Affiliate Highjacking refers to replacing your affiliate link by other affiliates. But the serious thing is Affiliate ****ing which I refer to ignoring your affiliate link by net-surfers.
By following all sorts of protecting methods, if you think other affiliates will not be able to replace your affiliate link and buy through it then you are wrong!
If an affiliate can't find your link examining your code, he will easily guess the merchant you promote, land onto his site, fill his affiliate form and continue there onwards. Never underestimate fellow affiliates.
But their can be rare cases where exclusive promotions going on that only a selected group of affiliates are eligible to promote a product (Very rare) and buying through own-links is prohibited. Some affiliates will be grateful to you and join to your second tier where tiers are present.
Very sad scenario, right? Forget it! The number of affiliates represents a very little portion of the total number of people who see your affiliate links. The rest is common net-surfers (Usually not too savvy) who will feel odd on your ugly affiliate links and ignore them.
The real pain lies here, in Affiliate ****ing. Therefore let's talk about how to overcome it rather than trying to fool smart affiliates. Here are 3 ways (Some times they will even work for Affiliate Highjacking :-). I assume you are familiar with HTML.
Mouse-Over Technique
When you include affiliate links in your web site, add following code to your
tags as a "one line". This will prevent showing your affiliate link in the status bar of the user's browser when he mouse over it.
onmouseover="window.status='Merchnt Site Name';return true;" onmouseout="window.status=' ';return true; "
Replace Merchant Site Name with appropriate text. I usually add text in Anchor to this location. Don't use an apostrophe (') here. For an example if you used Merchant's Site Name, it will break the code.
Example: (All should be in one line in your source code.)
Visit Example.com
IE will show the text you included (In this case, Visit Example.com) as it is on the status bar for a mouse-over and Firefox will show nothing (Still nice).
Displaying Clean URLs in the Address Bar
Here is the biggie. After you redirecting a visitor to a merchant's site, in some cases, still the address bar shows your affiliate link. Even though you implemented Mouse-Over Technique right, visitors will feel that they got caught seeing your affiliate link.
In these cases, you can show a tidy URL in your domain instead of your affiliate link. This will also enable you to display the URL directly in cases like newsletters. Here is the code.
Title of the Merchant's Web Page
<![CDATA[<br />
<body><br />
<p align="center"><br />
This web page uses frames and your browser doesn't support them.<br><br />
Please <a href="http://www.exmple.com?affiliateID=12558">Click Here</a> to visit the requested web page in Non-Frame-View.<br />
</p><br />
</body><br />
]]>
Here two frames are created as two rows. First one will take the entire space (100% height) of the browser window and it will contain the merchant's web page. Second one is invisible (0% height). You may think that it doesn't need to assign a web page here. But just assign a blank page of your site for the completeness.
Replace above example affiliate link with your own one and give an appropriate Title in between
tags. I usually use exact title of merchant's web page. These pages are empty in good content and you may not want search engine bots to index them. Meta NoFollow does that job.<br />
<br />
Code within <noframes> tags should be familiar to you. It's for browsers that don't support frames (Very rare, these days).<br />
<br />
Save the file in your web space (Preferably in the root directory for short URLs) with an appropriate name (Say Product-Name.html) then you can use a URL like below to send visitors to your merchant's site.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.your-site-name.com/Product-Name.html" target="_blank">http://www.your-site-name.com/Product-Name.html</a><br />
<br />
If you are unhappy about .html part you can create a sub directory in your root directory with the name Product-Name and include above file as the index.html in that directory. Then you can use below URL for the same task.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.your-site-name.com/Product-Name" target="_blank">http://www.your-site-name.com/Product-Name</a><br />
<br />
This can be expensive when considering the tidiness of your web space. But it will be really useful in special cases.<br />
<br />
Note: Some merchant's may use frame breaks where this technique doesn't work and some may not allow framed pages when directing leads. It's better to ensure this (Read Affiliate Agreement or contact and ask) before implementing the technique (Most will allow).<br /><br /><div class='aionets_similar_threads' style='padding-top:10px;width:98%;font-weight:bold'>Similar Threads:<ul style='padding:0;margin-right:8px;margin-left:8px'><li> <a href="showthread.php?t=15146" title="Forum: General Discussion ">Choosing An Online Business Is A Tricky Business</a></li><li> <a href="showthread.php?t=14049" title="Forum: General Discussion ">Three Simple Ways to CreatThree Simple Ways to Create Value on your Business Website</a></li><li> <a href="showthread.php?t=13487" title="Forum: General Discussion ">Affiliate Marketing: The Biggest Mistakes You Can Make (And HOW To Avoid Them!)</a></li><li> <a href="showthread.php?t=12603" title="Forum: General Discussion ">Rich Affiliate Poor Affiliate</a></li><li> <a href="showthread.php?t=7508" title="Forum: Career Forum & Tips ">Avoid getting your CV lost</a></li></ul></div>
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Meta Refresh<br />
<br />
<br />
After redirecting, some merchant sites will show their original URL in the address bar instead of your affiliate link. This enables you to use these links in your web site without any add-ons (You will still use Mouse-Over Technique).<br />
<br />
But they are still ugly to display in places like newsletters. In these cases, Meta Refresh will do the trick. Here is the code (Saving and using the file is same as above).<br />
<br />
<html><br />
<br />
<head><br />
<title>Title of the Merchant's Web Page
If you are not redirected,
Please Click Here to visit the requested web page.
12-13-2009, 09:09 AM
Affiliate Highjacking - 3 Tricky Ways to Avoid
