Have you ever had traffic hijacked?

This is the first time this has happened to me and I'm not sure if I should be pissed or not.

I joined a webcam top list some time ago, mixed guy and girl cams. Its not great traffic, but there are enough guy cams that it is worth it.

So I notice the traffic sorta stopped showing up suddenly in my little counter stats. My links were correct, and I was still on their list, in and out hits continued to increase, but they weren't showing up as a referrer anymore.

I log into my account, and they list owner had joined my affiliate program and converted my direct link into an affiliate link. I send traffic to the list so that my site is highly listed, and they get the benefit of the traffic! Since affiliate traffic bypasses the counter to avoid a traffic leak, they won't show up there, only in my urchin stats.

Is it just me, or is that unethical as hell???

the site owner may be clueless. i see that stuff all the time.

i would definitely point out to him that in order for you to send him traffic, you need him to send you traffic. if he wants to be paid for traffic he sends you, you should be paid for sales you send him.

just my opinion...

Someone else was telling me a situation similar to this a few weeks back about a site they were advertising on and stopped.

Right after they stopped their ads, the site owner started using the text they provided to send sales to a different site to the original one.

Might just be me and them but, thats wrong on so many levels, especially as this was done to a former paying customer :eek:

Regards,

Lee

I changed the link back to a non-affiliate link. If he changes it back to an affiliate link, I'll hack his affiliate percentage to 2% so he gets pennies per sale.

I tried emailing the link that is on his site, but it was returned as undeliverable.

Its just annoying. I run 4 top lists and would NEVER even consider such a nasty trick for someone that legitimately joined the list and sends decent traffic.

Those str8 site webmasters are a tricky bunch. Gotta watch 'em like a hawk.