Being an affiliate of several product/service providers myself, I noticed that the affiliate ID may sometimes appear (and stay) in the final URL of the offering page. I've conducted a survey a while back understanding how people would react when they recognize an affiliate ID in an URL when they purchase something. A RELATIVELY HIGH PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE INTEND TO REMOVE THE AFFILIATE ID. For example, if the URL to my affiliate site is "www.someproduct.com/?affil=1234", most people will remove the "affil=1234". This is the complexity of human mind. Why would you deny the effort someone working hard as an affiliate while you are in the same way of making money? I'd like to get everyone's view on this. Thanks.
Are you referring to removal before or after clicking the link? If after, then it's probably no big deal as a cookie has already been set to capture your affiliate details. If before, then yes - that's a problem. Some affiliate programs can now recognize the referring URL and associate it with an affiliate account so that no affiliate ID is needed. This is, so far, the most innovative method I've seen to combat this problem you describe.
Yes I've seen this happen with friends of mine, for some reason it seems an affiliate link puts some people off buying (???). I did see an application somewhere which could mask the link - I may go back and re-visit that scenario.
Yeah I've definitely noticed this. People seem to associate the affiliate ID as a scam. This is especially true with the "get paid programs", The ID makes it look like a person is trying to pull them in a ponzi or pyramid scheme...
The simple idea is to make a short url for your affiliate link of cloack it somehow ... cause what you said is true.