This is a really quick post for anyone that wants to promote products from Clickbank and what a small portion of vendors are doing. It’s not against the rules, but to me is very dishonest.
What I am going to explain is exactly what happened to me, and how it made me take a longer harder look at any products or services from all affiliate networks. Please be aware this is not a reflection on Clickbank themselves, they still offer an outstanding service for anyone that chooses to use them.
The problem is with some greedy vendors, even though the vendor is following the terms of service from the network there is a little known loophole that they can use to steal commissions from you. Yes, that is a strong word, you do all the work only to find that some vendors are not being open and honest.
What’s The Loophole
If you take any time to read what is required of the vendor when joining the network you will see they only have to allow sales from the actual landing or sales page, that means the page your affiliate link will be pointing to. And every vendor in the marketplace must do this or they will not get approval.
However and this is where you lose out if you are not careful, is that vendor then offers a optin form or links to other articles on the site to help sell their product or service. For me this is excellent, the page is providing as much information as possible to increase the chance of making a commission from all my efforts. And as far as I know I have a cookie on that visitors computer that may last for 30 to 60 days depending on how it is all setup.
Link Hijacking
What I didn’t realize was this, the vendor in question had created cloaked links and had even used a script to embed their own affiliate link into any other page of the site. What this meant with so many other helpful links on the sales page saying click here for this and click here for that was the minute the visitor I sent to the sales page followed any of those links my affiliate link was removed and replaced with their own link.
How To Check Your Affiliate Links
The easiest way to ensure you are getting the full benefit of promoting a product or service. Go to the landing or sales page and click on the buy now button. Then at the payment page you should see your affiliate I.D located at the bottom of the payment page. Then clear your cookies and follow a link from the sales page to another page on the site and then click the buy button again to see if your affiliate link is still there.
In the screen shot above you can look at the URL once you have followed your own affiliate link to the vendors site. What you should see is a URL similar to the one above, with the hop part of the URL having your affiliate I.D embedded.
If you do not see anything that looks like your affiliate I.D in the URL that may be just the way the site is set up. The next thing you can do is follow the sales funnel to the payment page.
Once you reach the payment page of the product you are promoting then scroll to the bottom of that page to see whether or not you can see your affiliate I.D displayed at the bottom of the payment page. If you don’t see your I.D by checking this way then you have either not used your affiliate link to go to the vendors page or you have a real problem with what you are promoting.
Again I would like to state, I do not believe this is a problem with Clickbank they are a reputable affiliate network. I also believe this isn’t the case for all vendors in the marketplace only a handful who are trying to game the system for their own greedy ends. Now you have the information to identify this practice you can simply avoid promoting any products or services people like this offer. You can read my post here about the advantages this network has for vendors.
You can join this affiliate networks here. I don’t do this check on just this network I check all links now to make sure all is well.
Do you believe that some vendors are being dishonest and not giving you all the credit for the work you have done, if so I would like to hear from you. Please add your comments and experiences in the comments below.
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