Clickbank Sucks

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your reply. I can not express to you how very much we appreciate the honest opinions of our clients and hearing their concerns. Because we appreciate your honesty, please allow me be honest with you. This email is in no part a "form letter". The information in it is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and I am personally writing with your individual account and concerns in mind.

From reading your letter, I am sure you know that this is not the first complaint of this kind that ClickBank has received. As you might imagine, such complaints have prompted a full, in-depth, and detailed search of our system and our processes to be sure that nothing is out of order. The information below details our findings in full.

First, ClickBank has not yet found any data to support the claim that newly opened accounts are credited with sales that existing accounts are not. Sales to newly opened accounts can be easily understood when your consider that these clients are often times updating their advertising copy and posting additional advertisements when they create a new nickname in hopes of making more sales. This new advertising activity generates more traffic and can lead to more sales. The new sales have nothing to do with having a new nickname, but everything to do with updating ones advertising and refocusing one's effort toward producing a different result.

Furthermore, the theory that having a new account would change one's ability to receive sales through our system is fully discredited by the fact that all recording for all accounts is run on the exact same systems. Sales and hops recorded for accounts that are several years old run through the exact same recording system as hops and sales reporting for accounts less than a day old.

The system that records hops and sales does not have any programming that would enable it to tell which accounts are new and which are not. It simply records any hop information it receives, regardless of the age of the account listed in the hoplink. Therefore, claims that new accounts somehow perform more accurately than old accounts are unfounded because the system that tracks hops and sales is exactly the same for all accounts.

These systems have been thoroughly investigated by ClickBank's Technical Team and no errors in any part of the tracking systems have been found. You do not need to open any new account because it does not have any affect other than the same affect that updating advertising copy and refocusing where and how advertising efforts are spent would have.

Secondly, the periods of times without sales in your account are normal. The reason our clients are seeing these dry spells is because these trends are perfectly natural. They are not in any way an indication of problems in ClickBank's tracking system. Each spring ClickBank, (and many other retailers as well) see a slowing of sales as potential customers spend more and more time outside. Please keep in mind that ClickBank's Technical Team has repeatedly checked and re-checked all of our tracking systems to make sure that everything is working properly and they will continue to do so each day. However, fluctuations in conversion rates are extremely common, especially so for newer affiliates who have not yet learned to adapt their campaigns to changing market conditions.

As you can imagine, if ClickBank truly had problems in it's affiliate commission tracking system, you would expect that the number of affiliate commissions paid in comparision to total sales would have gone down. However, during to our Technical Team's thorough investigation of this issue; we have found that affiliates are currently receiving credit on a higher percentage of our sales than ever before.

Sales are never constant nor guaranteed in any market and yet overall, more and more of ClickBank's total sales are affiliate referred. However, this does not mean you will not experience natural fluctuations in sales patterns as you use your account. It is unrealistic to expect that sales conversion rates would stay the same or very close to what they have been in the past in today's economy without considerable doubling of efforts on the part of the affiliate.

We fully understand your concerns and encourage all affiliates to continue to ask questions, give specific examples, screenshots, order numbers and any other quantifiable information they have to our Technical Team for investigation. With this kind of information we can further investgate any possible issue they may have concerns about.

ClickBank also surely encourages affiliates to visit affiliate marketing forums as they can be beneficial for new affiliates to get tips and free information from more experienced marketers, however, as you can tell, there is a lot of misinformation on such forums with no way for any member to accurately verify the validity of any comment or group of comments. Everything read on any forum must be taken with "a grain of salt".

If you ever have any specific data regarding a sale you believe should have been credited to you, or a series of screenshots of a process that does not seem to be working correctly, we want you to send this information to us so we can investigate the cause to the fullest extent possible so we can be doubly sure our system is functioning properly in every way. And if an error is found, we will always post this information in the News section of your account and also on the System Status page.

ClickBank values its reliability and transparency to clients. We always post any anticipated outages in your account on the "Account Home" page (the first page after login). The system status page and a blog about ClickBank's systems are listed below. If you ever need to check the system, we encourage you to visit the page and check the statuses listed and if you have concerns, to contact us directly so we can help you as quickly as possible.

http://www.clickbank.com/blog/2008/05/12/seeing-double/

http://www.clickbank.com.xohost.com/status.php

Finally, I would like to stress how seriously ClickBank takes all affiliate concerns. Affiliates are the life-blood of our organization and making it easier and more profitable for affiliates to use ClickBank has always been the bread-and-butter of our business. ClickBank prides itself on our Technical Team's constant vigilance to ensure our systems are functioning correctly and would never, through negligence or otherwise, allow any known issues with our system to continue unchecked. To do so would only hurt our business, ClickBank's reputation, and its bottom line.

I trust this addresses your concerns, however if you have specific order information you would like to discuss, please let me know!

Melissa
ClickBank Client Services
msd@clickbank.com

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And my reply
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I thought I'd address one point...

"First, ClickBank has not yet found any data to support the claim that
newly opened accounts are credited with sales that existing accounts
are not. Sales to newly opened accounts can be easily understood when
your consider that these clients are often times updating their
advertising copy and posting additional advertisements when they
create a new nickname in hopes of making more sales. This new
advertising activity generates more traffic and can lead to more
sales. The new sales have nothing to do with having a new nickname,
but everything to do with updating ones advertising and refocusing
one's effort toward producing a different result."

You guys have fraud software right? Well, of course you do. You have a
sister company that sells them that just happens to be at the same
address Clickbank is at (according to the Better Business Bureau). I
find it hard to believe that you just have one server to run things
through, but I'll bite.

I'm going to take a big wild guess that fraud software doesn't flag a
specific IP or specific risky traffic (because you don't fire pixels),
so you flag accounts. Right? That makes sense right because if my
account is high risk for credit card fraud that would make perfect
sense right? You end up blocking the account for a period of time to
prevent fraudulent activity.

I don't think it is possible to deny such a thing. I'm pretty sure you
guys block accounts much longer than you should.

Obviously a new account that ISN'T FLAGGED by the fraud software would
be good to go, where as a flagged one would not. Right? This is common
sense 101.

Let's see here... I went 16 straight days of zeros. I never
experienced a run of that many zeros since I first opened my account
with you guys. I complained and you replied asking for more details.
Magically I get a few sales.

I've been sending off a lot of my traffic to competitors, which
obviously convert consistently. I even decided to send away all my
traffic that I thought would be more high risk... you know things like
forex and the "make money niches" would probably be a much more
fraudulent area than say morning sickness.

Let me just put it this way... I've been so disappointed. The only
reason that you still have traffic coming to you from me is that I
have yet to find replacements for some of the niches that I'm in.

I was a good affiliate. I liked working with Clickbank, but than the
fundamentals changed. If I work harder with Clickbank, I get no
reward. I make no more money. I just get a headache. But if I go to
your competitors and work hard, my income doubles. It's just amazing
how you guys just have *no* problems and experience all the problems
of fluctuations and the economy, but your competitors don't.

I suppose my email did it's job and my sales were turned back on -
regardless of what you said.