If You Don’t Know This, You Might Loose Your Commi

If You Don’t Know This, You Might Loose Your Commissions!

by: Frank Bauer

Are you aware that using certain tools to protect your affiliate commissions might in fact cause you to loose them?

Let me explain you how than can be and what you can do to protect yourself from commission loss…

The other day a good marketing friend of mine, letกs call her Eva, send me an email, telling me about a service that she believed me to be interested in… and in fact, I was.

She wrote: กIf you want to take a look, the link is: http://www.more4you.ws/monก

When I followed her URL, I noticed on that page, that her affiliate ID was missing on the main page, as well as on the order form page.

Since I wanted her to get credit for this, I emailed Eva:

กYour link will not earn you commissions as your affiliate ID doesn’t show at http://www.monopolizer.com/.

I recommend to use a forwarding link instead of placing the site into a frame.ก

She answered me that it worked fine when she followed the link herself. How was that possible you ask? Very simple.

When she originally got the affiliate link, she must have used the link one time directly and this way saved the cookie on her computer.

So I replied to Eva:

กI checked it again… if I visit their site through http://www.more4you.ws/mon, your ID is not shown anywhere.

But if I visit it through http://www.monopolizer.com/index.php?affiliateID=249040817 I can see your ID everywhere.

In general… cookie based systems often have a problem if you place the site into a HTML frame on another domain.ก

This time Eva replied to me:

กWell thatกs got me stumped… I used Covert Affiliate to generate that URL and I just cleared my cookies and tried it and I do not see my affiliate codes on the main page…ก

I actually noticed that problem of promoting through a frame already quiet a while ago. Also e.g. when I use Mikeกs MyViralWebsite system or any other system that displays your affiliate URL inside a HTML frame… itกs the same problem.

The tricky part about it… some programs work if called through a frame (meaning: your affiliate ID will be used) and others don’t.

My rule of thumb is: If I don’t see my affiliate ID on the other page, I will not use a HTML frame.

But for the reason I described before, make sure that you delete you cookies before you give it a try!

This is also the reason why I always use my own Add2it GoTo Pro tracking links whenever I promote another program.

The Add2it GoTo Pro links look e.g. like this:

http://www.add2it.com/go/to.pl?l=ListDotCom

To make that shorter and easier, I created and uploaded another tiny script called see.pl. Now I can use an even shorter link:

http://add2it.com/see.pl?ListDotCom

The last part, the กListDotComก, is what changes depending on what program I want to promote.

The advantage… not only do you get stats on how many people click that link every month, it also simply forwards to the URL you want to promote, prevents this way the กframeก problem while still hiding the ugly long affiliate link and this way it REALLY protects your commission.

Reprint rights to this article are granted, as long as it is not modified and the resources plus signature remain unchanged.

About The Author

Frank Bauer is the owner of Add2it.com Scripts & Services for your Web Business at http://www.add2it.com and the publisher of the More4you Newsletter at: http://www.more4you.ws. To see how he can help you, visit: http://www.frankbauer.name

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 04, 2004

by Frank Bauer

Someone Stole Your Commission

Someone Stole Your Commission

by: Bob Bishop

Someone Stole Your Affiliate Link!

If you use affiliate programs you may not be getting all the commissions you deserve!

Hijacking is what happens when someone replaces your affiliate id with theirs in the affiliate link. Let’s say your affiliate ID is cyberbooks and the product site is www.affiliatelife.com. Then your affiliate link would be www.affiliatelife.com/?cyberbooks.

Say the highjacker uses the affiliate ID of captainhook. What he would do is replace your ID with his, and buy from the URL www.affiliatelife.com/?captainhook.

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.affiliatelife.com/?cyberbooks, the bypasser will simply ขchop offข the affiliate ID at the end and simply buy from the plain URL www.affiliate.com without your affiliate ID attached!

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. 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.

If you’re using PayPal to sell digital products check your source code. In that code is the link to your thank you page which many people use as the download page for their digital product. All someone has to do is copy that link in your source code and voila’, they’re at your download page without having to pay for your product!

Your best bet to overcome this problem is to do some research and find some software that will cloak your affiliate links or hide your code.

This is something you should take care of before you start losing money!

About The Author

Bob Bishop is the publisher of the free ขTraffic Tip of the Dayข newsletter.

http://www.internettraffictips.com

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This article was posted on November 14, 2002

by Bob Bishop