Are You Losing ClickBank Sales?
This is an important message for those promoting products from ClickBank as an affiliate.
If you don’t know about this, you could be losing sales — a lot of sales.
Let me tell you what happened. I was testing a new advertising platform. To make it quick and easy, I chose a product from ClickBank, created the hoplink, write the ad and put it all up. And I got my first sale within 15 minutes or so. I was excited and that proves the ads work. And the merchant’s site converts.
But then days went by… nothing. Hmm… maybe it was just a fluke…
So I kept changing my ads into something else… Still nothing…
And during the process where I was trying new copy for my ads, I forget the actual hoplink that I was using. So I have this habit of typing the first few parts of my hoplink in my browser, and then the rest of it would appear like a drop down menu. And I would copy that. But this one-time, I entered and went through the hoplink, and arrived at the merchant’s site.
I clicked on the order button, and I arrived on ClickBank’s order page.
And here’s the shock — I don’t see my affiliate ID at the bottom of the page!
If you don’t already know this, when you promote products from ClickBank, when the visitor arrives at ClickBank’s order page, they can see your affiliate ID at the bottom of the page. You can try this yourself. You should see something like [affiliate=your_id] at the bottom of the page.
Give it a try and see if you see your ClickBank ID. Here’s how you create your hoplink…
http://your_id.merchant_id.hop.clickbank.net
Change your_id with your ClickBank ID and merchant_id with the merchant’s ID that you are promoting. Let’s just say that your ID is johndoe. If you are promoting The Rich Jerk, your hoplink would be…
http://johndoe.richjerk.hop.clickbank.net/
And then, when you are at the site, and your click on the order button, arrives on the order page, you should be able to see [affiliate=johndoe] at the bottom of the page. If you see [affiliate=none] — something is terribly wrong.
This was what I was seeing. After using my hoplink, that is all that I see… [affiliate=none]
Which means, I could have been losing sales, paying for traffic to this particular merchant. The hoplink is not working. Alright, what can I do now?
I thought, why not stop promoting this merchant and look for other affiliate programs with similar products. And start searching the Internet. I found merchants and I also found affiliates. I looked at what other people are promoting. And I found someone who was promoting the same ClickBank product I was promoting.
Hmmm… maybe I can see if his hoplink works. So I clicked on his link, arrived at the merchant’s website and clicked on the order button. Now I am at the order page… And his affiliate ID appears!
At first I thought that this could be a browser thing and nothing much that I can do. But after seeing this, I know that there’s something that I am not doing. How come this particular affiliate’s hoplink works and mine doesn’t. I studied what he did. Of course it was a bit difficult because he was using a PHP redirection file. But I found my way around it and discovered what he did and what I didn’t.
The minute I fixed this, my hoplink works!
It was such a simple thing to do, and depending on how much you advertise, not doing this can be really costly…
Now, here’s what he did…
http://your_id.merchant_id.hop.clickbank.net/?type=nohop
Maybe you know about the “tid” parameter that you can use with your hoplink. It is the tracking ID. You can assign it with any value like “tid=adwords001″ or “tid=ysmrichjerk” or anything else. When someone buys, you can see from which hoplink they bought it from. It will appear in your transaction report. You can use this to track your advertising efforts.
But apart from that, there’s also the “type” parameter and you can that to the hoplink. Apparently, when I use this, my ClickBank ID does appear on the order page.
I don’t know about you. Maybe it’s an OS-Browser thing. I tried it on Internet Explorer 6, and there was no problem. I tried it on my wife’s computer, which is Firefox with Windows XP and it’s still OK. I am taking the safest way I know.
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Comments
Damian Pang
Hi Kidino,
Adding the tid or type parameter does help in the case of Firefox.
But since ClickBank has implemented supplemental hoplink tracking, the chances of lost sales are significantly lower.
You can drop by our forum to find out more ways to prevent lost sales.
Cheers
Damian Pang
Moderator
ClickBankSuccessForum
Abi
Thanks a LOT MAN! No wonder my sales dropped all of a sudden even with the same traffic…!
Kidino
This is not really a discussion about the TID, though. Remember … /?type=nohop — this makes all the difference.
Reny
I just started using clickbank and did some promoting. Had 1 sale and then nothing! This just might be the reason. Thanks.
zul
so.. actually what does this /?type=nohop actually means?
oh yeah.. there are a few merchants that try to discredit their affiliates of sales.. so before you promote any CB products you should try clicking on your link and see on the order page whether there’s your cb id or not..
other thing, try opting into the merchant’s opt-in list and see whether he swipes your cb id with his or not..
Dixie
It seems to me that Clickbank could devise a way of locking your affiliate link in after you set it up. I have heard of affiliate competitors stealing links to try and put you out of business, but I don’t quite understand how this works.
Sorry I happened to you, but it looks like you have it under control.
I haven’t had this happen yet, but will definately keep an eye on it. Thanks for the link tip.
Liz
I don’t understand as you have not explained this properly. What is the ?type for and how does it stop your commission being stolen?
Kidino
@Zul @Liz, frankly I am not sure what it is too. But from my initial understanding, it is to remove that ?hop=your_id in the URL when you arrive on the merchant’s site. That way, to the visitors, it doesn’t seem like an affiliate referred you. And you don’t lose your affiliate commission this way.
But I see that some merchants are also using type=XXXX to redirect to specific pages of the site. For example, a golf merchant has several other products like one for putting, one for driving, they tell affiliates to use type=XXXX to send traffic directly to those specific pages.
Check http://superiorgolfing.com/affiliate.php
I am not sure how those merchants are doing it but I am going to find out. But about this post, I see that my affiliate ID appears in the order page when I use ?type=nohop with my hoplink. And it doesn’t when I don’t.
@Dixie – yea, so far seems like it. Thanks.
Melvin Ng
Thanks for sharing. Have you experienced this with paydotcom? I just experienced the same thing with an affiliate link but I haven’t tested to see if its a browser problem though.
Wayne
Try this without using the type parameter. Clear
your cookies AND cache and then go through your hoplink
again and see your affiliate id should show on the
order page. Your browser will serve the page from
the cache if you have gone through this link
previously, depending on how many days you have
set in your settings to save your browser history.
If you clear your cookies in the meantime and go
back through your hoplink, the browser will serve
the page from the cache and your cookie will not be
created again.
I believe Clickbank has made some changes this year
to decrease your chances of losing sales.
Kang
I didn’t know there’s this “type” parameter.
Shall find out more about it.
Thanks! :)
Dennis Edell
I haven’t used CB yet, but this is in my faves for sure. Thanks!
Harry
Hi,
As I understand it you are also exposed to ClickBank fraud when links (like this example) are shown in the browser address bar.
http://www.affiliateprojectx.com/index2.htm?hop=kidino
If I wanted to buy this product, could I not cut the hop=kidino part and still get through to the product site and make a purchase for which you would get no benefit?
Harry
k
The problem I’m concerning now is Spybot, you see.. the latest spybot has a feature called Teatimer and it will block clickbank affiliate pages to load. I’ve received complains from customers not able to see the page after they click on the affiliate links. It took us so long to find out what the problem was.. Ppl are getting more savvy these days and more and more ppl starting to use spyware programs to protect their pc… i hope the merchants can come out with a better tracking system rather than using outdated cookie system..
Harry
Hi,
K raises a very valid point.
As people becoming more security aware (and they will) they are more likely to be disabling cookies, as a routine.
Before reaching the affiliate page, maybe users should pass thru a “are cookies enabled” test, with appropriate instructions on how to turn them on, for Firefox IE etc.
Ok this wouldn’t resolve the problem completely, but its certainly better than not doing anything. I’m sure a suitable script could be obtained thru the Warrior forum.
Harry
Web Guru Walla
One way to insure you get credit for any sale is to just make your own shopping cart and sell it then buy it for the client. Take a small hit on the fee and boom a sale is earned each time.
Is there someone in the TOS of ClickBank to stop someone from doing this?
Like using an Oscommerce store to sell each product you want to promote. So what if your not protected by the anti-fraud team.. duh it’s not that hard to protect.
Thoughts?
Steve
I believe that this is primarily a browser caching issue. I actually found this post because I was testing some of my existing hoplinks for a new ebook, and I found the dreaded [affiliate = none] on the order form some of the time. I could find no rhyme or reason or pattern to it.
Then I found this post and tried this method, but it didn’t solve my problem. I was still getting [affiliate = none] for some vendors.
Then I told IE to delete all my cookies and my temporary internet files. That did the trick. Now my affiliate ID shows up correctly.
My conclusion is that for some browsers under some circumstances, adding an extra parameter to the URL will force the browser to get new content rather than using its existing cache. It probably doesn’t matter what parameter you use. I don’t think there’s anything magic about “type=nohop”. I think it could be anything that causes the browser to get a new version of the page.
On the other hand, as I found, it doesn’t always work. It’s unfortunate, but I guess we just have to rely on specific conditions on the customer’s computer. If they’re not exactly right, we may not get credit for a sale.
George
Are you using google adwords to advertise?
You got some pretty fast results
thanks
SanAntonioBecky
You might also snag a copy of Michael Rasmussen’s Redirect Generator – it’s free.
http://www.ezau.com/latest/articles/0180.shtml
Jeff
Have you ever registered a domain name and then redirect to mask it? If so, does this take care of the problem or do I need to use your ?type=nohop suggestion in conjunction with masking?
I tried this click bank a few years back and got discouraged just as you did. Gonna give it a go again, just want to be armed with the latest info on the crooks. I still don’t know why a merchant would try to short circuit there affiliates. Once their discouraged and quit promoting so does revenue from that affiliate.
Thanks for the help
ZyprexaMM
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