Clickbank - Someone Stealing Commissions?

Most bloggers today and internet marketers (Affiliate Marketers) use Clickbank, Commission Junction, and a host of other intermediary service providers to enable the marketers and bloggers to advertise a product and get paid. The way it works is a blogger writes an article or creates a page on his or her website, then either puts an ad on the site, or a link within the body of the post advertising the product. If that ad or link gets clicked on, then the blogger will get paid a commission if there is a sale.

I have used both Clickbank and Commission Junction. The interesting thing is that while I get clicks, I've never once gotten a sale. I never paid much attention to it since neither of those sites were very high on my list of marketing arms.

But recently, I began to wonder. 

First, I read an article somewhere about some guys who were literally stealing the commissions. It's way over my head, very "black hat" stuff, but apparently, it is doable. Not sure how, but it is being done. Second, I began to look at the stats and realized that there was a statistical probability that this was happening to me. Third, I discovered, inadvertently, that there were entities/producers of products, mostly digital ebooks, who were somehow gaming the system. You'd make a sale, but it never was registered as a sale. Somehow they are able to keep the sale off the Clickbank radar.

Maybe it's time to start rethinking the system. For me, I think I'll be pulling any Clickbank ads I have remaining. I'm way to busy to try and track it and find out who's doing what. Isn't worth it to me, frankly. But, I'll be looking closer at all of them I use, as well.

The best one so far is Google's Adsense, with a close runner up being Amazon. They're pretty straightup and I've not heard of anyone gaming the system. Probably being done. I just haven't heard of it, and have not experienced any problems.

I'm hoping that Clickbank and the others who have such a power position in the internet marketing arena will one day work closer to the Google and Amazon model. Otherwise, I'm convinced they're going to keep on losing advertisers like myself, which is no big loss in just myself, but multiply those like me by 100,000 and you have significant numbers leaving the ship.

North Carolina SB 31 bill seeks to turn healers into felons

Recently, an article came to my attention done by one of my favorite web sites, Natural News. The article deals with the legislation being passed in North Carolina and creates criminal penalties and the prohibition of those who believe in natural healing as opposed to Big Pharma's "medicine only" approach. It's a heavy-handed piece of legislation. Anyway, this excellent article needs to be distributed and read, because it will (or already has) come to your state, eventually. 
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North Carolina SB 31 bill seeks to turn healers into felons; but the health freedom backlash has already begun

Learn more: 

Today, in North Carolina, if you claim to be "practicing medicine" (i.e. treating any health condition whatsoever) using any holistic modality (including nutrition), you are instantly a criminal felon. But if you don't claim to be treating anything, then there's no reason for people to visit you for health treatments then, is there?

A warning to those who would seek to crush the freedoms of the American people

I have a warning for the legislators of North Carolina and every other state that is persecuting natural healers, herbalists and homeopaths: What you are seeing right now in terms of the public backlash is just the beginning of the info war that will ultimately see the reestablishment of our health freedoms and the collapse of the pharma poisoning of our nation.

We, the health freedom movement, proclaim that no state, no government and no entity has any authority whatsoever to criminalize or imprison those who practice holistic healing modalities, and that any attempt to engage in a witch-hunt criminalization of those who practice natural medicine will result in a popular revolt against your false authority and your broken, bankrupt systems of chemical-based medicine.

Learn more: NATURAL NEWS - North Carolina Health Freedom