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 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
