Affiliate Marketing Forum

ElizabethAdams · Joined: 20 Apr 2008 Posts: 1 Location: WA

Is This Squeeze Page Snitching Affiliate Commissions?

And, if so, is there anything that can be done about it?

Hello, Everybody ...

A friend of mine sells a ClickBank product on her blog.
She averages one sale every other month and would like
to do more, so she asked me if I knew of anything she
could do to increase her sales.

When I clicked on her hoplink, the first thing I
noticed was the redirect link in the address bar.
It had a php script at the end of it.

I found that it went to a squeeze page. I filled
out the form and pushed the button and was taken
to a sales page with a subdirectory-type link in
the address bar.

I clicked on the "order now" link and was taken
to a shopping-cart-type page where I had to fill in
my first and last name and email and also put in a
user name and password.

I clicked on the "pay now" button and was taken
to a regular ClickBank pay page. I checked for her
affiliate name down at the bottom, and it was there.

So far, so good.

But then I went back and filled out the form on the
squeeze page as a prospect would who was just
interested in looking at the free sample.

I X'd out of the sales page that popped up and went
to check my inbox for a confirmation email, but this
product owner isn't using the double-opt-in feature
of AWeber, so there wasn't one. There was just a
message in my inbox about my free sample.

I opened that message. It had a subdirectory-type link
in it, which I clicked. It went to a page about downloading
the free sample which was so confusing that I clicked
on the order-now link instead.

As before, I was taken to a shopping-cart-type page
where I had to fill in some personal information.

When I clicked the "pay-now" button, I was taken to a
regular ClickBank pay page.

But when I checked it at the bottom for my friend's
affiliate name, I found this:

[Affiliate = None]

In other words, my friend is *not* going to get paid
when a prospect buys through a link in a follow-up
email from the owner.

The ClickBank MarketPlace listing shows the percentage
of referred sales at 49%.

It's my understanding that this means that 49% of the
owner's sales come from affiliates, and 51% of his sales
he makes himself ... or, as I suspect is happening in
this case, he makes as a result of following up by email
with those prospects his affiliates send him who don't
buy immediately.

I don't have a problem with him following up. I quite
understand that "the money is in the follow up."

What I have a problem with is that he is putting his
own link in the followup emails and not his affiliates'
links.

He is, in effect, stealing money from his affiliates.

Or so it seems.

The php scripts he's running on his squeeze page
make it difficult for me to determine what's really
going on, and that's why I'm coming here for help.

I'd like to find out:

(a) if my analysis is correct, and

(b) if there's anything that can be done about it, or

(c) if my friend should pick another product and move on.

Is there anyone here who would be willing to take a
look at this for me?

I'm reluctant to publish the product name until I have
a consensus that the owner is, indeed, ripping people off,
but I would gladly PM it to you so you could set up a
hoplink to test it for yourself and either confirm my
suspicions or lay them to rest.

Short of that, could anyone here tell me if this type of
thing occurs with a certain amount of frequency, rather
like 1-800 order lines on some owners' sales pages that
rob affiliates of their commissions, unless the operators
are trained to ask the caller for a special code on the
sales page indicating which affiliate it's from?

Is it, in other words, another type of commissions "leak"
that affiliates are well-advised to be on the lookout for?

Is there a way that an affiliate's squeeze page could be
substituted for the owner's, in a case like this?

If so, where could an affiliate go to get the kind of
php script that's being used here?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer.

Regards, Elizabeth ...

P.S. Would it do any good to take this up with ClickBank?
I find it really hard to believe that a payment processor
of their stature would condone this kind of thing, but I
suppose stranger things have happened. Maybe their quality
control evaluators are just unaware that it's going on?

Smile

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