How do I avoid affiliate link hijacking?

I've been reading a lot lately about affiliate link hijacking and link cloaking. Do you recommend any particular link cloaking software or technique and/or are there any particular ones to steer clear of? I saw one 'Covert Affiliate' that in addition to cloaking affiliate links puts a tracking cookie on the visitors computer even if they don't click on the link. They talk about having the 'unfair advantage'... that concerns me that if you're doing something 'sneaky' that it could actually bite you in the butt down the road.

Dave's Answer:

This is a great question, actually, and everyone who is involved in any sort of affiliate program where you get paid a commission on completed transactions (for example, Amazon's Associates program), needs to pay attention to this situation!

The problem is that unscrupulous adware, spyware and other malcontents have software that they install on your computer - sometimes with your consent - that also automatically rewrites affiliate links on pages you visit. For example, you would then innocently pop over to the Web page for my book Growing Your Business with Google and click on the 'buy this book at Amazon' link, thinking that you're cool that I'm going to make an additional $0.75 on the transaction through the Amazon affiliate program.

Surreptitiously, however, that link is rewritten to use someone else's affiliate code, giving them the credit - and commission - for the sale.

Not a huge big deal, but now imagine that instead of visiting my site, you're actually on the Web site of your favorite charity or organization and you want to show your support of the organization by using its affiliate links, thereby making a contribution to the group by doing your regular shopping (a great way to support charities, in my opinion!). But, you guessed it, the charity doesn't see a dime and instead some lowlife gets the affiliate income instead.

I know about the problem, but for possible solutions, I turned to my friend and colleague Shawn Collins, who runs the great Affiliate Summit conferences (and yes, there's another coming up in July at Disneyworld and I'll be there, speaking about weblogs and blogging!)

Here's what Shawn had to say in response to this question:

There are two ways you can go about cloaking your links: set them up yourself or buy a program to automate the process.

Personally, I do it myself. In some cases, I use a little mouseover script, but that's just to trick the casual observer - it won't beat the schemers and spiders.

In the past, I've also used frames to cloak affiliate links. This has its limitations, but it's quick and easy.

Another method is to purchase a domain and use the domain registrars forwarding service (free with most domain registrars) to have the domain redirect to your affiliate link.

The technique I use most often is the .htaccess redirect. An .htaccess file is a plain ASCII text file you place in the root directory of a Unix server.

The .htaccess technique is much easier than using other redirects, because there's no HTML required. All of your redirects are in one text file.

One thing to bear in mind when cloaking your links is that you should add the afsrc parameter, so legitimate adware affiliates will recognize that you are an affiliate and not overwrite your cookie.

If you want to get a program that will help you set up the cloaked links, check out CBmall, search for cloaker or cloaking, and you will see lots of programs to consider.

As far as that program you mentioned that "puts a tracking cookie on the visitors computer even if they don't click on the link" - stay far away from that one!

That is known as cookie stuffing, and it's a big taboo. By doing that sort of thing, you're no better than the thieves you're trying to beat in the first place.

There's a third solution that Shawn didn't mention: using third party URL redirection services like Click Thru Stats that can make it easy to cloak your affiliate links too.

Thanks for your info, Shawn!!

Categorized: HTML and CSS , Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising (Article 5972, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: affiliate link cloaking, affiliate marketing
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Comments

Thanks for the helpful information. I actually just wrote an article for our affiliates on how to cloak their affiliate link.

Posted by: Joshua at May 23, 2007 9:41 AM

Thank you for this information. It has become a veritable jungle out there, and constructive information such as yours is most welcome and valuable.

I will follow all those links and find out more!

Posted by: Dominique at July 31, 2007 11:30 AM

I've wrote a small article dedicated to easy cloaking methods using JavaScript and PHP for others that are not so good with programming
http://richbeaver.com/webmasters/link-cloaking-step-by-step-guide/

Posted by: RichBeaver at January 7, 2008 9:53 PM

For avoiding link hijacking, have you checked out Cloak And Tracker yet? It runs on both PC and Macintosh platforms and lets you swap links on the fly as needed.

For instance, if you have an ebook with your affiliate links in it that goes viral (a GOOD thing), and then the site your promoting goes KaPuT (a BAD thing) -- all you need to do is change the link via Cloak and Tracker and BAM!, you're salvaging all that traffic. And the tracking is an added bonus. Plus there's no messy FTPing of the files that is required with many other solutions-- it does it all for you.

They just reduced the price to $27 (from $49) so it's a great deal: http://www.cloak-and-tracker.com

Posted by: Dante at January 12, 2008 3:11 PM

Hello
This is more of a question than a comment
I've got an acer aspire 3680 and it's got windows media addition on it,now as stupid as I've been in purchasing this laptop have tried loads of ways to cloke my links could you advise me in any way my knowlage of prowgramming is minimal
Terry

Posted by: T Collingwood at March 22, 2008 6:07 AM

that is lot of hardwork actually u need to install a program into users computer which is hard to do

Posted by: amin at July 2, 2008 12:38 PM

Hey Dave, is there anyway to know your link is being "jacked"? I run a review site and consistently make sales from most of my products (Clickbank products)but there is one product (not Clickbank) that i know for a fact is a high profile high converting product to which i send consistent traffic and havent made one sale from. Thanks for the info.
Cheers,

Mark

Posted by: Mark at July 11, 2008 4:21 PM

Thanks for the info. I actually thought you were going to expand on the URL redirection method with a different domain, but you skipped it.

I will explore it elsewhere then.
Nice post BTW

Posted by: Evans at April 11, 2010 2:17 AM

Dave, I have been looking for information and trying to understand how people can steal your affiliate commissions for awhile.

To be honest, I still don't quite understand this and how it can be done.

Also, if I sell my products through Clickbank- can someone somehow collect an affiliate commission even though they go through my link?

Third, does creating a 301 redirect prevent this problem?

Im so confused! Its one of those things that- I don't know what I don't know. For all I know, someone could be stealing all my money.

Posted by: Eric R. W. at December 1, 2010 4:27 PM

Hi Dave,
Is it possible that you are getting clicks with your Amazon affiliate IDs but someone is getting the credit for the sales.I ask you this because there is no single day without sales for a particular niche but for the past 7 days I see no sales in spite of all my hard work. And it is a very popular product.

Posted by: Joel at October 14, 2011 6:54 AM

Joel, yes, that is possible. It's called "link hijacking" and is one reason you want your affiliate links to be encrypted / encoded if possible. Sites like Commission Junction make this encoded URL easy to produce, but I'm not sure about whether Amazon has that capability yet or not.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at October 14, 2011 12:04 PM

This is a great subject Dave and you cover it thoroughly. I should do an article myself as I offer a free link cloaking program to subscribers of my own mailing list.

It works on frames and generates either a html or php file you just upload to your server. This particular link appears as a page on my site but is actually the affiliate sit in the browser window.

Thanks for a great article

Posted by: Dennis O'Brien at November 12, 2011 4:32 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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