Someone Stole Your Commission
by Bob Bishop
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 captain-hook. What he would do is replace your ID with his, and buy from the URL www.affiliatelife.com/?captain-hook.
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 “chop off” 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 “Traffic Tip of the Day” newsletter.
http://www.internettraffictips.com/
Get a free copy of the Ultimate Link Tracker when you sign up for our newsletter!
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
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