Michael John Arnold

Safeguarding Your Affiliate link

Your affiliate link is the link your sponsor gives to you when you join the program. It is very important as this is how your sales and commissions will be tracked. It is usually your sponsor’s URL with a code name or number at the end. This code is how your sponsor’s affiliate software or program will track your traffic and ultimately the sales that you send to them.

There is something that you should be aware of regarding this link and that is affiliate hijacking. This is a common problem with affiliates. Surprisingly enough many people just ignore this and allow a lot of money to be left on the table.

What is affiliate hijacking? This is when unscrupulous affiliates substitute your code with their own. It can also happen when customers knowingly or unknowingly chop off your affiliate code and go directly to your sponsor’s site. Without the affiliate code that is in your link your sponsor has no idea that you have sent the customer to them and cannot award your commission. This is very common with Clickbank affiliate links.

Many times sponsors will track your visitors with cookies but customers will often clear cookies from their cache and your commission can be lost. Therefore it is most important that potential customers use your own special affiliate link when they buy as a result of your promotions.

This problem can be easily resolved by disguising or cloaking your affiliate link. Here are a couple of ways that you can do this.

Cloaking your Affiliate link:

• Software: You can use software like “affiliate cloaker.” This software comes at a moderate price.
• Free redirect links: you can use something like tinyurl. This is used by many but you can also encounter dead links and errors with it. You need to keep a good track on your tinyurl links. There are many free redirect links available. You can also use tools from your domain service and hosting service to mask your affiliate link.
• Javascript redirect page: You can do this with your own domain. You simply hide your link on one of your web site pages by means of Javascript. People will be redirected to your affiliate link.
• You can also use your tracking software URL.

Some affiliate programs do not allow you to cloak your affiliate links so be careful to read the TOS of each program you join, but most of them do allow this.

In order to get maximum profits from your affiliate programs it is important not to ignore affiliate hijacking. With these simple and cost effective techniques you can fight back. It is true that some hijackers will get through no matter what but if you take precautions you will safeguard most of your sales and get the money that is rightfully yours.

Affiliate marketing has some techniques which you should master before you start. In order to learn more about affiliate marketing why not learn from the experts. To find out more please go to www.secretaffiliatescout.com

Article Tags: Affiliate Link

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