How to Protect Your Affiliate Links
One problem that you may run into as an affiliate is how to protect your affiliate commissions. The basic problem here is that other affiliates will see that your link is a Clickbank hoplink, and will redirect traffic via their own hoplink just before buying – and robbing you of a commission in the process. If this happens enough times, it can turn a profitable campaign into a losing one.
Commission thieves will always operate and you will find it hard to change that, but these methods should make it easier to stomach.
The first method is one that many of you will have heard of. Essentially, what we are going to do here is cloak our link so that it doesn't look like a standard clickbank hoplink.
If you are an affiliate, and you are redirected through an affiliate hoplink, you will end up with a URL in your web browser that looks like this: http://http://yourID.hop.clickbank.net
Not exactly pretty is it? Apart from looking a little obtrusive, it also sends alarm bells ringing in the heads of any potential commission thieves, and they will realize that this is a hoplink right away.
As soon as they do this, they slyly re-enter their own hoplink, thus being the last person to refer the sale, and they will steal your commission in the process.
There are a number of ways to cloak affiliate links, most of which cost $30-70 and do the same thing. Not a fortune but worth avoiding paying if we can. But there are also free affiliate cloakers that you can use.