Shawn Collins' Blog

Affiliate marketing and other stuff from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

  • Home
  • About Shawn
  • Contact
  • Learn Affiliate Marketing
  • Disclosure
  • Archives

Ask Shawn Collins: Affiliate ID Theft

February 11, 2007 by Shawn Collins

Q: I keep hearing that people are stealing affiliate ID’s and people are not getting paid. Is this true, and if so, what can you do to protect yourself?

Shawn CollinsA: I’ve heard of this problem in the past with ClickBank links, but not really with any other affiliate network.

The issue with ClickBank links is that if somebody can take your link and edit it to insert their own affiliate ID before continuing on to make a purchase.

Below is the structure of a ClickBank link I just created with my account for an item on ClickBank called Day Job Killer:

http://babylounge.dayjobkill.hop.clickbank.net/

babylounge is the affiliate ID and dayjobkill is the merchant ID. So theoretically, somebody might just replace babylounge with their affiliate ID. Say their affiliate ID is cheater, then the new link would be:

http://cheater.dayjobkill.hop.clickbank.net/

There are lots of programs out there with the purpose of cloaking ClickBank links. Personally, I think those programs are unnecessary. If you are really concerned about the possibility of somebody hijacking your affiliate links in this fashion, try using a .htaccess file to redirect your links.

I don’t have any statistics on the incidences of affiliates replacing somebody else’s ID with their own, but honestly, I don’t see this as a big issue.

If somebody wants to purchase through their own link, it just takes a minute to login and generate a link from any network.

Don’t lose sleep over it.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Reddit

Related

Filed Under: Ask Shawn Collins

Shawn includes advertising links in some posts - these do not influence the content, and they promote products and services he uses.

Social

  • View shawncollins’s profile on Facebook
  • View shawncollins’s profile on Twitter
  • View shawncollinsatx’s profile on Instagram
  • View affiliatetip’s profile on Pinterest
  • View shawncollins’s profile on LinkedIn
  • View affiliatetip’s profile on YouTube

Blogroll

  • Affiliate Manager
  • Austin FC
  • Austin, TX Airbnb
  • Bose Hearing Aids
  • Extra Money Answer
  • Movies That Affected My Life
  • This is Affiliate Marketing

Return to top of page

Copyright © · Shawn Collins Consulting ·

 

Loading Comments...