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.

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