fartarific

Hey i'm an affiliate in a number of affiliate programs in CJ and I was wondering what the best way is for to protect my traffic sources.

Right now I have 2 domains that I use for my campaigns. Domain A I use solely for tracking. I setup simple PHP redirects. Site B is my actual offer/landing page which is a wordpress site. This is where I have my affiliate links. I send my traffic through to Site A (php redirect) and this redirects to my affiliate links in Site B which forwards to the merchant offer (final landing page).

I want it so when CJ and the merchant see's the traffic and sales, they will see it coming from Site B (wordpress page and offer). I do not want them seeing the traffic that get's sent to Site A which redirects to Site B.

Is this the best way of going about it? One one hand I want to protect my traffic sources, but on the other hand with CJ you can't do anything shady or block/fake/blank our refferers or they will get suspicious (either using a double meta refresh or other method of confuscating the affiiate link using html or javascript). This is why I redirect it through my Site B (landing page).

Please let me know if this is the best method. Or if there is a better way of protecting myself while not throwing up a red flag to CJ then I would love to hear anyone's thoughts or opinions.

Thanks.

StoneWilson

I don't know whether it's the best way or not, but I do know lots of people use this way, and do remember never let CPA networks know you are using this way.

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jeffrey73

I'd be more concerned about protecting myself FROM C.J. themselves..

fartarific

thanks for all your input.

MakeSmiles

Keep in mind that a php redirect does NOT blank/change the referrer. So if you only use a php redirect from Site A to Site B to Site C (the network), the network will see Site A as the referrer in most cases, which defeats your purpose.

Using a one domain approach, even if you were to clear or change the referrer, it is quite trivial for the network to discover your source(s) of traffic.

We use the two domain approach, with each domain on seperate servers with seperate hosting companies. All of our ads point to Site A, and are redirected to Site B, where the encrypted ad code is decrypted, logged for statistics and tracking, and redirected to the network/offer. Again, it would be quite trivial to uncover your sources(s) if both domains were using the same server/hosting platform.

We spend an insane amount of money on generating legitimate traffic, primarily through media buys, as well as some PPC campaigns. As far as we are concerned, it is none of the networks business where our traffic comes from. If they insist on having that knowledge, we usually inform them that we will not be making a media spend with their network and move on. (Most of the time though, we don't even deal with networks.) Of the networks we do deal with, Site B shows as the referrer for all of our traffic. If they can live with that, then they get tons of targeted traffic to their offers.

Traffic sources are your proprietary and confidential information. It is the lifeblood of your business. It is perfectly within your right to keep that information as private as possible. Just be sure to check with any network you utilize to see what their policy is on the matter.

As for CJ, that's a whole big can of worms in and of itself...

Ben

fartarific

wow thanks for all the helpful information. i agree with you 100%.

yeah i have 1 domain that i use for all my tracking. i don't care that they see this its just used for tracking and nothing else.

both domains are on a VPS server I have from liquidweb. they both have a private IP & nameserver. i honestly don't know if CJ cares about it. i dont think it's in their Terms that states I can't do it, and I know a lot of CJ affiliates who do this and are succesful.

i really like your approach a lot. can i ask what you use for tracking your traffic? do you use prosper or something similar or what do you use on your Site B before you redirect the traffic to the merchant/offer page?

Do you use a PHP redirect from Site A or a similar method before redirecting to Site B?

if you can share or give me some tips that would be awesome, but It's good to know I am on the right track!

I Can

use redirection 301 (apache)

or use goo.gl

also protect directories with a blank index.html

add allow/deny access on .htaccess

install APF, change root password, user permissions,etc

and finally disable root SSH login

google it if you do not understand what I mean

MakeSmiles

All of our tracking and optimization server code is custom written. Most of the available commercial stuff is just too cluttered and slow for the volume of traffic we generate.

No, as stated previously, a php redirect will not change the referrer. We want Site B to see Site A as the referrer. If traffic comes from any other site other than Site A, then Site B acts a bit differently. We use a java post redirect from Site A to Site B. We also use a java post redirect from Site B to the network/merchant, IF the offer is not hosted on one of our servers. We also require the network/merchant to post back a tracking pixel with subid upon completion of the offer, but increasingly when the technicalities of the offer allows, we are requiring the merchant to host a customized version of the offer on one of our servers if they want our traffic.

Another note to keep in mind, is to make sure both of your domains either use different registration information or, as is our case, set the registration information to private.

As a side note, based on your username, my advice is to stay away from shady traffic tactics. It usually always results in low quality and non-converting traffic. It's bad for any network involved, it's definately bad for the merchant and ultimately it is bad for you. There are far, far too many legitimate ways to earn a fortune in this industry if you treat it as real business. If your username does not reflect how you get traffic, then I apologize for the assumption.

Merchants want new customers. Targeted customers want what the merchant is selling. Bring these two together and the world is yours...

Ben

andrawah

have you ever use the brad redirect plugin from wpblackhat ? I think it deals with your problem

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