Let's face the facts!
Almost everyone online today is looking to make or
save a buck any way they can. In the past, most of the people who clicked on
your affiliate links used to purchase without a second thought... but, as times
get tougher online, it seems a growing number won't!
As money gets
tighter and product prices rise, people who know how to manipulate the system
will sometimes replace your affiliate ID with theirs and "hijack" your
commissions.
Here's an example:
Let's say your affiliate link is
www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well.
Say the highjacker uses the affiliate
ID of captain-hook. What he would do is replace your ID with his, and purchase
from the URL www.ebookaboutcats.com/?captain-hook.
The bottom line: the
hijacker puts your money in his pocket.
In other cases, they can't stand
the thought of you "making money off them" so they bypass you by simply chopping
off the end of your affiliate link that contains your ID.
Instead of
purchaseing from www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well, the bypasser will simply
"chop off" the affiliate ID at the end and simply purchase from the plain URL
www.ebookaboutcats.com --without your affiliate ID attached!
Either way,
you get cheated out of your rightful commission.
To help you fight these
affiliate link hijackers I offer a couple of my best (proven and battle tested)
tips, which will at least confuse these "hijackers" and, in many cases, often
defeat and disarm them completely.
Side Note: If someone really, really
wants to steal your affiliate commission, they will find a way; however, most
hijackers are just opportunists who will only act if they see an easy buck.
The first and cheapest way to hide your affiliate links is using a
javascript redirect page. This is where you hide your affiliate link in a page
on your site using a simple javascript that redirects people to your affiliate
link.
It works great not to expose your "naked" affiliate link in your
actual email messages and ezine ads, but, once people get redirected to the true
affiliate link, many affiliate programs expose the affiliate link along with
your ID in the browser address bar.
Here's an example of a redirect
script in action. Click => http://www.ebookfire.com/esejs.html
Notice
how the link takes you to a page where you can see my affiliate ID, ebookfire,
in your web browser's address bar.
Like it or not, someone can replace
my ID with theirs and "hijack" the commission... but at least the redirect
script keeps them from immediately seeing my "naked" affiliate link
(http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets) when I publish it in my
newsletter, email, or on my website.
You can get free redirect scripts
just about anywhere you find free javascripts. Here is the script I use
http://www.ebookfire.com/jrs.shtml.
A better way to hide your affiliate
links is using a zero-frame or "invisible" frame that masks the affiliate link
by making it appear you are sending people to a page on your website. In
reality, you are actually sending them to your affiliate link.
This is
the technique used by those "sub-domain" redirect services that provide you with
urls like http://ese.ebookfire.net.
While giving someone a link like
that is much better than using a "naked" affiliate link such as
http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets, there is a problem. As soon as
someone does a "view >> source" in their web browser they'll see your
naked affiliate link plain as day... which instantly blows your cover!
Currently the best way to protect your affiliate commissions from
ruthless hijackers is to use a combination of a zero- frame page along with URL
encryption. This involves sending someone to URL that looks like a page on your
site, but actually pulls in your affiliate link like those "sub- domain"
services. However, there's one critical difference...
If someone does a
"view >> source" in their browser, you have added protection in that all
they will see is a jumble of computer code instead of your naked affiliate link.
Check out this example of a zero-frame with URL encryption in action.
Click => http://www.ebookfire.com/ese.html
Side Note: Beware of
cloaking scripts that use javascript to mask your affiliate link because they
could malfunction in some web browsers.
Here's the bottom line: if you
are going to sell through other people's affiliate programs, never send a
"naked" affiliate link... you're just asking for people to hijack or bypass you
if you do.
If you want to get paid more often through your affiliate
links, make sure it's not obvious you're referring people to an affiliate link.
If they can't easily see how to hijack or bypass your link, a lot more people
who would have taken the money out of your pocket will just go ahead and
purchase through your link - which is, after all, the whole point! :-)
