whydowork.com

[swagen]

I will make this short and to the point.

There is a definite problem with Clickbank hoplinks with IE 7.

I had several people, including myself test this.

In the tests conducted approximately 57% of the time, when clicking through to the pay screen for a Clickbank product, at the bottom it says AFF=NONE.

If there is ANYBODY here who has any clout with Clickbank, PLEASE contact them and make them aware of this problem.

Affiliates are getting murdered, myself including. My sales have plummeted through the floor.

What makes this even worse is that it is apparantly an intermediate problem, which makes it all the more worse. As a former QA tester I can tell you that intermittant problems are close to impossible to find.

This is not theory, this is not rumor, this is not alarmest talk. This has been tested and narrowed down to IE 7.

In just checking my user logs, I noticed that 67% of the people going to my affiliate site are using IE 7. This is an alarming stat which means you have a 38.19% chance of losing a sale (57% failure rate x 67% users with IE 7) each time a customer goes to your affiliate link.

Somebody here has to be powerful enough with Clickbank to get these people to fix their system before we all take a terrible beating.

I am personally calling them, but I am pretty much just a small fish in a very big pond and I doubt I'll make much headway.

Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

After all, this affects ALL of us.

[swagen]

:UPDATE:

Okay, I just got off the phone with Larissa and Diane from Clickbank. Diane is one of the managers.

I won't go into the whole long 45 minute conversation so I will just hit the high points.

The issue is not just IE 7. It is with a lot of the new browsers that are tightening on security with cookies disabled either as the default, or as done through a security update.

Another contributing factor to this problem is spyware.

Many affiliate programs are on what they call the spyware blacklist. Clickbank is one of them. This is why Clickbank changed their hoplink format from

this....

http://hop.clickbank.net/?aff/product

to this...

http://aff.product.hop.clickbank.net

Most spyware only looks at the first 8 or 9 characters. So with the old format, Clickbank comes up right away. With the new one, it is closer to the end and harder to detect for certain spyware. But it is still possible for more sophisticated spyware to identify this as a Clickbank cookie and not allow it to be written.

This report just came in to me from one of my testers.

------------------------------------------------------------
I am using FireFox version 2.0.0.1, running under Windows XPSE on a 2.7 ghz pc with 512 meg of RAM.

I have run some more tests:
1. Thought it might have to do with cookies, so I cleaned out all cookies and tried again. Same result.
2. Thought it might have to do with my computer, virus or something. So I went to ClickBank Marketplace, picked 3 products at random, got a CB-generated hoplink, then, documenting each step for what was in my browser window, I went to the site, hit the order now button and looked at the bottom of the page. Saw my I.D. there. No problem. Doesn't look like it is specific to my machine.
3. Went back to your site, documenting each stage again, and there was my ID at the bottom of the page.

[I now have 8 negative results and 4 positive results using the same CB-generated hoplink!! Maddening!]

If that is representative I will lose 67% of my commissions!
--------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I don't know what spyware detection he has running, if any, but I suspect that's the problem.

Anyway, after going over all this with Diane, this is what she told me.

"The issue is really resolving itself as Internet users today are aware of having to enable cookies to make things work correctly."

to which I replied...

"Obviously not though."

Well, after some more back and forth I realized that I wasn't going to get anywhere with her when she told me that I had to take up the problem with the browser manufacturers and the spyware detection makers.

The only positive thing I got out of the conversation was when she told me that Clickbank was working on a non cookie system. I asked he when that would be ready and she said she had no idea.

Absolutely infuriating.

Oh, she also suggested that I try selling another product.

If I was somebody with clout, I'd have gotten further. But I'm a nobody to them and ultimately I got nowhere with them.

Maybe as a community we can do something.

Until we do, this is a serious problem that's NOT going away.

[netjunkie]

There is a love/hate relationship with spyware detection software.

If this keeps up, culd mean the "Death of Affiliate Marketing"?

[WayneW]

I use firefox and i havn't gone to 2.0 and I got the same error on both links above. Maybe they're trying to rectify. Hope so. I'm not quite ready to start linking to them yet but this still sucks for those that depend on them. Her attitude seemed kind of cavalier also. THAT would have pissed me off.

[swagen]

It has turned out that the problem is with SpyBot targeting Clickbank cookies as bad.

What happens is when users immunize it prevents cookies from being written to the machine.

Monday, I am calling Clickbank to have them start a class action suit against SpyBot for restraint of trade.

Hopefully, if enough people do this, something will get done.

[Marc Meole]

Stuff like is is why I rarly deal with clickbank anymore.

There is just too much that can go wrong.

[whydowork-notused]

Greetings!

For those interested we were in touch with some of the folks at ClickBank on your behalf and they let us know the following:

- they are aware of the problem with cookies and their developers are working on a way to solve the current problem

AND

more interestingly, they are working on the launch of a cookie-less system that is independent of your browser, OS, or computer settings.

So it looks like they are moving in the right direction!

[Chaz Tiogangco]

So are we just a bit safer using the new hoplink format: http://aff.product.hop.clickbank.net ??

[swagen]

So are we just a bit safer using the new hoplink format: http://aff.product.hop.clickbank.net ??

It has nothing to do with which hoplink format you use. If SpyBot blocks the cookie you're toast.

[Fwahmi]

Just some additional information

For those of you who are using the very powerful Kaspersky Anti-Virus or thinking of getting one in the future.

By default,Kaspersky blocks all adsense content plus it also blocks Clickbank,CJ and virtually all other ad based content.

Fortunately this is something within your control.Go into the Anti Spy Settings and set it to allow content from these sites. and you're good to go.

Stuff like is is why I rarly deal with clickbank anymore.

There is just too much that can go wrong.

What do you suggest as an alternative Marc?I know PayDot.COM.com is gaining popularity fast among the IM community and haven't heard of anything negative so far.

[Chaz Tiogangco]

Well... I'm trying doing my part in creating a buzz with CB to make sure that they know EVERYONE is concerned with the current situation at hand with hoplinks not being properly tracked.

I also got a response from Diane at Click Bank, which went like this:

Hello,
We have received reports of affiliates' hoplinks not being tracked on sales, and
affiliates not receiving credit for sales they have promoted. We are continuing
to investigate these reports, but our findings to-date point to customers that
have Spybot Search & Destroy, with ?Immunize? enabled on their computers.

While we are making every effort to understand and address these reports, in
looking at our sales statistics, we find that affiliate-driven sales as a
percentage of total sales has been increasing from the beginning of 2006, and
that rate of increase has remained steady.

We are also researching alternative methods to improve tracking of affiliate
identification.

Best Regards,

Dianne
ClickBank Customer Service

I guess it's a safe response. And my guess is it's canned, but at least they made an effort to respond to my inquiry. As with swagen, I'm just a tiny fish in this ocean, but I think we can all do our part as this issue DOES affect us all.

[teres811]

Just wondering...what's the latest on this ClickBank problem, anyone have any news?

I was going to sign up today, but after reading through this post, I'm a bit hesitant. Plus, I noticed when starting to fill out the signup page, that there was no encryption. Not real crazy about that.

It seems like ClickBank has been around forever. Is anyone familiar, or have experience with any ClickBank alternative(s)? Are there any??? I did a Google search and didn't come up with much, and what info I did get, was pretty dated.

Thanks,
Teresa

[Chaz Tiogangco]

Hi teres811,

I wouldn't discourage you from signing up with Click Bank. In speaking with them they are very concerned about the current issue of some affiliate links not being tracked. They know that if they don’t tackle this issue it could mean bucks for them.

They did say that they are working on a "cookie-less" tracking system, which would pretty much solve the problem. Not quite sure when that's going to happen though (couldn't get a specific date out of them)

As far as alternatives you could check out Commission Junction at http://www.cj.com ,which is another affiliate retailer service.

[teres811]

Thank you, Chaz!

[AndyTampa]

Just last week I was informed by a forum admin (different forum) that my links would need to be removed because they didn't work. Some users were able to use them and others were not. I even used a subdomain in my link so that it wouldn't mention clickbank. The admin told me my clickbank link wasn't working, a message she received from her anti-spyware software. I discovered that Spybot S&D has clickbank listed in the hosts file as a bad site. I'm not sure which anti-spyware she was using.

After reading the previous posts, I can only surmise that Spybot isn't looking at the URL at all, but instead is reading the cookie itself.

Now, her experience was that she got a blank page. She couldn't even open the site. Different anti-spy softs probably produce different results.