Affiliate Rip-Off
Here’s a question I received this week from D.R. about the potential for affiliates to get ripped off by merchants under certain circumstances.
Is it true that ebook writers using an email capture box on their sales pages are ripping affiliates off when customers being sent to them sign up for the emails, then they sell them a book weeks or months later and we never see a dime for it.
Also if a ebook writer has 2 forms of checkout on his order page if the customer uses the optional one (not clickbank) then again we get no commission.
You have the clout, can you find this out and answer in your newsletter. I received an email from a guru about this very practice. If true then they will lose ALL affiliate selling their product by the thousands.
Thanks.
Well D.R., I’m not sure that I have any clout, but I do understand your concern and do know something about these issues.
To answer your first question about losing possible commissions when visitors go from the affiliate site to the ebook author’s site (or any merchant site for that matter) and sign up for the merchant’s newsletter…
Unless the merchant has done something sneaky, (and I’m not sure what that would be) the cookie on your referred visitors’ computers will still be intact, so you won’t lose any sales that way.
Actually, if the visitor is sufficiently interested in the product to sign up for more information, receiving the merchant’s newsletter should in fact enhance your chances of making a sale.
What you should be concerned about is cookie duration. Look for cookies that last a long time, the longer the better. I almost never sign up for programs that have cookies that last less than a month, unless it’s a CPA offer that makes it easy for visitors to generate a lead as soon as they arrive on the merchant site.
Now to your second (very good) question about multiple payment options on the merchant page.
When you are researching ebooks that are sold through Clickbank, be sure to check the merchants salespage to see whether they have more than one payment method listed.
If so, look for another book to promote.
There is absolutely no reason why a Clickbank merchant needs to post a separate PayPal payment link when Clickbank also accepts PayPal.
Merchants who wish to use multiple payment methods (eg. Stormpay) should in fact have different salespages, preferably on different domains which do not link to each other.
Ultimately, it is up to each affiliate to know and understand their merchants’ programs and practices to avoid getting ripped off by those who might divert traffic to other payment systems.
Want more info?
Rosalind Gardner is a Super Affiliate blogger, author, speaker, and Internet marketing consultant.
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Ros,
Good post. I like a lifetime cookie, but I’ll settle for 60 days. You’d have to do follow-up emails at least twice a week to get even with the odds against you on a 30 day cookie.
Best,
Lowell
Great answer to the second question — I’ve walked away from a couple programs that offered multiple payment options, since I’d only get paid on the ClickBank one.
On the first question, an unscrupulous vendor could include his own hoplink in his followup email, thereby changing the CB cookie. The vendor who played fair with affiliates would include a direct link to the product and would not diddle with the cookie.
Hi Terry! Thanks, and exactly!
~ Ros
Hi Ros,
Great Blog! You said, “Actually, if the visitor is sufficiently interested in the product to sign up for more information, receiving the merchant’s newsletter should in fact enhance your chances of making a sale.”
Doesn’t Click Bank only accept the last cookie?
If this is true, when a merchant has a prospective buyer optin to their list, and the buyer clicks on the link in the email they received from the merchant, the merchant gets the whole sum and the affiliate gets nothing. I see more and more merchants doing this lately.
Regards,
Keith
Hi Keith – if the merchant sends people back to their domain with a straight URL (no Clickbank ID) the affiliate cookie is NOT overwritten, ergo – no fear.
~ Ros
Another problem is that visitor might use a different browser when clicking on the e-mails in the newsletter…commission will be lost that way…he also might send the newsletter e-mails using another Clickbank account with a different username…commission will be lost that way too
That’s why it pays to sign up for your merchant’s newsletter and make sure that they send folks back to their site using a straight URL to their site, ie. http://SuperAffiliateHandbook.com. If you see a Clickbank ID pointing to their domain… run like hell! ~ Ros
Hi Ros,
I see what ya mean about clickbanks. I just had to remove about half of my links (340). I tried to do like you said a couple yrs back, but I couldn’t afford to advertise. I’m beginning to think Commission Junction is in the same boat. I don’t have autresponders and that might be why I haven’t made one cent as of today and I know my site is being hit by 2-4 times an hour.
I just don’t understand why google would need to do that. really, is there any point? I have read elsewhere that it still passes PR juice around? Anybody have an answer?
The best way to see if you are going to get credited for a sale through Clickbank is to test the site by following it to the payment page. If you don’t see your affiliate name represented as “affiliate = your name” on the clickbank payment page, you are not going to get paid for the sale. I found this to be true with a large number of software vendors on Clickbank. When I tried to call this to Clickbank’s attention, they told me that i must not have cookies enabled. When I told them that some of their sites showed my affiliate user name and some didn’t I was told that they would have to check the sites in question and get back to me. That was seven months ago and I still haven’t heard back. Needless to say, unless I can see that affiliate name on the payment page, I won’t waist my time with that advertiser.