The Death of Clickbank

One check sent out on March 15th hasn’t arrived yet here though one from March 27th did. Go figure…

They offered to stop the old check and re-issue but there would be a Stop fee of $20 for the old check deducted from the re-issued one. A total brashness in my opinion. I was only a $100 check so the re-issued one would be only $80 minus deposit fees of ~ $20 for overseas checks, how great… That’s the first time it happens and I hope the older check somehow comes through yet.

I don’t think CB is dead (yet). I mean so many e-books are sold via CB, among them many high ticket items. Those “silent” days are something which is nothing to sneeze at and shall be examined further. I wonder whether the IE7 issue has also contributed to it.

I agree with you that CB MUST improve their hop link system and introduce the first come first serve cookie, so that not other affiliates (or the client himself using his own ID) can steal your commission. I guess that’s the biggest flaw in their system and affiliates trying left and right to protect their commissions by cloaking and using frames etc, slowly getting desperate.

CJ pays out too low and at CJ you won’t find merchants selling ebooks. (except some rare occurences) CB is the biggest platform for selling ebooks and software. Where shall merchants move then?? IMO Paydotcom is not really a solution.

The title is a bit alarmist.

I would bet right now Clickbank is doing excellent business and no where near dead.

On the other hand, they have their share of issues and I got burned pretty hard on one campaign where people were sending receipts for bonuses and I wasn’t seeing any sales. Of course they didn’t give a crap about that.

For now Clickbank = necessary evil.

I also saw posts that it is related to IE7 and that Clickbank domain is on the list of some antispyware programs which are adding Clickbank to no trusted domains in the IE.

I’m not sure that I would say that Clickbank is dead, but I have had some issues with them myself.

I was advertising a product through PPC with conversion tracking through Adwords. Through my Adwords account I showed 5 sales yet Clickbank only showed 2. I questioned it and was told that the only tracking that can be followed is theirs and there was nothing I nor they could could do about it. I even asked where the problem could be and they wouldn’t respond to me. I found it strange since the conversion tracking with Adwords was obviously set up ok (what is the point in PPC conversion tracking then if it doesn’t prove anything?)
Anyway, I immediately stopped the ad campaign.

Another issue I had was the same as Mikes comment. I had a cheque issued that I hadn’t received, yet I received the next one. I e-mailed Clickbank that I hadn’t received my cheque and told them that I did not see the point in having another re-issued since it is rediculous, to say the least, to pay $20 for an $18.00 cheque. They never responded back… although I finally did receive it.

I do agree that some necessary changes will need to be made to improve the overall reliability of Clickbanks service. It is us (the affiliates & publishers) that keep Clickbank going, if they ignore our complaints then they will end up as good as dead!!!

There is no doubt you can do very well with Clickbank as an affiliate. However, the general internet community is much more savvy these days and is tired of the crappy Clickbank products that get rolled out every day.

However, every once in a while a real gem does come through the network but for the most part a lot of the products on there are overpriced fluff. While many affiliates get caught up in Clickbank promotions it’s only a matter of time before they move onto promoting actual retailers and merchants with a tangible product.

I also do not waste any money on PPC advertising Clickbank products which I actually like nowadays. This past January I did not receive a check from Clickbank for about 3 months. They did a purge on my account and sent a check out in the next cycle but never gave me a reason why I wasn’t paid for so long.

Hi again,

no idea whether some of you have already seen this but it might be the problem why some who sell CB products via Adwords have less sales recorded than their Ad tracking tells them.

I perused some ads for a popular product and thus also got tagged by affiliate cookies. I then used my own CB ID and created a hop link and re-visited the same sales page with it. I clicked through the order page and paid close attention to the bottom and was surprised to see that not my ID was listed as affiliate but apparently still the previous affiliate’s ID.

I thought that with CB the last affiliate gets the sale?

I did this with Firefox, no idea whether the same prob occurs with IE. I had to clear my cookies and re-load with my ID which worked then.

I see very many sales going lost due to the fact that your ID just doesn’t get loaded. This happens very easily since many skip from one ad to another just to read different reviews or see which affiliate offers the best bonus.

Have some of you experienced the same? I urge you try this yourself with different ID’s (can also try fake ID’s) and see whether on subsequent visits - then with your real ID - at the bottom your ID is listed or not.

Any ideas for a workaround?

Mike

Good thing they’ll be getting competition soon….

I guess I shuold stop doing those iFramed blogger blogs then…

Some time ago I considered to join CB but I didn’t. What I read today gives me the idea I made the right choice, or, more probably, I was just lucky.

Geez, when I saw the title of this article, I thought this was just another of those linkbait thingy..

The info that you shared here really make me surprised. And stunned..

So, what other affiliate manager do you suggest?

Clickbank has had some major issues lately, especially in the month of March where a lot of affiliate have seen record low sales. Apparently, their upgrade to a new system was a total disaster, they openly admitted to losing sales.

I for one will never promote another Clickbank product in the future, this company’s actions constitute incompetence at best and gross negligence at worst.

Great post, totally agree. I’ve been doing well w/ClickBank for a long time but I CONSTANTLY experience ’strange’ patterns… for example I’ll be doing $100+ per day each day for a week and then it will go 5 days at $0 per day, etc. Like you I’m all organic w/them at this point… PPC became unprofitable for the products I was pushing.

We’ve tried using a few different methods with Clickbank but haven’t had much success. Also, I’ve noticed that the quality of products is pretty low. 99% of the products in our category are so low quality, that I wouldn’t want to be associated with them.

I wouldn’t say Clickbank is dead, or that it will die anytime soon, but I do agree they have some issues they need to work on.

For one, they should clear up the 100’s of products that were thrown together in 5 minutes (which you can usually tell by a quick look at the landing page).

There are some good products in Clickbank, but unfortunately their overshadowed by all the not-so-good ones.

Hoplink tracking as many pointed out is also an issue the should address.

This is because of the “30day” garbage being PUSHED by affiliates and (influenceable consumers). I think more INTERNET users are increasingly seeing these products as nothing more than a 3am infomercials or a “click here! you are infected with spyware” kind of SPAM. Product originality and consumer need has to be re-evaluated.
As far as Clickbank’s accounting methods: do you have your legal proof?

I don’t think Clickbank is going to die anytime soon, but I think that a lot of the smaller players are going to get squeezed out. If Clickbank wants to survive then the have to make partnerships with some higher quality products.

FOOLS.. Clickbank is owned by ME Tony Soprano and these silent days are just MY cut of the action. Now, shut up and go about your business.

I have tryed to advertise affiliate links from click bank for months. with out 1 sale. ask for help? they send links of more Clickbank stuff. its a scam. all legit ad sites on the internet will not help to promote Clickbank affiliate links becouse of framebraking codes/ redirect or some other problem. I hope some day that this kind of internet garbage will be gone..

I installed a new and more comprehensive tracking stats package on my server as I wanted to see my click-through/conversion rates so I could work out how much I could spend on PPC and which product I should promote on PPC.

That same day, my sales in Clickbank stopped. I had nothing for 2 weeks. But I know I sent a lot of traffic their way, so I figure maybe PPC to Clickbank, even my highest converter, might not be a good idea. If they can’t convert my traffic, I won’t be paying for it!

But everybody is different. I just have the CB products on one page of my site and it gets all its traffic from organic search. So for me it’s a nice and easy freebie when I do get a sale.

I still do some PPC with a few Clickbank products, but I am very selective. I’m promoting some products from Paydotcom, too, but I’m not ready to abandon Clickbank for good. Unfortunately, Clickbank continues to attract the lion’s share of merchants — albeit, a lot of crappy ones.

I myself being very new to affiliate marketing and reading all about how great click bank was set up a PPC campaign for click bank with absolutely no ROI my ads sent over a good few hundred highly targeted leads with absolutely nothing in my account. most days I log on in hope.

Since I last wrote on July 20th I am still logging on in hope but alas still a big fat 0 in the account. I do not no if it is because of the clocked link as I have no way of finding out if any clicks have been recorded

Interesting read: I’ve been a Clickbank publisher for a while now however only premium products, and will agree that most of the slate is somewhat garbage. While climbing through the ranks, I have MANY successful campaigns however also noticed strange patterns, however so does EVERY OTHER platform in their own ways. I can’t say I’ve ever ‘lost’ a sale, nor quantify red handed blackhat activities, perhaps I was lucky…

Now that I am a publisher looking after various products with a semi-large affiliate count to each, i have tons of data to play with, and can’t really say anything bad about them - except the fact that they still only offer 1-tier The day they flip that, and perhaps take a vote on the ‘first come first served cookie’, will be a good day for them.

Take a look at the Alexa graph below which compares Clickbank and Commission Junction.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/clickbank.net?site0=Clickbank.net&site1=commissionjunction.com&y=t&z=2&h=400&w=700&range=5y&size=Large

Clickbank has been reducing slightly, but they are still a major player. IMO.

Further they have recently been upgrading their systems significantly. I believe they ahve finally caught the necessary wake-up call.