How To Stop Affiliate Marketing Code Theft

Author: Alyice Edrich

Tired of having your affiliate commission stolen? You can protect your earnings by hiding, or cloaking, your affiliate links.

Hiding, or cloaking, your affiliate links isn't about tricking your audience or breaking any FTC rules. It's about preventing others from bypassing your affiliate link altogether, replacing it with their own affiliate link, or simply mistyping it when they choose to type it into a new browser window.

While not 100 percent foolproof, the following techniques have been successful in preventing affiliate commission theft:

Use TinyUrl.com to redirect traffic. It's a free online software tool that converts long affiliate links into manageable tiny urls.

Pros: The website address is small enough to remember.

Cons: You cannot build name recognition or brand your company.
Use a 301 redirect web page. Simply save a text file as .htaccess, type “redirect locationoffile.htm http://url.com/affiliatecode” and then upload that page to your main website.

Pros: It’s simple and straightforward.

Cons: You need a Unix server and an understanding of how .htaccess pages work. This file is also used for error pages and password protected directories so you could accidentally erase important information.
Buy a domain name for the specific purpose of redirecting it to the web address of your choice, i.e. your affiliate link.

Pros: Domain names are easy to remember. You can use the domain name on all your marketing materials, and you don’t even have to purchase web hosting.

Cons: You cannot build brand recognition, you cannot use the search engines to gain natural visitors through Internet searches, and you have to rely heavily on the affiliate’s website to both pre-sell and sell.
Make an automatic redirect page within your own website.

To do this, you start by saving a folder specifically for redirects. Inside that folder, you save a web page for each of your affiliates or affiliate product pages.

Then on each web page, you insert the following html code and use that web page’s address when referring your visitors to your affiliate link.

< html >
< head >
< meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=http://yoururl.com" >
< /head >
< /html >

Pros: You can build name recognition and name brand recognition and you can use you’re the web address on all marketing materials.

Cons: You can't pre-sell your affiliate’s merchandise or gain natural visitors through the search engines because it isn't an actual page on your website.
Use a mouse over to hide your affiliate code when linking directly from your web page.

< onmouseover="window.status='Title Name';return true;" onmouseout="window.status=' ';return true;" >

Pros: You hide your affiliate link when visitors place their cursors over the link.

Cons: Your affiliate address is shown once the link is clicked.
Use a mouse over in your body tag.

Pros: It hides your affiliate link when visitors place their cursors over links within your website.

Cons: Your affiliate address stills shows up once the link is clicked.
Use a script.

Pros: Pretty effective at hiding your affiliate link.

Cons: You need to understand how to write and code scripts.

But the best trick of all is to simply build visitor loyalty.

When experienced Internet marketers respect what you do, they won’t bother stealing your affiliate commissions by replacing your code with theirs. And when your target audience feels they're getting something valuable from you, they won't bother with bypassing your affiliate link and going directly to the company.

How To Stop Affiliate Marketing Code Theft

Author: Alyice Edrich

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