Link Theft

Today we’re going to talk about the dark side of affiliate marketing: Link Theft.
It’s not ethical, but it happens.

You should know that there are people out there who, for whatever reason,
absolutely hate the idea of someone earning a commission off their purchase.

These are the cranky, paranoid customers of the online world. There are also
fellow affiliate marketers who would deny you your hard earned commission as
well.

The term “link theft” isn’t entirely accurate, though it’s what you’ll see used to
refer to this phenomenon. The accurate term, in a nuts and bolts sense, is “link
altering”.

Quite simply, the link thief does one of two things:

1. Erases your affiliate link from his browser window, deletes any cookies set
by the link, and then proceeds to the merchant’s site via the main www url.
2. Erases your affiliate I.D. and replaces it with his. He then purchases
through his own link and takes his commission as a rebate.
The solution to link theft is “link cloaking”. Essentially, you turn an obvious
affiliate link such as www.clickbank.com/hop?=affiliate, into an encrypted link
or you mask it behind a short domain name.

There are pros and cons with each method. Link cloaking software such as
Affiliate Defender and others use javascript to encapsulate your URL into an
indecipherable scramble of characters. This prevents anyone from seeing the
real affiliate link at the bottom of their browser window when they mouse over
it.

The only problem is that your link can still end up exposed once the user clicks
on to the main site. The link often “unscrambles” and appears naked yet again
in the address bar.

Domain masking, when done properly, allows you to use your own short url
which redirects to the merchant site while keeping your url in the address bar.
You can use domain masking with any address you choose. For example, you
could register one domain name to devote to your affiliate redirects.

You can use subdomains (subdomainname.mysite.com).


The downside to domain masking: the technique involves what’s called an
“invisible frame”. The frame pulls in the affiliate site within the main window.
Imagine your site has a set of navigation links down the left-hand side, and
clicking those links causes the main window to pull up content, while leaving
the left column unchanged. This is the basis of the technique – it’s just set up
on one link and hidden from the surfer’s view.

Unfortunately, sites like Clickbank frown upon this practice.

There’s a good chance that your redirect link will break frames and wind up
exposing your affiliate URL anyways. Nothing wrong with that other than the
fact that you went through a lot of work for nothing!

A greater concern: frames have a bad habit of confusing affiliate tracking
applications. Your referral ID might not be recorded and you wind up losing the
sale.

Obviously, you are free to test out any of these “solutions”. Just keep in mind
that they aren’t fool proof. Ultimately, the link theft problem occurs much more
frequently in the Internet Marketing niche than it does anywhere else due to
the large number of fellow profit-motivated customers within the niche. Link
theft occurs infrequently, if at all, in other niches.

Those customers are less likely to know (or care) what affiliate marketing is –
and less likely to take notice of affiliate URLs in general.