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 buy 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 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!
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 buy through your link -
which is, after all, the whole point! :-)
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Jim Edwards, author of numerous best-selling ebooks, earns
thousands in affiliate commissions every month! Jim has
developed "Affiliate Link Cloaker," the easy, FAST, safe way
to STOP affiliate link "hijackers"... Dead in their tracks!
Click http://hop.clickbank.net/?6d39f8a1/cloaklinks
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