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I am good in marketing - according to the feedback from my readers and clients, my articles helped very many people by using products which I recommended like excellent ones and made sure that people can buy them with the help of Amazon.com links.

I hope that Amazon.com is very proud of my work, but I am not at all. Somehow I feel like idiot. Or at least like donkey. Why? Inspite of very positive feedback, majority of the sales have not been tracked at all...so Amazon.com is only one which earnes money, my readers are getting better, and where am I ? Up till now , after 1 year of using Amazon.com affiliate boxes in my hubs, I earned around 20 US$...this money I cannot get from Amazon, up till the moment I earn 100$. How promissing. This would be great if I could live for next 1000 years without any expenses...

Well, there is a cunning trick in affiliate programms, which nowadays does not allow marketers to get majority of money they earned on so hard way.

Let me explain you what is all about....I know where is the catch.

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Through affiliate program you can earn money by recommending the visitors of your Hubs of website to purchase the products of other website - which is Amazon.com. But you don’t have to deal with any business issues such as payment collections, product deliveries, non-payments, frauds etc. All you have to do is place on your Hub box with Amazon.com links, that leads visitors to the Amazon.com which will take care of the remaining sales process. For each purchase made by the traffic sent from your Hub, you receive a commission. Your visitors (1) get to your Hub (2). From there, they are taken to Amazon.com (3), there will probably make the purchase (4), and in case that purchase is made, Amazon.com give you a comision for it (5).

This is beautiful idea. I love it. But, unfortunately this is only theory. In material reality, things do not work as promised.Let me show why.

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A LITTLE BIT OF KNOWLEDGE HOW AFFILIATE PROGRAMS SHOULD WORK

Main principle of affiliate programs to be successful is tracking code of your affiliate program. When your reader clicks on Amazon.com links on your Hubs (or any other website you have, there is no difference) , your tracking code should stay registered on his/her computer with the help of cookies.

Cookies are little files which store information about

• website your readers visit ,
• your precious affiliate code and
• about products they were interested in.

The beauty of cookies is that they are able to store such info for any period between 1 day or 1 year, depending on time they are programmed... Companies who give you affiliate code, usually let you know for how long they programmed their cookies, what is important because if visitor decides to buy the product later on, without visiting your Hub or website any more, cookies still store your affiliate/referral code, so this should assure that you get your commission.

But reality is not so promising, as it seems to be....cookies are naughty and wicked little creatures which obviously have ability to disappear when WE NEED THEM THE MOST:

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WHERE AND WHEN COOKIES DISAPPEAR

1. Today 95% of Internet users set up security levels on their computers very high, so cookies just do not stay cached on their PCs.
Clicks of their visit do stay tracked, but with very high security level on your reader´s PC , your tracking code and your sales just do not get registered . You actually do earn nothing, whenever somebody has too high security level set up, what happens in 95% of cases. Companies, like Amazon.com who provided you with tracking code are very well informed about that fact.

2. Even if people use moderate security level, majority of them regularly clean their computers from viruses and cookies, so if they did not buy product you referred them immediately (you allegedly should not be worried about it, because cookies should stay in their computer), when they clean PC, they clean your tracking code as well, so when they next time visit f.E. Amazon.com, without using your link and buy product you referred to them, your cookies do not exist any more, so your all effort was for nothing. So cookies are in the most cases just beautiful story which does not work in reality.

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Some of you will say: But, I still do earn some money, some sales are recorded.

That is true. We do earn money whenever somebody does not set up security level too high for our sales to be recorded. When is level of security moderate, our tracking code does its job. If it is very high, forget about your money. Unfortunately for us, 95% of people are wise enough to protect themselves from PC viruses, at the same time they protect us from earning our money.

In this case I believe that the owners of HubPages also can forget about their part of money, so trick is much more dangerous then it looks like.

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I discovered this trick of fraud several months ago, when I set up few affiliate programs on my own website. None of the sales which my clients, with whom I was in e-mail contact was recorded.

I found out (from Clickbank where I applied for selling Native Remedies) why the sales are not recorded ...Of course they explained that only 5% of visitors set up very high level of security, so I should not worry about that - (what is lie, the truth is that today 95% of people do that)- and they recommended me that I should focus on more intensive marketing (!) and not on this few non-recorded sales.

My boyfriend and me checked that statement, made experiments, and realized that tracking number of affiliator is visible - only when we set security level as "moderate". When is high, referral codes and numbers, just do not exist, what is certainly not problem of costumers.So I deleted that affiliate programs from all my sites.

The same case is with Amazon.com, every now and on I get some happy e-mail from my readers, who ask me various questions about their health in connection of using product which they bought after I referred them through my Hubs. They do believe that they have right to ask, because they think I am earning money from these sales, but usually purchase is not recorded....so I had to start to charge for such info...everyone who asks. Sorry.

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If your sales with Amazon.com are low, from this Hub you can see, that you are not so bad in marketing....something else is rotten.

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I would recommend Hubbers (who can) who are not satisfied with Amazon.com to use E-Bay instead, because E-Bay recently became PCP program (pay-per-click) and clicks do get recorded.... .

I did not fully test click programms yet , so I cannot swear if really all clicks are actually recorded. I know if somebody just quickly clicks to another website and changes mind before is completely open, such click does not get recorded, but this should not discourage anyone of using such programs (Google, E-Bay).

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I live in the part of the world, where we cannot use E-Bay, because is connected with PayPal system...which is not available ewerywhere...so Hubbers like me (Europe, Croatia, South Africa, Phillipini, etc, etc....) can basicaly rely on Google only (we are very happy about that fact, you can imagine)... so you will still see Amazon.com on my sites, at least for some time, up till I do not find solution which will not make me so stupid in my own eyes. But as soon as I find it, I will stop using it.

This is, of course, my personal experience, I would be glad that everybody shares it´s own.

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