Are My Links Being Stolen?

[Branlan17]

I am going to be cloaking soon but I just wanted to know about something...

I wasn't getting sales for a long while before they dropped off, then changed my hoplink to one with a tracking ID and a couple days later got a sale. Now no more sales... Now honestly, this could totally be due to low tracking volume BUT if I can click through my link to the order form and see my affiliate ID at the bottom does that mean the link is indeed working and not being stolen? I don't know what stealing links entails but I was just wondering if the link going correctly to an order page with my ID meant I'm in the clear?

[Branlan17]

Blah, so much to worry about in this business... Anyone have an idea?

[Janet Sawyer]

Originally Posted by Branlan17

I am going to be cloaking soon but I just wanted to know about something...

I wasn't getting sales for a long while before they dropped off,

So did you get any sales or not? really confusing that statement.

Originally Posted by Branlan17

then changed my hoplink to one with a tracking ID and a couple days later got a sale.

That happens! you finally get to track a sale/order thanks to the TID from Clickbank.

Originally Posted by Branlan17

Now no more sales... Now honestly, this could totally be due to low tracking volume BUT if I can click through my link to the order form and see my affiliate ID at the bottom does that mean the link is indeed working and not being stolen?

Hopefully yes, if your affiliate ID is showing on the order form, then you should get credited for the sale. That's how it's supposed to work.

Originally Posted by Branlan17

I don't know what stealing links entails but I was just wondering if the link going correctly to an order page with my ID meant I'm in the clear?

Youre in the clear? well, to be honest, your'e on the page, so you should get credited with the sale.

There have been so many Clickbank isn't working posts recently, and I can understand why you asking the above questions.

Clickbank does work every now and again, but their analytics are a bit worrying. I'd much prefer it to be a "this day", "this week", etc, rather than the 14 day period that we are stuck with.

Until they can over ride the cookie stuffers, I guess we are all stuffed so to speak.

I'll stick with them, because the nice direct deposits are putting food on my table, and every little helps.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Branlan17

I am going to be cloaking soon but I just wanted to know about something...

I wasn't getting sales for a long while before they dropped off, then changed my hoplink to one with a tracking ID and a couple days later got a sale. Now no more sales... Now honestly, this could totally be due to low tracking volume BUT if I can click through my link to the order form and see my affiliate ID at the bottom does that mean the link is indeed working and not being stolen? I don't know what stealing links entails but I was just wondering if the link going correctly to an order page with my ID meant I'm in the clear?

Branlan,

You're asking so many different things at the same time, and seem a little confused about what some of them mean, that it's not easy to answer.

I don't follow your concern about links being "stolen" - where does this come from? What's this all about? Why do you imagine links are being "stolen"?

What do you mean by "low tracking volume"?

Originally Posted by Branlan17

if I can click through my link to the order form and see my affiliate ID at the bottom does that mean the link is indeed working

Let me try to explain this in really simple terms ...

When one of your prospective customers follows one of your hoplinks to the sales page of a Clickbank product, whether that hoplink is open, cloaked or masked, with tracking ID or without, whatever he sees in his browser, and goes from there to the order page to buy the product, one of two things happens. Either your affiliate ID shows up on the bottom of the order page, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you don't earn an affiliate commission. If it does, then it's very likely indeed (not quite 100%, as we've seen in some recent threads, but forget those for the moment) that you do. (Assuming the person actually follows through with an order, and pays, and his credit-card or PayPal payment is accepted, of course.)

What you can see on your own computer has very little to do with it.

The easy way to cloak your hoplinks, if you want to (and on balance probably you should want to, in my opinion, though its importance varies a bit from niche to niche and so on), is just to buy a ".info" domain-name from GoDaddy for each product you promote, forward it with masking to your hoplink for that product, and then use that domain-name in place of your hoplink.

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[InternetMarketingIQ]

"Stolen Links" happen in 2 ways. First they are not usually "stolen" per say. What happens is an affiliate recognizes the link as an affiliate link. Clears their cache, then buys through their own link.

The other way links are stolen is through malware and cookie stuffing. Programmers. I'm not sure that even cloaking will protect from this as the software is resident on the "infected" machine. I could be wrong about this. Been a long time since I bothered trying to program anything.

There is also plenty of software "out there" that strips out affiliate cookies.

Be sure however you choose to redirect your links that you test them after wards. Internet Explorers doesn't like redirected links and will sometimes strip out cookies depending on settings.

I have noticed however in my own case that since I switched to the new Clickbank links the tracking doesn't seem to be as good. I do not know if this is me being critical without basis or the season or my sites.

I did a trial the other day where I sent a masked link via GoDaddy direct to an Affiliate Offer and racked up about 500 hops for the day which appeared to all be tracked.