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I Think I Made a Mistake...Help Me Get Back On Track Here!

by LilBlackDress
8 replies
Alrighty I have been article marketing etc and doing pretty good but a couple products I have focused on I have not had any luck with (high gravity clickbank products).

Recently I signed up to sell an affiliate product for a health company and was reading the FAQ's and saw where they don't support GoDaddy Masking.

This got me to look at the "view source" in several of the Clickbank products I am promoting where I host them with my domain name. I watched a video by some marketeer who said I should redirect and mask to keep thinks easier.

To my shock half of the text code was missing in the view source but I did see my affiliate link. I am thinking I made a mistake by masking and any sales I would have had I missed out on by masking because it is not supported. Is this a correct assumption?

So I am unclear on how this works...can I use a domain name of mine for a Clickbank or other product but then redirect it (but not mask it) and get the affiliate commission or do I have to have the consumer go directly throught the hoplink and not via my domain or what?

This is all that what was in the view source code except where the xxxxx's are was my affiliate link. The page does shows up properly.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>

<head>
<title>Hot Body Fast </title>
<META name="description" content="Lose Weight Fast">
</head>
<frameset rows="100%,*" border="0">
<frame src="http://xxxxxxx.fatsecret.hop.clickbank.net/" frameborder="0" />
<frame frameborder="0" noresize />
</frameset>
<!-- pageok -->
<!-- 07 -->
<!-- 7.9-->
</html>
#back #made #mistakehelp #track
  • Profile picture of the author Lawrh
    Do you have a hosting account with cPanel? If so, cPanel has domain redirecting built in.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Diamond
      Please read this recent thread for an extensive discussion of this issue.

      The short version is that you shouldn't be masking ClickBank sales pages. It's against their rules and you may not get your commissions. Instead of masking, use domain redirection.

      Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    i answered in the other thread. Yes, you can also use your cpanel for a domain redirect.

    A iframe is a different story, it works "similar", yes, but has more legal implications since the URL doesnt change and the target sites APPEARS to be on your own site. The "kosher" method would be a redirect using no iframe which simply jumps to the other URL.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Koop
    Hey there,

    You are using a method of "dropping the cookie" via an iframe.
    While this method can work, you should know that it is frowned upon by ClickBank.

    See ClickBank's info here:
    FAQ HopLink - ClickBank

    Now then, there are many other methods of creating an affiliate link to place in the Resource area of your article but you should know that this is against the TOS of many directories.

    The directories want you to link to a site/blog you own/control and then offer links/banners there for visitors to click.

    That said, if you are going to directly link, there are a number of ways to do it...

    [1] If you are using GoDaddy as your registrar, they provide 90 subdomains for each domain you own.

    So, if you owned "lilblackdress.com" (as an example) you could login to GoDaddy and create a subdomain named anything you want. I'll use "fatsecret" as the example here.

    Your resulting domain would be fatsecret.lilblackdress.com and you would redirect it through your standard CB hop link.

    You'd use your domain name in the article and it would redirect straight to the sales page.

    [2] You could use either an html or a php redirect that is placed on your site to redirect (without using an iframe)

    [3] You could use a script on your server that would allow you to create the link and track stats from an admin panel as well.

    To test your current setup, do this:

    [1] Visit your url (the one you posted the source code from)
    [2] Visit the sales page for the "fatsecret" product
    [3] Click on the order button
    [4] Once on the CB order page, scroll down to the bottom and look
    for the "affiliate = _______" text.

    If it says, affiliate = none, the redirect isn't properly dropping the cookie.

    If it says, affiliate = yourcbid (where yourcbid is your ID) then it is working correctly.

    Hope this helps,
    Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author LilBlackDress
    Ah..I did not know this. Regardless I did not make any commissions on those two CB products. Could it be because of the frames (you can see the source code that was on the site above) Interestingly now that I have just a redirect I cannot see my affiliate code in the view source?

    Now for the new health product I want to promote...so long as I only REDIRECT the link but do not mask it...will that be ok?

    I am unclear exactly what frames are.
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    Pen Name + 8 eBooks + social media sites 4 SALE - PM me (evergreen beauty niche)

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    • Profile picture of the author Kevin Koop
      Originally Posted by LilBlackDress View Post

      ...so long as I only REDIRECT the link but do not mask it...will that be ok?

      I am unclear exactly what frames are.
      You're most welcome!

      An iframe is generally used to pull in content from one site into another. For example, you can place an iframe on YOUR site which calls out google.com and guess what, Google's search box will appear (and work) on your site.

      However, affiliates commonly use it, as you were, to do what is called "cookie stuffing." If someone visits your page, the cookie is automatically dropped without the visitor needing to click a link.

      This has obvious advantages but the downside is that it is against the TOS of many affiliate networks and or merchants.

      Re: Redirects -

      It is possible to make a redirect that does not "cloak" the merchant's url and ways to make it "cloak" (or hide) the real url from the visitor.

      Many affiliate networks/merchants do not allow the cloaking of links so you will want to check before cloaking.

      Happy marketing,
      Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author LilBlackDress
    Thanks Kevin!

    I didn't realize I could check my CB link that way. I just changed them so they are redirects to follow CB's TOS, but it actually appears to have been working masked or as a redirect.
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    Pen Name + 8 eBooks + social media sites 4 SALE - PM me (evergreen beauty niche)

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  • Profile picture of the author hugeaffiliatecash
    Its always worked when masking through godaddy for me...

    I always go to my page that is redirected and masked, click on the order button and check at the bottom of the clickbank page for my id and it is always there...
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