| |
| |
|
Ecommerce Information |
|
|
|
The Clickbank Crash of 2003: Lessons Learned
I had a rude awakening recently. I checked the days worth of sales from one of my sites and there were none. This had never happened before and of course I was anxious to find out what was wrong. I quickly found out that the credit card processor Clickbank was under a hacker attack. Their service was effectively paralyzed by computers around the world flooding Clickbanks computers with bogus requests for information. They weren't the only web site being attacked. Similar attacks have happened against Yahoo and CNN in the past. This is the first one that effected me directly... right in the wallet. Time For Emergency Action Nobody knew how long Clickbank would be down. I wasn't going to wait around to find out! I had to take emergency measures to cope with it. I was not only losing sales that couldn't be placed, I was also losing money on online advertising. Pay per click accounts were sending people to my site which they couldn't order from. The first thing I did was pause my pay per click accounts until I got things under control. This saved me from wasting money on useless advertising. Alternate Payment Choice I needed another credit card processor to handle my sales and quick! I was lucky that I already had a Paypal account in place. I quickly created Paypal payment links so that customers could pay for my products. It was a matter of creating the links correctly and changing the webpages to handle the paypal transactions. I don't normally use Paypal because Clickbank's affiliate program is exceptional. In this case, I did not have much choice and it was easy for me to start accepting money again. Once Paypal was up and running, I reactivated my pay per click campaigns. I was happily rewarded within the hour with a sale... My first in a day. Thankfully Clickbank was back on its feet after about 3 days or so. I then switched things back to normal. Handling My Affiliates By using Paypal instead of Clickbank, I was denying my affiliates commissions on traffic they had sent me during this incident. I wanted to make it up to them as I didn't think it was fair to them. I did this by averaging out how much commission they had earned in the 30 days prior to the incident. I divided that total amount by 30 to come up with an average amount per day they had earned. I then gave them 3 days worth of this commission with an explaination of what happened. Ironically, I sent them their commissions through Paypal so they got them instantly. I received excellent feedback from appreciative affiliates. Some of them stated that my commissions were the only money they made during the time that Clickbank was down. How You Can Prepare Ahead Of Time There is no guarantee that Clickbank or any other payment processor won't be attacked by hackers again. It is extremely difficult to defend against. It would be smart getting a backup plan in place just in case. Here's a good back up plan:
I am sure a lot of lessons were learned during this time. I still love Clickbank, but now I have the experience of having a backup plan I can quickly put into place should anything like this happen again. You may want to prepare ahead of time also. About The Author Article by Tim Kerber from the Small Business Web Site. Learn proven secrets to make your web site a profitable success. Tips, tutorials, videos, interviews and more. Click here now -- http://www.SmallBusinessWebSite.com
MORE RESOURCES:
Ecommerce - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How e-business and e-Marketing are Changing Internet now days became a real marketplace and many many companies using Internet as a online Selling and Customer Care or Support Tool for their Products and Services.Companies using e-Marketing, Search Engines Optimizations, e-mail eMarketing, Opt-In emailing Lists, Web Sites, Online Website Promotions, Backlinks Increasing, Link Building, Online Stores, Data Feeds, RSS Feeds, RSS Submissions, Business to Business (b2b) Exchange, Sales Force Automation Solution Software's, Online Live Customer Care or Live Support etc. Selling Online for Newbies If you are interested in selling online, it is quite easy to get started. First of all you must have a product or service to sell. The Five Steps of E-Commerce You set up a retail business, you advertise in your local newspaper, you get customers coming into your store, and you receive payment at the cash register. Create an online store, and. Tell Site Visitors What To Do Your site visitors make all the choices when it comes to browsing the Web.No other medium gives users, readers or customers such control over their own experience. Is Your Business Afraid of the Internet? My Business is Afraid of the InternetBill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, once said that there would soon be two types of businesses, those online, and those out of business. Those words still ring true today, and many small businesses are missing a huge boat by not getting online. 10 Reasons To Survey Your Visitors, Subscribers And Customers 1. To find out what type of content visitors want to see on your web site. Chinas Online Shopping May Be Booming In The Next Few Years Data from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) shows that till June 2004 Chinese online user has reached 87 million, of which, 7.3% has experience of online shopping. How to Boost Conversion Rates, While Lowering Merchant Account Fees! Using an Address Verification System (AVS) when processing your online credit card transactions can help to reduce the number of fraudulent transactions you receive. However, most online merchants don't know that using AVS can also reduce your number of legitimate orders. Merchant Accounts: What They Can Do For You Congratulations! You created an impulse in a customer to buy your product. One small catch? without some way to take their credit card number, your sale is as good as gone. Using Drop Shipping for E-commerce Thanks to the ubiquity of the internet, online virtual businesses have become very popular business opportunities. Online retail stores are gradually playing a more important role in our lives than the traditional 'brick-and-mortar' retail shops. Google Catalogs - Old Gashioned Mail Order Meets High Tech Search In addition to Google's Froogle shopping service (still in beta), which features a searchable database of online merchants, Google is also beta-testing their Google Catalog service. Google Catalogs provides a searchable central repository of hundreds of mail-order catalogs. Developing a Winning e-Commerce Strategy One bright spot on the economic horizons around the world seems to be continued consumer spending and e-commerce is clearly a part of this, with sales estimated to be in excess of $9.9 billion in the next three months according to ACNielsen. The Webmasters Assistant There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse website traffic allowing them to monitor the number of visitors, see what pages have been accessed and even the length of time each visitors spends accessing the website.However, despite the considerable data available what is missing is anything to tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Leveraging Open Source Technology Open Source applications can bring unique value to business owners. Since the base application development costs of open source applications is free, small and medium business owners are able to leverage previously unobtainable technolgies against their sales objectives, operational costs and customer satisfaction levels. Is ClickBanks Popularity Drawing To An End? ClickBank is the Internet's most popular payment processor for online payments but with many rivals appearing on the scene is ClickBank's popularity drawing to an end?ClickBank allows website owners to accept credit and debit card payments online and then deliver the products to their customers instantly. Since August 2005, ClickBank has integrated with PayPal so that people who either do not have a credit or debit card or choose not to use their cards online, can now pay using funds from their PayPal account instead. When Do You Ask For A Refund? Have you ever asked to have your money refunded after buying something online? Do you do this often? What are the reasons you've asked for refunds? Savvy marketers will try to find out why without making you feel you should not have asked. This would be valuable information to them. Is It Easy to Build An E-commerce Web Site? --Online Commerce--E-Commerce website is all about selling products and services over the Internet. Amateurs may think that it is easy to build your own e-commerce system and our advice to you is to stay away from these amateurs. Grow Your Business Using B2B Emarketplace - Part II Selecting the right emarketplaceAlthough, IT spending has been staying flat for the last several years, corporate spending in e-business is gaining significant ground and at present surpasses 20 percent of overall IT budget.This means, more and more businesses are undertaking ecommerce initiatives, and as a result increasing sales, streamlining business processes and dramatically boosting productivity. Is Your Website Credit Card Friendly? In my last column I discussed the process of credit card enabling your brick-and-mortar business. I pointed out that research has shown that accepting credit cards can help increase revenue and enhance cash flow. The Top 10 E-Commerce Ways to Follow up with Clients - Part 2 Did you know that 80% of all sales are made after the 5th contact? The biggest mistake we make is not following up with our clients regularly. We not only lose the chance to offer other services and products, we lose the chance for satisfied clients' referrals.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
