Clickbank commission being stolen... what do you do?

27am_dot_com

(Just posted this in Warrior's Forum as well as I'm hoping for a bit of feedback from the "veterans")

I launched my first Clickbank product late June and now see the "affiliate thieves" in action. Out of the sales in these first 6 weeks, 5 of them were stolen commissions (ie: the affiliate bought through their own link).

Does anyone have experience with this? Frankly, since it's a marketing tool, I'd rather not create one for these individuals. They can have a refund but I don't support/tolerate these actions.

Any thoughts on this?
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Derrick Pizur · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:09 am Post subject:

I wouldn't worry about it.

What is the difference if they buy through there own link or someone elses?

Either way you make the same amount of money. Sure if an affiliate sent them to your site they get screwed but that is part of the affiliate game, it is up to the affiliate to combat this the best they can and remember they chose to promote your product.

Your hands are tied since you are using clickbank.

Just be happy you are getting some sales.

Derrick
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27am_dot_com · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:18 am Post subject:

You're right that I'm getting sales, but somehow it's just distasteful seeing this.

I could argue that some of the purchases through the affiliate links might have been full sales from my own links (hence I'm being stolen from... though I wouldn't know how the customer found the product). But even if it's just an affiliate of mine, it's really unpleasant seeing this.

At the same time, in 6 weeks with approx 80 sales, I found 5 instances of this. The troubling part is that 3 of those were in the last 7 days.

I appreciate your feedback.

Is that what others would recommend as well? Simply ignore it?
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Derrick Pizur · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:55 pm Post subject:

Don't get me wrong if it was easy to correct I wouldn't suggest ignoring it, but it is something you cannot do that easy.

I am big on honesty and fairness in marketing but sometimes you cannot control things and with using Clickbank this really is out of your control.

Derrick
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Will-I-Am · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:08 pm Post subject:

This is the reason we decided to switch to PayPal, that and what we thought was an insane no questoins asked refund policy -- Oh, you want a refund? Sure, here you go!

PayPal doesn't have a merchants' affiliate program that I'm aware of. Unless you have access to such software, PayPal might not be feasible as it could require a lot of work to manually track and account for commissionable sales.

There are other merchant/affiliate one-stop solutions out there, I'm sure. We haven't had occasion to investigate.

ClickBank is easy and quick if you need an affiliate program and payment gateway all in one package. But it is easy to abuse.

Sorry, no solutions in this post. If you continue with ClickBank, you'll need to get yourself into a state where you don't let the abusers get to you. They're there and they take advantage, and it's easy for them to do. If you let "uninvited discount" purchases and unwarranted refunds get to you, the stress can endanger your health.

Will
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Alice Seba · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 4:13 am Post subject:

As far as I understand, ClickBank allows this. If you don't want to allow it, manage your own affiliate program, like Will suggested.[/code]
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underwater · Contributor Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 16