Stealing Clickbank Commissions

I read this in another thread and I want to address it:

"there are commission theives so you have to be careful with your hoplink. Try to cloak it if possible."

My questions: how can someone steal your commission and how do you cloak a link? Couldn't a cloaking service online steal your commission link?

This looks more trustworthy: http://www.addme.com/linkcloaker.htm

Recommended?

 

best way to cloak is just a php redirect on your domain. none of that tinyurl.com or anything. (they are good for linking in digg posts etc however)

so www.domain.com/likes/product.php or whatever.

only peeps that steal your commissions are prolly other affiliates, or just other peeps with CB accounts that know how to change the hoplink (which would be pretty much everyone).

your average joe will not know wtf the whole hop url is.

 

Thanks, learn something new every day. Can links from banner ads be stolen? Or is this just a Clickbank thing?

 

if the link displays as http://yournick.publisher.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=xxxx or whatever. some people might catch on.

always cloak. also when choosing your CB nick its better to choose one that might be relevant to the internet. like 'webpage' or a random number. that way people dont really suspect a thing. ya get me?

 

Good advice

 

Correct me If am wrong but are you implying that all I need to do is add php at the end of my link like this and all my theft problems will magically disappear.

 

Never use online services... I don`t even trust TinyURL why wouldn`t they want to be richer ? ha ? LoL

I use PHP redirect for all my products.. it`s a tiny bit of code you need to upload in your main root directory for each individual product..

No brainer

 

But all you need is the code once and then you can duplicate it. You don't even have to plug in an affiliate link to get the code. This is the code Add Me gives:

<a href="http://www.browserwindowurl.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.affiliatelinkurl.com'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Affiliate Link Name</a>

Helpful to have nofollow on affiliate links too.

 

ok then i will correct you

php redirect is as follows.

<?php
header('Location:http://google.com/');
die();
?>

Code (markup):

there are prolly more elegant ways of coding it. you can also just do a HTML redirect.

<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http://www.google.com">

Code (markup):

 

This goes for pretty much every affiliate program not just clickbank. It is always a good idea to mask your hoplink or affiliate id link to ensure your sale is not lost by someone changing the code.

 

Basically if a person knows that a product is available in clickbank and they want to steal your commision (eg. buy the product through their own hoplink) then there really is very little you can do to prevent it. The good news is that most people aren't aware of the whole affiliate/clickbank aspect of their purchase - they're just out to pay for the information and move on!
Affiliate link cloakers and redirects are a good choice even if it just means cleaning up the look of your hoplink.

 

yeah basically that is all it is used for. having a nice normal looking link.

 

I use urlpass.com

 

If they want to steal commissions or do other unethical stuff, they can. No trick, php redirect can prevent that. That's why, for Clickbank products, it's almost always a good idea to sell products to non marketers, i.e., the general public. The best solution should come from CB itself via encrypted links at the source.

 

I use a simple program called profit protector, it's free and works wonders. I think it also uses php redirect.

 

Yes I agree, session only encryped hoplink, so each hoplink request is always different !

 

Has anyone tried the supplied link cloaker script from clickbank? http://www.clickbank.com/publisher_tools.html#Publisher_Tools_10

#10?

 

That's a really nifty little utility, better than most I have seen.

 

Duh, I should have realized that a simple Add Me cloaking script would be revealed by Page Source. The annoying thing is that certain Clickbank programs reveal your hop ID on their own page: so it's www.affiliate.com/yourid. Anyone can take that ID, go back to Clickbank and make their own URL - if that's how it's done, I'm not even sure how you go about stealing commissions...There's nothing you can do to stop that, once it's off your site. Stupid of them because I'm just going to delete it and replace it with a program that cloaks off site as well.