Affiliate Link "Cloaking"

I'm sure many of you have seen the Affiliate Link Cloaker software. Is affiliate link "hijacking" really a problem?

I think you are talking about situations such as when people click on the ads on our sites, after we have spent countless manhours working on them, only for Ebates to awaken on that person's computer and pop up their own ads.

I can say that it is a definitely a problem with non-adult websites and affiliate programs. For example, if you have a computer advice site, and you promote Dell's affiliate program - the user might have crap from Kazaa or Gator / Gain or some other nasty toolbar running which ensures the parasite gets the affiliate commission and not you.

I have not seen any talk of this however with adult affiliate programs. I have wondered whether ZoneAlarm or Norton block - say - ccBill tracking cookies.
Perhaps the programs are too small for scumware writers to take notice.

I have taken some lessons in the non-adult world and implemented them on my adult site. I almost always now use redirect urls on my pages rather then the actual linking code which some program could potentially block.

Steve

Hey Steve -

Thanks. You bring up some good points that I didn't even think about.

All I was referring to is the potential for visitors to see that you're promoting an affiliate program, and instead of clicking through on your link, they go directly to the website and sign up as an affiliate, giving themselves a discount as well as cheating you out of your commission.

IMHO its only a problem for the affiliate who's link is being hijacked, that being said, a few sponsors did post updates to their standard T.O.S last year saying that if anyone used this method of gleaming sales from their programs they would can the accounts in question.

I beleive TopBucks was one of these sponsors in addition to ARS.

Regards,

Lee