Just signed up for CB today, I can't believe how awful their affiliate resource center is. How the hell do I even track my stats? LoL their site made me feel like a noob again. Tried to make a "hop" link so I did this...

Code:

hxxp://MYAccountName.ADVERTISERNAME.hop.clickbank.net

is that it?
Whenever I go to that link it redirects me to

Code:

http://PRODUCTSITE.com/products/?hop=MYAccountName

I mean that's meant to happen right?

But here is my real question, the product site that I am trying to promote has "3 sections" on his website.

Meaning that my redirected affiliate link goes to his main page where he asks where the potential customer wishes to go. Now, here is the part that confuses me, when I click any of the 3 products he is selling, when I arrive at the page, my "?hop=MYAccountName" disappears! it will only show his ordinary website. When I hover at the ADD TO CART paypal, all I see is..

Code:

http://1.VENDORNAME.pay.clickbank.net/?sku=XXXXXXX

Yes, it just shows "1" where my name is supposed to show. Something is very wrong here, or this is how it goes? I've been with A$en$e and Mor3Nich3 all my life so I'm really clueless about this.

Also, is there a better way for me to track my earnings/hop clicks/number of clicks to the add to cart?

I'm just planning on posting a BANNER on my site since the niche is targeted.

+ rep to those willing to help.

Thank you!

Hi,

Just make a simple test and click on your affiliate link and go through all the sale process. Add to cart and when on Paypal page, you should see your affiliate name at the bottom of the payment page.

It should all be good.

You can also add a tracking ID on your hop link.

How will I know if the lead is has been registered? I am going around at the CB dashboard for an hour now but I can't figure it out

Originally Posted by djedje70

Hi,

Just make a simple test and click on your affiliate link and go through all the sale process. Add to cart and when on Paypal page, you should see your affiliate name at the bottom of the payment page.

It should all be good.

You can also add a tracking ID on your hop link.

Yeah you made the hoplink correctly. The reason the link takes you to the product sales page is that's where you want the visitor to land. All that clickbank does is process the payment and track the affiliate, the product vendor is the one actually making the salespage. In other words you aren't promoting clickbank, you're promoting the vendors product.

When you click on that link it takes you through clickbank which sets a cookie on the visitors pc and then takes you on to the product page. The hop is a type of redirect so it's pretty much instantaneous, but it's happening and that's how your stats are being tracked.

To find your stats... Login to clickbank, then click on the "Reporting" Tab. That brings up a sublist, click on the "Analytics". That takes you to the main stats page.

To make sure that you're hoplink is correct, follow the steps djedje70 gave and see if your affid is at the bottom of the order form. Then you can go to the stats page I just explained about and you should see hopcounts for the visits you made, and orderform impressions for when you checked the orderform. Remember though the stats are not updated in realtime. There will be a delay in reporting anywhere from a couple hours to on occasion a full day.

Just spend some time checking each tab and subtab on the clickbank home page and you should be able to sort out where everything can be found. There's a lot there but once you get used to it, it does kind of make sense.

Another thing you can do is use the CB hoplink encoding tool to cloak your hoplinks.
https://www.clickbank.com/hoplink_encoding.htm
The standard affid.vendorid.hop format makes it pretty easy for people to bypass your link if they want. Using the encoding tool means they at least have to use your link once to even find the vendors sales page. By then your cookie is set and most people will just leave it that way if they decide to buy.

Now... regarding this part about how the vendor is dealing with your visitors.

Originally Posted by peter73

But here is my real question, the product site that I am trying to promote has "3 sections" on his website.

Meaning that my redirected affiliate link goes to his main page where he asks where the potential customer wishes to go. Now, here is the part that confuses me, when I click any of the 3 products he is selling, when I arrive at the page, my "?hop=MYAccountName" disappears! it will only show his ordinary website.

That's a VERY a valid concern, (especially in the way you describe what's happening), but probably not really a problem. You will need to test it though just to be sure.

Here's a reply I gave in another thread (Paranoid about ClickBank Product) awhile back. I've highlighted the part that explains how to check everything is being done right. Follow those steps for each of the 3 product offers to make sure you are still being credited as the affiliate.

Originally Posted by GreyWolf

Originally Posted by Deevo

Is it possible for product owners to divert the hop link somehow, therefore avoiding paying any commissions on sales??

yeah it's possible but most vendors don't do that.

Worst case is when someone clicks the buy now button on the sales page it could stuff a cookie that would overwrite yours and then the vendor would never have to pay commissions. Of course that's a very extreme example and if CB caught them (which it would) they'd have their product and account banned. An even better reason why they wouldn't do that though is if affiliates don't see any sales they won't bother to keep promoting. Vendors need affiliates, so it would be extremely rare to see anything like that if ever at all.

The vendor might also do things like have an optin form in which people will join the optin list instead of ordering right away and then the vendor will try to make another sale by email. It's possible that some vendors might include their own hoplink in a newsletter sent to their list, but that's usually not malicious and only done by inexperienced vendors that don't realize the consequences to the affiliates. Most vendors will only include a link back to their sales page or direct link to the payment page which won't overwrite the affiliates cookie. The reason for this again is because vendors need affiliates.

The vendor will make more money by letting affiliates make sales and pay them a commission, it's not in their interest to cut the affiliate out because then they'll lose their sales force. Most of the time if a vendor is building a list or doing second chance offers or anything else like that it's good for the affiliate because it means there's a better chance of making a sale, but the vendor needs to do it in such a way as to leave the affiliates cookie intact.

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The way to make sure none of that is happening is to follow your hoplink all the way to the sales page. Click on your hoplink and it takes you to the sales page, click on the order button and it takes you to the order page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and make sure your id is showing as the affiliate. If there's an optin form on the sales page then fill it out, (use a throwaway email addy if you want), then check for the follow up emails and follow the instructions, when it gives you the opportunity then follow the link to the order page, check again to be sure your affiliate id shows at the bottom of the order page.
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Once you've done that test and see your affiliate id on the order page then you know if the vendor is doing everything right. Most likely that's what you'll always find.

Another thing to check after you followed the link to the order form is check your stats (you might need to wait a few hours or even a day for it to register), since you went there you should see an order form impression in your stats. If not then it's a problem with cb, not with the vendor. Most likely though everything will track fine. (When you did that test, how long did you wait before you checked for that? There's usually a delay before things show in the CB stats.).

I suspect your problem has more to do with how qualified your traffic is. You may be getting enough interest for them to click the hoplink, but once they get to the sales page they might not be targeted enough to decide to order. Or it could just be a crappy salespage that doesn't convert. In the first case you'll need to target your traffic better, for the second case you'll have to figure out how to presell the offer yourself first or just move on to a better converting product.

Sometimes vendors will do things like you describe in an effort to increase conversions, but if done wrong it can overwrite the affiliates cookie. More often than not (I like to think) the vendor isn't doing it maliciously, but rather just doesn't realize the effect of what they're doing.

If you find a situation like that you just have to make a judgement call about how good a converting product you think it might be and then either contact the vendor to see if he'll correct the problem, or just search for a different product from another vendor.

Hope that helps and good luck.