Are You Being Ripped Off By Clickbank Merchants?


I see affiliates from two perspectives.

Firstly as an affiliate, I see myself as a business partner to those merchants that I promote. I send them traffic, and if I make sales for them, I expect to be paid for my efforts in the form of a predefined percentage or lump sum.

As a merchant, I see my affiliates as partners and value the traffic they send me. My utmost priority is to make sure that any sales that are made are credited to the affiliate that sends me the traffic. This is essential if my affiliates are going to trust me and put effort into promoting my products. This is essential if I want my business to grow!

Most of my own products are related to internet marketing and webmaster tools. Because of the nature of these products, those visitors are likely to be knowledgeable of affiliate programs and probably Clickbank as well.

Imagine this scenario:

Joe goes to Google and searches for "webmaster tools". Something caught his attention over in the Pay Per Click ads, an affiliate link to a product that promises to make link exchanges easier.

"Hmmm" thought Joe. "That looks like a great tool".

Joe clicks on the PPC link and is redirected to a sales page. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, Joe sees that the product is $97.

"I want this", thought Joe, "but $97 is a bit steep".

Joe searches the webpage for that magic link, and he finds it easily.

"Great" says Joe out loud. "A link to a Clickbank affiliate program, and this program pays 50%".

After a few minutes, Joe has signed up for the affiliate program, created his own affiliate link, typed it into his browser, and revisits the sales page.

Joe's mouse clicks the buy link. He fills in his credit card details and clicks the purchase button. Closing his browser, he checks his e-mail. He watches as two e-mails are downloaded to his machine. The first is the download information for the new software he purchased, the second one is an e-mail with the Subject "Congratulations Joe, you have made a sale".

Joe checks his stats online for this new affiliate program and sure enough, he has made $48.50 commission on this purchase. In other words, he only paid $48.50 for the product.

OK, what is wrong with this scenario?

Is it fair that Joe used his own affiliate link to make a purchase?

What about the affiliate who advertised this affiliate program at Google? That affiliate paid for the click that started the sale process, yet did not get the commission.

What is going through the minds of merchants who place links to their affiliate programs on their sales page?

I would imagine that some merchants think about these points:

* I want to make $48.50 per sale minimum.

* If I offer it for $97 and give 50% commission to affiliates I will make my goal of $48.50 per sale.

* By adding an affiliate sign up link to the sales page, I can encourage people to sign up for my affiliate program, buy through their own link and get the software for the real price of $48.50, but the customer will be happy thinking they saved $48.50.

*Great plan!

I am sure that a lot of merchants don't see things this way - they just don't think hard enough about their affiliates.

A merchant that uses a link to his/her affiliate program on the sales page is using affiliate traffic as free traffic (whether they intend to or not). After all, the merchant does not need to spend time optimising pages or buying traffic - their affiliates will do that and send the traffic to the sales page for free. If an affiliate sends someone who becomes a customer, the merchant will make their money.

The big problem here is that being an affiliate is hard work. You do have to create content, buy and review products, possibly even pay for advertising. If YOU are doing these things as an affiliate, is your merchant doing their bit to protect your you? Unfortunately the majority of Clickbank merchants don't, and affiliates waste their time building pages and buying advertising to promote merchants who don't deserve it.

The bottom line
----------------

If you are promoting products aimed at webmasters, the traffic you send will likely know how to "steal" your commission. In this situation it is vital to only promote merchants without the affiliate sign up link.

If on the other hand you are promoting products to the general public, e.g. weight loss products, dog training eBooks etc, this affiliate sign up link poses less of a problem since most of the traffic you generate wont be affiliates themselves (most wont even know what an affiliate is) and wont have the necessary skills to sign up at Clickbank, create a link and purchase through their link just to get a commission.

What can you do?
----------------

If you find a merchant that you want to promote and they have an affiliate sign up link on the sales page, contact them. Tell them about your concerns and that they should treat you as a partner, not the source of free traffic. Suggest that they remove this affiliate sign up link.

The usual reaction I get
------------------------

Merchant: "I get a lot of affiliate sign ups from this link, there is no way I am removing it!"

Ask the merchant how many of those affiliates ever make a sale or ever send any traffic. This is exactly my point. The merchant is getting a lot of sign ups purely to get a discount. For every person who signs up as an affiliate to get a discount, there is one affiliate somewhere being robbed of his/her rightful commission.

Most of the "affiliates" you get via a sign up link on the sales page are only signing up to get a discount, they are unlikely to ever try to sell that product.

The only affiliates who will promote the product, are those that buy the software, use it and like it. They see the benefits and can sell it well to their visitors. These are the only affiliates worth getting, and you wont get them from an affiliate sign up link on the sales page.

The best way of getting hard working affiliates is to protect your affiliates from this type of link hijacking, gain their trust and do everything you can to help them out. Build a relationship with your affiliates and most of all, make sure they are rewarded for the traffic they send. To this end, remove that affiliate sign up link, and when someone buys your product, send them an e-mail outlining the benefits of your affiliate program. Active affiliates respond well to knowing their merchants are protecting their interests.

A final thought
---------------

If there are two similar products, similar price, similar commission, one sales page with an affiliate sign up link, one without, which would you prefer to promote? If you want to make money online with affiliate programs, take it seriously and start contacting merchants.


More Resources

How to Monetize a Free Website
For some time now I have been aggressively marketing my Geocities website without the prospect of any financial return. The site is content based so I did not expect to generate any product sales and neither was I able to lure potential sponsors.
Are Affiliate Riches Within Your Grasp? Discover How to Cash in Starting Today
There is some speculation about how much money you can earn online without your own product. Although marketing your own digital product on the Internet can be very lucrative, there is no reason why you and I can't profit mightily using creative methods that offer real value to Internet surfers.
Become An Affiliate Champion: 10 Tips
Affiliates programs are one of the easiest ways to make money in the internet. Small fortunes have been made for smart people who have taken advantage of this powerful marketing technique.
How Much do YOU Charge Per Hour? Avoid the Question by Setting up Passive Income Streams
If you work with clients, at some point in your career, you've probably been asked, "What's your hourly rate?" or "How much do you charge per hour?"Now, you and I both know this question isn't totally relevant, even if you provide services like I do. Because it doesn't really matter how much I charge per hour.
Affiliate Marketing - How to Start Earning Money Today
If you're new to Affiliate Marketing and your finding everything that your learning is a little "mind blowing" but really want to start making money today then here is the quickest way to get results.First, I would begin with using ClickBank.
8 Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commission
Here are 8 easy ways to boost your affiliate income:1) Collect your visitor email addresses by providing free reports.Offer a free report to your visitor.
The Key To High-Volume Web Sales
The quickest way to achieve high-volume sales on the web is to set up your own affiliate program.There are two ways to set up an affiliate program: you can install affiliate tracking software on your server or you can use a 3rd party affiliate tracker.
How to Succeed With Any Affiliate Program
In the early days before the internet was born, starting a business was like taking a giant leap into the unknown. Aside from the involved time and money, it also causes lots of worry.
How To Create A Lifetime Income With Affiliate Programs By Changing Your Focus!
"How To Create A Lifetime Income With Affiliate Programs By Changing Your Focus!" An often overlooked strategy that could maximize your affiliate earnings by Mark Meyers. Most people join an affiliate program so that they will make some money by referring people to the products and services of the affiliate company. This is, in fact, a great way to earn a really nice income.
5 Strategies to Boost Your Affiliate Sales
Are you promoting affiliate products?This article will show you 5 strategies to boost your Affiliate Sales, so make sure you read it and put in practice what I'm about to reveal you.The KEY to affiliate marketing is to take action!1.
Are You Making These Costly Affiliate Mistakes?
There are many ways to generate sales, but there are also ways to ensure your affiliate marketing will fail. However, many marketers make these mistakes without realizing they are actually running away sales!To help you with your affiliate marketing programs, we have collected some of the most common mistakes made by web based internet affiliate program marketers so that you can avoid making these.
Making Money Online
If you are a webmaster, you will see this everyday if you are searching for a profit in the online world. Now I am not speaking of opening up a store or selling something.
3 Powerful Words
I should have listened to an internet veteran back in 2000.Learn from my mistake.
Top 5 Tips For Frustrated Affiliate Program Marketers
Do you go through affiliate programs like most people go through pairs of socks? Many Internet marketers do. In fact, 97% of all Internet marketers never make a single cent advertising opportunities on the Internet.
Affiliate Marketing--Huh?
In my search for a presence on the internet, I searched many avenues, but was finding more scams and dead ends than I would care to speak about.It was one last scam and six months of my presence on the internet that I realized that the only way I could possibly make a living on the internet -- and gain any amount of satisfaction --was to work for myself.
Not An Affiliate? Why Ever Not?
If the idea of pursuing a living on the net has repeatedly crossed your mind but you still haven't found a way to implement it, then affiliate programs are going to break the ice for you.Affiliate programs are a lot like learning how to swim in a pool before you go to the open sea.
You Deserve a Check Today
Perhaps the fastest and easiest way to prosper online is to market products and services as an affiliate.While there have been many an article and book written about how to be an affiliate, most overlook one very important aspect of the affiliate process.
A Unique Opportunity For Affiliate Recruiters
If you're a webmaster, web publisher, or web merchant, chances are you have already come across the concept of affiliate marketing.As online joint venture partnerships, affiliate programs allows both content publishers and web merchants to maximize their online profits by working with each other.
7 Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commissions
Suppose you could launch an online business in the next ten minutes? Suppose that this business did not require your own website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development or maintenance? This is the ideal world of affiliate marketing.Made popular on the internet by Amazon.
A Successful Satellite TV Affiliate Website
Satellite TV has exploded on the scene during the last decade, providing expanded channel offerings and new technologies that were not previously available from regular television. When the "mini-dishes" were developed and the satellites put in place by Dish Network and Direct TV, satellite TV became available to almost everyone.

More Affiliate Revenue Information:

Related Articles

Affiliate Marketing Terminology
Affiliate Marketing is a large business piece on the Internet. The (online) retail customer often does not know that he/she made the recent online purchase through an affiliate link.
5 Tips If You Want To Be A Reseller
If you are planning to be a reseller for a product or many products, here are five great tips you can use for your own![1] A good way to source for quality products with great demand is to purchase a yearly (or even lifetime!) access to membership websites dedicated to resale rights. These membership sites offer products such as E-books, software, templates, and audio/video with resale rights.
Top Three Internet Marketing Two-Tier Affiliate Programs
If you run an Internet marketing web site and sell your ownproducts or services, you probably follow up with yourcurrent customers using autoresponders and upsell them withproducts and services from related affiliate programs?Note that if you don't do this, you are leaving money onthe table.Why? Simply, your customers have already spent money onyour web site, and if they enjoy your product or service,they now trust you.
Affiliate Marketing Or Market Your Own Products?
How should you organize your online business? Affiliate marketing seems to make sense, its easy and low costto start, and you can be up and running within a few days - but the struggle is how to get traffic and make my offer different than all the others?
Earn Top Dollar With Your Affiliate Monthly Income Stream
Virtually all online marketers have attempted lots of schemes and programs. Most online marketers have dropped a load of bread attempting to get going.
Reselling - Money On The Side
The other night I had dinner with a friend who mentioned knowing quite a few people needing websites for their local businesses. Despite being a software engineer, my friend is not a web designer nor does he know enough about servers to actually host (store) websites.
Affiliate Marketing: An Online Marketing Strategy
Everybody it seems can make money online. The simplest way perhaps is to make money online through affiliate marketing.
The Secret Shady Practices of Affiliate Marketing
You've probably heard it a hundred times..
High Paying Lateral Keywords
If you run AdSense on your site you know that some words pay more than others, much more in fact. More than likely you have also learned that terms like "structured settlements" and "mesothelioma" can produce incredibly high PPC revenue, if they show up on your site at all.
Get the Big Dogs to Affiliate with You
Have you ever tried to launch an affiliate program? If you have, then you know that one of the challenges you face is to get people to be your affiliate marketers. After all, if you are new on the block, people who have never heard of you may be reluctant to encourage their list or web traffic to come to your website.
Online Affiliate Programs - 6 Must Read Reasons to Join Them
You must have been exposed to the online hype, and the fact is starting an online business is a great way to make an extra income. There are many ways to make money online, one of them, is joining online affiliate programs.
Top 7 Affiliate Marketing Tips for Newbies
When a newbie begins an online business, the temptation can be high to join most any affiliate program they see in the hopes of making extra money. Given the amount of products and services that newbie get presented with, and since newbie have a burning desire to make money fast, it is easy to see how the online newbie can get lured into joining a lot of affiliate programs without knowing if they should join them or not.
Creating an Income Stream with Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs orPartnership Programs) are essentially commission-based salesschemes. You recommend a site to your users and pick up apercentage of any sales those users generate.
Soliciting Referral
Customer referrals are vital to small and home-based service businesses. When you need to increase sales but can't afford a salesperson and have limited selling time, focus on existing clients and let them do the selling for you.
How To Attract Affiliates
One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates. This fear is a stumbling block that stops many site owners from getting started with affiliatemarketing.
Affiliate Marketing - How Ezine Ads Explode your Online Profits
So we're looking at E-zine advertising. Just a quick overview - ezines are basically email newsletters, but most don't redirect to a site, they just leave the full text content in the email.
Five Things to Look For to Join Any Affiliate Program!
Here's a really simple way..
Five Ways to Increase Your Affiliate Sales
Most home business owners are involved with affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer, a combination of techniques can be used to promote your affiliate website and/or link.
Affiliate Marketing: Starting Out On The Internet
So you want to start your own business, and you want to start it without mortgaging your house and maxing out your credit cards. You've done the market research and you've concluded that by far the largest market place in the world is right there in front of you within the cyber world of the internet.
Using Google AdWords For Affiliate Selling
While many people may have you believe otherwise, selling online is not an easy thing to do. Coming up with a great domain name, setting up your website, integrating the whole lot with a payment processor, getting inventory, handling shipping, the list goes on.
3 Ways to Squeeze Even More Revenue Out of Your Traffic Equaliser Pages
Ever wondered if, apart from Google Adsense, there were other ways of generating real revenues from Traffic Equaliser pages.There has been some great results using the above two programs, running Google Adsense results on page as a fast way to driverevenues on a huge number of boiler plate pages.
WHAT! Internet Etiquette / Net Etiquette?
Many people know how -- and do conduct themselves in the real world properly. However, many people are unaware that this same conduct needs to be applied online as well.
Starting an Online Business - Affiliate Programs Make it Easy
If you have been longing to start a business online you may be coming across terms you've never heard before. You may also have found the opportunities available are overwhelming.
Successful Free Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are the latest money making tools available on the Internet. While there is definitely not a lack of options available,there is a lack of good options available.