploy wont hurt clickbank one bit, nor will they be very receptive to some groups list of demands.

    I would suggest some more education before trying to concoct schemes that have failed many many many times before.


    :)
     
    Sem-Advance, Nov 28, 2008 IP