What You Need To Know About
Clickbank Cookies And Follow Up Marketing

There is a myth circulating through the clickbank community that certain affiliates may not be getting proper credit for their sales or that clickbank vendors might even be intentionally “stealing” their commissions” by overwriting their cookies in their follow up newsletters and emails.

Although I was shocked when I first heard this, I would not be surprised if there are a few unethical product owners out there, trying to do everything in their power to bypass paying commissions to their affiliates.

Ultimately, this will be their demise.

When it comes to the Burn The Fat affiliate program, I can assure you, everything we do is designed to improve follow up, increase conversions and earn you more commissions, not less!

One reason that some affiliates think they're losing commissions is when a clickbank vendor uses pop ups (or pop overs, drop downs, fly ins, etc).

Burn The Fat.com collects email addresses using a pop over. Once someone opts-in, they begin receiving a 12 part autoresponder series as well as a once a week “live” newsletter. Unfortunately, some affiliates think that these follow up messages somehow “erase” their clickbank cookies so they don’t get credit.

Not only is this incorrect, quite the opposite is true: Our Burn The Fat follow up system helps to increase your sales dramatically and that is part of the reason why Burn The Fat has so many happy affiliates and has been the #1 clickbank fitness product since May of 2003.

Naturally, every affiliate wants to be assured that they are getting proper credit for the sales that they referred. I understand this completely. I am not just a vendor, I am also an affiliate of many other clickbank products, so I can relate to affiliate concerns from being in your shoes.

How The Clickbank system of cookies and hoplinks works to track your sales

If you’re not familiar with cookies (clickbank tracking cookies, not the kind you eat!), or if you don’t understand how clickbank cookies work to keep track of your sales, then you’ll want to read this very carefully.

A cookie is simply a little text file that remembers where a visitor came from. When you send a visitor through your correctly coded clickbank hoplink to Burn The Fat.com, the moment they land on the webpage, a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s machine.

This is how clickbank tracks your commissions. It’s also the same type of technology that is used by companies like Amazon.com when you land on their site and it says, “Hi Tom, welcome back!” The site can even suggests books you might like based on your past purchases. How is the Amazon website so “smart” that it knows who you are??? Cookies.

Just like Amazon “remembers you” when you come back to their site (as long as the Amazon cookie is still on your machine), burnthefat.com remembers the people you send to burn the fat.com when they come back, as long as the cookie with your clickbank affiliate name is still on their machine.

Here’s an important fact that every affiliate should know:

Clickbanks cookies last for 60 days.

This means that if a visitor referred through your hoplink does not purchase the ebook on their first visit, but they come back within 60 days and purchase at that time.

YOU WILL STILL GET COMMISSION FOR THE SALE!

Now, it’s true that there are ways a cookie can be erased, such as when a user intentionally clears the cookies from their hard drive or when their cookies are not turned on at all (there are scripts affiliates can use to identify when cookies are off, by the way – visit forums like the clickbank success forum or the internet marketing warriors forum and ask around if you are interested).

Your cookie can also be overwritten if the prospective buyer clicks through another affiliate’s hoplink (that’s clickbank’s policy – last click-through gets credit for the sale – and it’s a fair policy).

However, our Burn The Fat follow up reports and newsletters do not use hoplinks (which could overwrite your cookie), we only use direct links. That’s why our Burn The Fat follow up system doesn’t take away sales, it helps you make more sales!

“Follow up, Follow up, Follow up, Until they buy, Or Die”

- Tom Hopkins, Internationally renowned sales trainer

No matter how good a sales webpage is, the vast majority of visitors do NOT purchase on the first visit. People are skeptical these days - and not without good reason - many people have been burned or disappointed in the past on Internet purchases. So they don’t trust us… yet… and they put off buying… and they wait.

Fortunately, there is a way to win trust and gain future sales, and that is by collecting email addresses, then building relationships and trust with subscribers by following up and publishing newsletters.

Burn The Fat.com has a tested, proven follow up system... and it's getting better

Marketing expert Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the Guerilla Marketing series of books, says that it takes an average of 6 follow up messages before a prospect trusts you enough to purchase from you.

As an affiliate, it makes sense for you to associate with product vendors who know this and who have an excellent, tested and proven follow up system. By having a good follow up system in place, we are increasing the odds that the visitors you send to our website will purchase within the 60 day cookie window if they don’t purchase on their first visit.

After many months of testing and experimentation, we have developed a series of follow up autoresponders in a 12 part mini course, sent every other day over a period of about three weeks, which is both informational and promotional in nature. We are STILL constantly tweaking and updating this follow up system based on unsubscribe rates and sales statistics.

In addition, we publish a “live” once a week newsletter, and have done so for years without a miss!

I cannot make any guarantees or promises about your earnings, but I can say that as a result of our excellent sales page conversions combined with our diligent follow up, we have more affiliates earning four figure bi-weekly clickbank checks – not once, but every pay period – than ever before. There are even a few “super affiliates” who have hit five figures in monthly sales.

Obviously, there is great potential for you to succeed as a Burn The Fat affiliate due to good sales copy, good conversions and good follow up. The results that other affiliates are achieving is proof. Not only is Burn The Fat a quality product that changes lives, so you can feel confident about recommending it, it’s a best seller and there is every indication that Burn The Fat will remain a perennial best seller for a long time to come.

Check the clickbank marketplace and you’ll see that nearly 70% of burn the fat sales come through affiliates. Burn The Fat is an affiliate and word of mouth driven product and we could not have achieved the internet success and worldwide reach (134 countries and counting), had it not been for all of our affiliates and for the clickbank system.

My goal is to do everything I can to help you make more commissions, not to take commissions away. If there are a few bad apples in the clickbank barrel, don’t let them spoil the bunch. Although no affiliate tracking system is 100% perfect and no doubt, some sales are not properly tracked on rare occasion, I have complete faith in the clickbank system of hoplinks and cookies and I believe you can too.

- Tom Venuto, Author & Affiliate Manager,
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

Disclaimer: Burn the fat.com makes no promises, assurances or guarantees about earnings, commissions, conversions or income potential. Results of other affiliates are provided for informational purposes only and are no guarantee that you will do as well. Read the affiliate agreement and earnings disclaimer for more information:
http://burnthefat.com/affiliate_area/affiliate_agreement.html

Copyright 2006, fitness renaissance, LLC and Tom Venuto. Do Not Copy! Absolutely no reproduction of this article is permitted.