Guarding Your Links And Your Commisssions

By C. T. Driver

Making money with affiliate marketing requires a number of things:

* A good product offering
* A good marketing campaign
* A protected affiliate link

Without the first two, you won't get very far -- but without the third item, all your time and effort may be pointless!

You may have heard of link theft, or link hijacking, but may not recognize how destructive it can be to your efforts to make money with an affiliate marketing program. What can happen is that someone clicks on your affiliate link, and buys the product, but as the transaction proceeds your affiliate ID is removed from the link, and an affiliate ID belonging to someone else is substituted for yours.

Your customer arrives at the affiliate marketing site, buys the product, and moves on -- but the commission ends up in someone else's account! Final outcome: You made the sale, the hijacker collected your commission - and you were totally unaware that someone just picked your pocket!

Links can be hijacked in a number of ways. It can be as simple as someone changing your link to replace your affiliate ID with their own, so that they can buy the product and collect the commission themselves. Links can also be compromised by spyware on your customer's computer, which intercepts the link as it is being transmitted, and inserts the hacker's affiliate ID instead, allowing them to steal the commission you earned.

The best way to defend against this kind of theft is to use affiliate link cloaking. Cloaking your links allows you to protect your commissions by preventing link theft. The important question is, how do you actually go about doing this?

There are,as you might expect, a variety of ways to do it. If you are really into web-site programming, you can design your own link cloaks -- but let's face it, most of us don't have that level of knowledge. Another way to disguise your links is to use a link shortening service, but there are some reports out there on the internet that in at least some cases these services can screw up tracking
cookies, eliminating your chance to collect your commission.

Another way to manage and protect your links is use a link cloaking service. These services are maintained by experts who know all the exotic techniques of the programming world, and who have your best interests at heart. Using a cloaking service allows you to shield your links and protect your commissions, while at the same time directing your time and efforts to the parts of your campaign that will create real income for you.

Article Source: http://interpret.zar.vg

About The Author
To find out more about the best way to protect your Affiliate Links from being Hijacked, read this FREE REPORT:
Cloak and Dagger Affiliate Secrets.
Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box.