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:

  • Get a paypal account in place now in case you need it

  • Create your alternate order pages with the Paypal links and keep them ready "just in case"

  • In the event something does happen, keep good communication going with your affiliates. They will appreciate it and will likely reward you with more loyal sales in the future for you

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.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More E-Commerce Information:

Related Articles

How to Write a Landing Page
Is there a difference between writing a landing page and any other web site page? Yes and no. But mainly, yes.
Prompt Delivery Rules - Internet Product Sales
The Internet is the fastest growing source of mail order sales. The explosive growth in the goods and services sold online has in the past taken many online sellers by surprise: demand has outpaced supply, depleting inventories and disappointing customers.
Ecommerce Marketing Plan
Concept of ServiceThe current work deals with marketing offer of e-commerce service. It highlights the essential steps of marketing of a brand-new firm offering services of website construction, design, programming, development, and promotion.
Why Arent People Buying From Your Ecommerce Website?
Your stock is tempting, your prices right - your ecommerce website is good to go, but somehow the customers just aren't buying. So where are you going wrong?Make sure people can find your ecommerce website.
Gooooooooooogle It!
..
Doing Business Online - Private B2B Exchanges
Business processes are the building blocks of an enterprise. If one of these processes fails to live up to its expectation, business starts to flounder.
Online Credit Card Processing - How to Accept Credit Cards - Ecommerce 101
Back in 1998 (through 2000 or so), I worked for a small company (called PaymentNet / then Signio) that handled online transactions. Verisign later purchased this company, and the product team I led integrated the "client" - the portion that took the credit card information and sent it to our servers for processing.
Chinas IT Industry to Maintain Fast Growth
China's IT industry is expected to see a sales revenue of 2.68 trillion yuan (US$322.
Intranet Project Names - Some Ideas
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet."In this famous quote from Act II of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and the fact he is a Montague and she a Capulet (warring families) means nothing to their love.
Saving Money On Your E-commerce Site
After building and transferring many e-commerce sites it still amazes me that owners of e-commerce businesses are still wasting money in three basic ways. For fear of stating the obvious, saving money is the same as making money $100 saved is $100 added to your profit margin.
Online Shopping: Legal Challenges for Taxing Authorities
E-commerce offers customers the chance to eliminate many stages in the sales/distribution chain. The mark-ups that occur between manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and consumers can add the cost of goods purchased by consumers.
Working With Drop Shippers
Drop Shippers, the manufacturers or distributors who are willing to ship their products to your customers, bring a powerful benefit to ecommerce. Online businesses that engage in the wholesale-retail trade can cut down on all the hassles of shipping their products by simply establishing business relationships with drop shippers, and using them as part of their business model.
eCommerce Software Solutions
All of the long, grueling nights and an unknown number of working weekends spent converting your dream into reality finally paid off-in a big way! Affiliates are signing up every single day and the clicks have really turned into cash. Your success is not limited to a lonely website but several and all of them are helping you move very diverse product lines.
Select a Niche Market for Ecommerce
Choosing a carefully pinpointed niche market should be one of the first steps that an internet business owner has to take. A very common way of describing a niche market is 'a targeted group of individuals with very specific and similar needs or interests.
Ecommerce Solution for the Big and Small Business
First off, you need to know what an ecommerce solution is. An ecommerce solution can be defined in many ways.
Start doing online business using B2B Portals in Six Steps
I registered with a B2B site but what's next?This is a question many first time users of B2B marketplaces ask themselves. A few expect that the registration itself will bring them a number of new customers.
7 Questions to Ask A Potential Internet Merchant Account Provider
Recently I went looking for an online merchant account, with disastrous results. I made the mistake of taking information at face value and relying on the ecommerce merchant account provider's good reputation in other areas.
Do You Need A Merchant Account?
Deciding when to get your own merchant account for internet sales can be a confusing and expensive venture. If you have a small to medium sized business and only sell a small amount of products then having your own merchant account may not be the answer for you.
Beginner Ecommerce Mistakes
This is a short article because in the constraints of time and space preclude me from writing a 10 page article. Recently i built a ecommerce web site titled Cynscorion Products that sells knifes.
Accepting Credit Cards For Your Online Business
Did you know that one of the best ways to increase sales for any online or offline business is to offer your customers the convenience of paying by credit card? As a merchant, you have several options available when it comes to becoming part of the credit card acceptance and processing chain. Here's a quick guide to get you thinking.