ClickBank has released the latest issue of ‘ClickBank Communications’. The ‘Expert Article’ feature is titled “Protecting your Hoplinks”. [ClickBank Newsletter]


ClickBank has released the latest issue of ‘ClickBank Communications’.

ClickBank Communications

News of Note

ClickBank Blog Upgrades

ClickBank recently added the capability for clients to subscribe to the ClickBank Blog from their email address. Now you can get an email every time we add a post. Also, we’ve made it easier to subscribe to our RSS feed. Check out a portion of a post below about our recent Advisory Board meeting in London.

Live and In Person by Bob Dunlap, Director of Marketing

On Friday, June 6th, ClickBank management met with a small group of clients in London for our second European Advisory Board. We invited a diverse group of product publishers and affiliates to spend the day with us and provide their thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of subjects important to the entire ClickBank community. During the meeting we had in-depth discussions on our product roadmap – what new and improved capabilities we plan to build in the coming months and years, how to better serve our current clients, and how to attract and recruit more product publishers and affiliates to the ClickBank community. Read more…

ClickBank Client Survey

The second annual ClickBank Client Survey is launching in the next few weeks. We will randomly select current publishers and affiliates to participate. Please watch your inbox for an invitation. If you receive an email, please take the time to fill out the survey. Your feedback allows us to focus on the areas most important to you.

New York State Online Sales Tax Law

As we announced in our June 2 news entry New York state has implemented a new law that requires online retailers with affiliates located in New York state to collect sales tax from New York residents. Effective 2008-06-01 we began collecting sales tax on all sales made to residents of the state of New York. Everything is

Expert Article

Protecting Your Hoplinks

by Greg Lems, Director of Application Development, ClickBank

Remember the good old days, when you could put a personal check in an envelope and leave it in your mailbox with the little red flag up? Nowadays the media is full of reports about identity theft rings, some of which collect bank account information by harvesting checks from mailboxes. Although incidents of this nature have increased in recent years, the overall chances of it happening are actually still quite low. Nevertheless, I won’t leave an outgoing check in my mailbox, because it can’t hurt to be extra safe.

In a somewhat similar manner, it is important for ClickBank publishers and affiliates to protect their Hoplink information. Hoplinks are the key to the ClickBank Marketplace. Affiliates create them to promote publisher products, and publishers rely on them to drive traffic their way.

ClickBank has put a tremendous amount of effort into the reliability and security of its Hoplink system. It is closely monitored and designed to provide every protection possible, so that affiliates get proper credit for their sales. At its heart, however, the Hoplink system relies on URLs to work and as a result information can be exposed about the affiliate for the sale. Luckily there is a way to avoid such exposure.

“Hoplink theft” is a term used to describe the act of changing Hoplinks so that they credit a different affiliate. A hardworking affiliate may place Hoplinks across many sites on the Internet, but a person with their own ClickBank account and bad intentions could, with some manual steps and scheming, create an identical Hoplink to the hardworking affiliate, but with their own nickname substituted in. This typically happens in one of two places: when a Hoplink is placed in an ad by an affiliate, or at payment time when a publisher attempts a quick hop to a different affiliate just before payment. It isn’t a common problem, and when we encounter it we swiftly discipline the dishonest parties. There are steps, however, that can be taken to prevent it from happening in the first place.

To avoid the first form of Hoplink theft, we recommend cloaking your Hoplinks. This involves the creation of redirects that will take users to the intended destination without showing them the exact URL they are being sent to. This can be done either with a bit of HTML that surrounds the Hoplink, or with some server-side scripts for redirects. More information is available on this topic here: http://www.clickbank.com/affiliate_tools.html#Affiliate_Tools_2

Additionally, there are 3rd party products available to cloak Hoplinks. Although ClickBank does not specifically endorse any of these products, we encourage anyone seeking cloaking functionality to investigate what’s out there and available, as there are a number of different ways to perform this simple redirect.

To avoid the second form of Hoplink theft, we recommend that you examine the order flow of the products you are promoting to ensure that additional Hoplinks have not been added to the ordering process. The most straightforward way to do this is to click your own Hoplink, view the publisher’s pitch page and then click through to the ClickBank order form. At the bottom of the order form you’ll see an indicator that starts with “affiliate=.” If your Hoplink was constructed correctly, your affiliate nickname will appear there. It is a good practice to regularly check this flow to ensure you receive proper credit for sales.

Hoplink theft is not common. If you suspect it is happening, you can report it to abuse [AT] clickbank [DOT] com and our security team will investigate. By cloaking your Hoplink URL and paying attention to the order flow of products you promote, you can ensure protection of your hard-earned ClickBank commission. Just like when mailing a check, the likelihood of something undesirable happening is low, but it doesn’t hurt to be safe.

This article first appeared on the ClickBank Blog.

This article first appeared on the ClickBank Blog.

Tech Corner

Recurring Billing Report Changes

Clickbank just released an improved recurring billing report to better represent the current status of a failed rebill for an active transaction.

Now, transactions in the payment failure process have a status of “Authorization Failure” or “Validation Failure.”

Ultimately, this enhancement provides a more accurate view of a transaction’s status in our rebill process.

Tools & Tips

This month’s tip is for publishers. Check future issues for tips aimed at affiliates.

Listing a Product Title Reduces Refunds

by: Kylee Goodman, ClickBank Senior Customer Service Representative

Publishers have the option to list a product title from within the My Products section of their account. For Recurring Billing products, publishers can also list a short description.

The information entered is transferred to the order form and customer receipts, as well as ClickBank’s internal customer service system.

As you probably know, having a product title on the order form increases conversion. What you may not know, however, is that it also helps our customer service representatives serve your customers better.

ClickBank Customer Service Representatives use the product information as a tool to save sales during phone calls. The additional information of a product title and description (for recurring billing products) often results in preventing a confused customer from requesting an unnecessary refund.

For more information about adding a product title to your account, click here.

Feedback Loop

What do you think about the ClickBank Newsletter? What would you like to see covered in future issues?

Email general feedback or story ideas to: commfeedback [AT] clickbank [DOT] com.

About ClickBank

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*IMNewswatch would like to thank ClickBank for granting permission to reprint the latest ClickBank Newsletter.

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