Articles
Affiliate link hijacking and affiliate link bypassing
by Linda WelchThe Dirty Little Secret That Nobody Ever Talks About!
Affiliate link hijacking and affiliate link bypassing are the dirty little secrets of Internet marketing that no one ever talks about. * Hijacking is what happens when someone replaces your affiliate id with theirs in the affiliate link.
Let’s say your affiliate ID is live-well and the product site is www.ebookaboutcats.com. Then your affiliate link would be 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 buy from the URL www.ebookaboutcats.com/?captain-hook.
The bottom line: You don’t get your commission, and the hijacker puts your money in his pocket, in the form of a discount, by buying through his own affiliate link.
* Bypassing is what happens when someone sees an affiliate link and is either unfamiliar and uncomfortable with it, or just can’t stand the idea of your getting a commission (even though you’ve done the work to put the information in front of them).
So instead of buying from www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well, the bypasser will simply “chop off†the affiliate ID at the end and simply buy from the plain URL www.ebookaboutcats.com --without your affiliate ID attached! The bottom line is the same: Once again, you’ve been robbed of your affiliate commission. Unfortunately, as long as people can see an affiliate code in the link that you offer them, a certain number of them are destined to hijack it – or bypass it. And either way, you lose. To see a diagram what hijacking and bypassing look like Click Here!
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About Linda Welch 
538 connections, 6 recommendations, 1,211 honor points.Joined APSense since, September 22nd, 2007, From United States.
Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.
Comments
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Not Here
just want my account deletedThis is one reason I have moved more to programs where I deal with people first hand...I'm damn well sick of the cronies who hid behind their computer screens! Apr 21st 2008 18:35 |
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Jeff Greene
Online Marketing Specialist/ConsultantI recommend the practice of cloaking your links, these days it's tough enough to make a sale as it is... There are several very good cloaking programs that members throughout Apsense utilise, so you can at least have a look at few that your friends recommend! :) Apr 21st 2008 19:42 |
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Not Here
just want my account deletedAny of my real friends should know by now if they need anything at all I will help however I can. As far as cloakers go, I probably have at least three different ones I could be using already, but regardless as far as I am concerned I don't even want the business of someone who would steep to these SHALLOW, POINTLESS and STUPID tactics...and I sure as heck don't want them in my downline either! So again, for the most part I am dealing with people one on one...COMMUNICATING WITH THEM and building Long Term RELATIONSHIPS....I know...dull, crazy time-consuming concept that goes against everything that is being taught, isn't it? Apr 21st 2008 22:17 |
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Arthur Webster
 Just plain honestyCLOAKERS DO NOT WORK unless they take the prospect to your own landing page, your own sales letter and your own sales page. Cloaked urls are just as obviously affiliate links (that's why they are cloaked) as a plain affiliate link so anybody criminal enough to want to steal your commission from you would simply close their browser, once they discover the web site - and go direct to the web site. They might even clear cookies before doing that if they are determined enough! It would be interesting to know what motivates these bat-blind morons. A free programme I have promoted has now had at least eleven sign ups from my ad that I have not been credited with. Just what do they think they are gaining? p.s. Why are they so brain dead that they not only sign up on my recommendation but THEN send MY UNIQUE email to ME to try to get ME to sign up under THEM? Apr 22nd 2008 03:49 |
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Moiko -
 I have heard of that, but I don't get it. If you are an affiliate, why would you have to do that? Can you explain, it just seems that one would merely buy from their on links. May 18th 2008 20:44 |
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Michael Carmona
Making Money Online Rocks!!!hi linda i am aware of this issue that is why i joined viral url b/c it protect my links and my commission by cloaking my affiliate url. your blog is so informative. thanks for visiting my blog. let us stop scam! --> http://vur.me/PTC01-np Jan 4th 2009 01:30 |
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Jen Casey
 Very nice topic and people should think of others and stop that nonsense, it's too much work for someone to just come and benefit from it for free by hijacking your links, it's wrong and it should stop. Free communications business opportunity, free website as well: You will thank me for this business. http://riveroffers.com/affiliates.html?crid=157695 Jan 18th 2009 19:02 |
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Mark Fournier
Advertiser,Videographer,Sales RepHI Mark here You are correct it is a dastardly deed for people to do that, I have found a program that not only cloaks your affiliate links, but pays you to use their service- even if no one clicks to view ,join, or order your product or service you still get a little something. It's called "linkbucks.com" It solves the problem by putting your site in a frame- a viewer has to wait a few seconds for your page to be displayed and the Url gives no clue as to your destination Site! Free to sign up! Contact me at markus63 here on ApSense if you would like more info Have a great day and God Bless May 7th 2009 22:03 |
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Nnamdi A.
 Internet MarketerA thief will always try to steal regardless of the exotic names we give them. An affiliate link hijacker is a thief just like his brother the affiliate link bypasser. That is their motivation. Aug 28th 2010 14:34 |
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Darlene Isberg
Internet UserMost cloaked links can be unraveled by simply looking at the source page of the web site. Lots of information can be determined about a web site doing this. I think time is the biggest discouragement of a hijacker. Time is also money. To spend 10-15 minutes unraveling a cloaked link is costing that person from doing other more white hat activities. Don't worry about them. They end up biting themselves regardless as they usually swim with other sharks of their own elk. Oct 24th 2010 09:12 |
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Philippe Moisan
 Tutorial videos, sci-fi writerDarlene, I send your comment. Andy Anderson gave very good reasons about not cloaking link. I will find the place where he posted it and give here the words to look for so that you can search them and find the blog Oct 24th 2010 09:16 |
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Kevin H.
Internet MarketingFirst of all, the people who bypass your affiliate links are affiliate or internet marketers themselves. The large percentage of actual buying customers has no real clue what an affiliate link is or what it should look like. They are not personally engaged with any form of online business and therefore are not concentrating on looking at the URL address of the affiliate link. If you are selling a product or service for a specific market that is totally outside of the internet or affiliate marketing community, than cloaking your links is really not a necessity. However, if your product or service is geared specifically towards other affiliates and internet marketers, than yes, simply cloak your links. Nov 28th 2010 19:19 |
Hi, Linda,
I have raised this subject in other blogs and I am still trying to work out if people do this because the gurus told them that they could!
Would it ever have occured to anybody that a link could be mutilated if some guru had not invented a link cloaker and sold it with the terror tactic of "your commissions are being stolen".
The best link cloaker in the world is no good if the final destination is a web site with it's name in nice big letters at the top. These commission stealing ingrates will simply close the site and then visit it directly.
You have to question the sanity of these people, don't you? They pay the same price for a product, send all the money to the principal and deny commission to those who actually earned it - AND THEN THEY WILL COMPLAIN BECAUSE THEIR COMMISSIONS ARE BEING STOLEN if the same thing happens to them!
Go figure!
The only way that these thieves can be stopped is by the affiliate master having a simple change made to his site. NOBODY should be able to buy directly from the site without a valid affiliate link. Some sites do this already - but far too few.
As for those who hi-jack your link, maybe the technology is available for purchases through your own link (on a single product site, especially) to be randomly allocated to another affiliate.
Apr 21st 2008 06:17