Is Clickbank REALLY RIPPING Us Off? I did Some Testing. Surprise!

im hitting 0 dollars anyway

Hmmm....

I heard its good practice to have more than one account with clickbank so you have a new hoplink all the time for every product. But I dont know....

I'm going to be pissed though when I finally get Adwords figured out and PPC, then have clickbank screw me lol...

I better test too..........

Anyone else have clickbank issues? And what other affiliate sites are trustworthy?

Here's something interesting for you....

Last week, I had the worst Clickbank slump ever. I mean, I've had zero dollar days here and there, and even had a few days that had zeros in the past, but never as bad as last week.....

I went a full 8 days with NO sales. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely nothing.

And, not only did I send hops through as normal - I had days that I sent more hops than ever before!

In the past, I would send an e-mail to customer support, telling them to verify my links were in good working order. I usually got a canned response (as always).

Well, I did the same thing on the 8th day that I had no sales. Guess what happened the next day? Over $100+ in sales as I usally do, and more sales today....

Everytime I send them an e-mail when I run into a "slump", I send them an e-mail, then out of nowhere, sales return to normal within the next day.

Coincidence? I don't know, but it sure as hell is a bit fishy. Their tracking system is garbage and ancient, that's for sure.

I just get tired of their B/S responses, coming up with every excuse in the book as to why sales aren't coming through. I'm not an idiot, and I know and understand that there are many things that factor into sales, hence why sales flucuate.

But, there needs to be an explanation when the traffic is present, and no sales are coming through for over a week, especially when you're like me and experience consistent sales on a daily bases. The B/S responses I get aren't good enough.

More so lately, I've stuck to either creating my own products and sell them via PayPal, or I promote products that use the RAP or $7 script and payout instant PayPal commissions. Seems to be more worth my time.

I'm considering creating and launching a product on Clickbank, just to test out things from the Vendor point of view, because it seems a lot of affiliates are getting screwed lately, while the Vendors don't notice much.

I could somewhat understand the zero sales (some due to anti-spyware programs installed by users blocking clickbank cookie) but your screenshot of a sale without a hop, now that's something.

from what i hear no. But who cares? paydotcom isnt really all that good.

This is really concerning. It is just so hard to know what's going on these days. On one hand the economy has us thinking that people are "buying less", and then you see a thread like this one.

I have done a lot of promotion for clickbank, I really hope they aren't ripping me off

Matt

The old change the account trick

that does look interesting, but it's no where near enough info to make an accurate judgment. Had you been making $500/day+ consistently and had that drop down to $0, then there's definitely something fishy going on.

Secondly, you're getting decent sales of ~$150/day already, but my question is: did you have many $0/days before this?

I think the Easter holidays could account for the drop in sales

best person to ask is Clickbank themselves and ask why the odd differences that makes no logical sense!

I made my first internet sale ever with a clickbank product on the 28th Jan. sales continued to come in for a few weeks then nothing then a couple more sales then nothing until this week then 2 sales.

I thought it must be the products I was promoting as clickthroughs continued so searched for other products.

This week I promoted a windplans product using a brandable ebook in the last 4 days it has had over 730 clickthroughs but not one sale. Yet 2 sales have come with products with less than a dozen clickthroughs each

Still can't work out what gets the sale, I know my traffic is targeted so I guess its just a numbers game.

If the products I promote really converted at the 3% most of them claim i would be a happy man.

Surely I'm not the only one who recognizes the obvious discrepancies in that screenshot on the right??

Look at the size of the bars and the amounts they are supposed to represent.

So whats up with that?

For what its worth I did some testing myself after a slow period. Results inconclusive.

But that original screenshot can't be relied upon for a second because its been doctored for some strange reason.

I wonder if anyone has ever thought that you just aren't getting any sales. No ripping off or anything, just that you're not getting conversions.

Um.....look at the numbers and the bars from the first three numbers after the zeros at the top.....

I'm a little perplexed here...

LMAO.. the bar for $128.72 is longer than the bar for $155.02

And

The bar for $140.48 is longer than the bar for $169.38

FFS.... what is the purpose?

Classic... doctoring a CB screenshot before you're even trying to sell something... haha

I think any Warrior who posts bogus figures here should be banned.

What would be good would be for various Warriors to combine together their actual figures. Most people do not provide sample sizes which are statistically significant. By pooling together the results of, say, 100 Warriors, we could have a much more informed debate of what, if anything, is going on.

Pearson

I've been getting lots of hops from affiliates ever since i launched my product 2 months ago and so far there's only been 1 sale. that's like less than 0.5%.

Well... maybe it's the problem of the salespage.. But the conversion rate is too fkin low..

One of my products received almost 20,000 uniques over 2 days.. not a single sale according to clickbank, yet there's non affiliate reviews out there.. strange since I wasn't selling the product through anyone else other than clickbank.

I've stopped using them now.

what an idiot!!!!!

Is there a point to making up these stats?

Does it imply that affiliates should look at sites other than clickbank? Any issues with Paydotcom too?

It's probably because everyone realizes how easily such things can be doctored, so screenshots aren't really proof of anything.

I know, I know... you're wondering WHY anyone would bother falsifying their "proof." What do they have to gain from it? Maybe a hot thread since "CB sucks" type threads are currently hot? Link exposure? Pats on the back from fellow Warriors?

Beats me. *shrugs* Maybe you have some ideas?

I don't get the argument about Clickbank being dishonest. They get the same 7.5% + $1 no matter if the affiliate gets credit or the Vendor gets the full sale.

I can tell you as a fact, I've been a Vendor on Clickbank since 2003 and I've never had a customer contact me about an order and not be able to find their receipt credited to my Clickbank account.

If they were really dishonest, Vendors would be affected as well. It's just not in their long term interest to do dishonest stuff.

The other point to consider is, if affiliates were really getting screwed, you'd see a big drop in the percentage of sales referred by affiliates in their Marketplace stats. From what I can see, many Vendors on their network still have 80% or more of their sales coming from affiliates. I haven't noticed any meaningful changes.

It's easy to blame someone else when your sales drop off. Unfortunately, complaining doesn't make them go back up.

you need a high volume to know the results.

Someone making 200 or more sales a day is getting better statistics.

Maybe I'm missing something here...but...exactly how does Clickbank benefit by not properly crediting affiliates? Seems the seller would be the one to benefit.

Jay,

Your on track! Our government and corporations have everybody seeing "boogeymen" or is that "boogeypeople" behind every rock.

There are also alternatives to Clickbank but it takes some "comfort zone" shifting for us to show our displeasure through action as opposed to just lip service.

I don't use ClickBank as a vendor (yet) so I can't speak from experience. But in answer to the question "how does Clickbank benefit by not properly crediting affiliates?", as other have already said, they don't. BUT, the more persistent question in my mind is, whether or not it benefits them is not the point. The point is, are they able to accurately track all sales? Does their tracking system let some sales fall through the cracks? I've yet to see any solid evidence either way. If they are failing to accurately track, perhaps they just don't want to invest in fixing it, as it may involve restructuring the whole process. I don't know. What I do know is we should figure out a way to conduct a black and white test over a period of time to put an end to this debate once and for all.

I think the ultimate point is that many affiliates feel there has been an improper accounting of their commissions with a valid basis for their suspicion. ClickBank incurs the total wrath because affilates don't know who else to blame.

Assuming CB is not benefitting, then some other affiliate is receiving the commission properly due someone else. Then CB needs to convince their affiliates that all is working properly. One would think that CB conducts internal testing and internal audits on a regular basis to ensure a proper accounting takes place and no one is able to game the system. All that I've read on the thread is that CB issues no convincing replies if they reply at all. That's not good for business.

Wow this is interesting. Clickbank is one of my sources of income as well as to my surprise have seen 0 days when I think I shouldn't. Definitely something to look into. Great post

Seems like this issue is not ending anytime soon...

I've read countless threads about this problem and I'm pretty sure ClickBank themselves suspect something could be wrong... but why aren't they taking any kind of action to resolve this problem?

I mean they could be facing a major lawsuit here...

Alex

I'd love to know if your username is assigned to a server or how the server issues operate. It does seem that when I've sent an e-mail to them I will get a sale within a day or two. I am not sure what that means or if it's a timeout process (which does seem to happen sometimes when I login). Also not everyone uses high speed dial-up. I know even with the wireless card from sprint or verizon, the stats page can load slow. This may be true for purchases and result in errors . If you are on dial up, this can only be worse. Also I am not sure about why certain credit cards get declined.

Debbie

I think Clickbank is broke. It's my honest opinion. I know everyone thinks it's profitable, but there doesn't seem to be anyone trying to go into the same business model. There's a lot of paydotcom like sites, but that's different. CB controls all the cash and falls under a much different regulatory body.

I don't believe it's that profitable. CB has been running their business like crap for a decade and no one has really come in with the same game plan to beat them.

We all know there is a problem. We all know and Clickbank knows it, even though they won't say.

I just come back to two logical conclusions...

a. they're retarded
b. they don't have the money to fix the problem.

My money is on B.

Now, just so no one comes in with a "but clickbank does a million a day in sales"... that's revenue. That's not profit. I'm sure people will give a simplistic business analysis that resembles PDC, not CB. When you control a million dollars, hold it and distribute it to all the parties, you fall under a very different business model than PDC.

There are no "real" competitors of CB... and that means competitors that do ebooks and hold the cash because there just isn't enough money in it.

It makes the most sense to me. If you're rolling in the dough, you fix the problem, upgrade the system to the year 2009 and make more money. That's what a normal business would do.

Harvey is right. What's interesting is that a lot of these same issues are in a thread from 2006:

ClickBankSuccessForum.com :: View topic - affliate links dead

Debbie

Another interesting point I just thought of....

Since CB sales don't show up for sometimes hours later in your CB account (Its not instant) the sales and tracking are obviously fed into a database.

Anything database driven is easily open for manipulation.

Frank Bruno

**NEWSFLASH**
(cut to female newsreader voice)

A Los Angeles forum moderator was shot down today in a gory "drive-bye" "post and run" incident... it is thought, the post-out (as opposed to shoot-out) was instigated by the nuking of a previous post, but this is not confirmed and the investigation continues...

"Back to James for the weather, where you are"

James: "Thanks Carol"

...... I really do need that beer

Peace

Jay

Did you call me JayX ?

I was just doing a drive by post

WTF? What is the point of this thread? Those screenshots are a joke!! That really annoys me seeing that on our board. Just another pointless Clickbank jab.

TomG.

I think instead of using hoplinks to track stuff find a different alternative to track.

Jay has it right above, Clickbank is not purposely ripping people off, it's just their tracking and payment system is terrible.

In an effort to curb payment from fraudulent credit cards they have overcompensated by temporarily shutting down accounts if something suspicious happens. So this means all it takes is one suspicious payment to stop all sales to your account.

After testing selling the same products through different affiliate networks it became IMMEDIATELY clear that Clickbank was missing out on significant conversions.

The most troubling aspect of this ordeal is it has been going on for so long that I question if Clickbank even cares. Surely if they did the company would have done something about it by now.

I think what it has come down to is they would rather have affiliates make less money as long as they can prevent fraudulent payments. And if this mean affiliates missing out on sales then so be it.