Hide affiliate link?

How to hide the affiliate link without using frames?

[nfinland]

Hi,

Ok hereīs the fact and my question:

When you have an affiliate link to a web site which a user bookmarks all the sales in the future wonīt give any revenue for you. To prevent this I usually have my affiliate links in frames (mainFrame has the affiliate link) and if the user bookmarks the site he will return to my site (the framed page) which then "activates" my affiiate link.

I noticed that one of my affiliate links donīt track my sales if I use frames. Is there any other ways of doing the above mentioned (not with frames)?

[Fruit and Veg]

<a onMouseOver='window.status="http://www.url-displayed-in-status-bar.com"; return true' onMouseOut='window.status="Done"; return true' href="http://www.affiliate-url.com" target="_blank">Link Text</a>

[nfinland]

Thanks, but doesnīt resolve the problem. When a user clicks at that link he will go to the affiliate site (the URL of the affiliate web site) and if he bookmarks the site he will return to the affiliate site and I wonīt get any revenue from possible sales in the future.

As I mentioned I have use frames (top frame my URL and target frame the affiliate web site) to prevent this, but some affiliate links wount track sales this way. Iīm looking for other possibilities...

[nativenewyorker]

nfinland said:

As I mentioned I have use frames (top frame my URL and target frame the affiliate web site)

You should be aware that framing a merchant's website within your own is a Terms of Service violation of many affiliate contracts and may result in your suspension from their program and / or loss of commissions.

If you are promoting a reasonable affiliate program, the merchants should have cookies to track visitors that return to make a purchase. Make sure you have some good reasons to promote merchants that will only credit you for visitors that are referred during a specific session.

Ted

[Catalyst]

This doesn't answer your link question, but does address the cookie issue.

The average cookie length is 90 days - so if the program is affiliate-centered you should get at least 30 day cookies where return visits are tracked EVEN if your surfer comes back through a bookmark or search engine. I set most of my programs up with 120 day - 10 years cookies to give affiliates the best chance for getting credit for repeat sales. (Not that anyone would still have the same cookies after 10 years, but when it comes to cookies the longer the better, so I always give affiliates the max the merchant and the network or tracking solution will allow.)

Linda

[tantalus]

nfinland

I've just been reading about this recently and found out that framing can cause problems with your cookies being set by IE 6.0.

Could this be your problem?

nativenewyorker is right about the TOS issue.

Off topic :) I want to post a link to another forum that will hopfully update information found here about link hijacking and masking that seems to be perpetuating a myth...is this allowed? Can anyone tell me.. mods is anyone there?

[nfinland]

"You should be aware that framing a merchant's website within your own is a Terms of Service violation of many affiliate contracts and may result in your suspension from their program and / or loss of commissions".

Iīm aware of this, but that has nothing to do with my original question. This is just a technical question! P.S Iīm not framing merchants that do not allow it.

Cookies 90 days or more arenīt enough if you are doing serious long term business.

[Fruit and Veg]

One simple answer is to STOP framing the merchant site. Why do it? Just pop their link up in a new window.

[JamesR]

When you have an affiliate link to a web site which a user bookmarks all the sales in the future wonīt give any revenue for you.

And how often are they doing that? If your site is good enough, they should be going back to yours again and again anyway. Confusing your users with a persistent frame will cause more trouble than it is worth, IMO. They won't realize whose site they are on when they try to click out. If a site did that to me, I might choose to bookmark another site and NOT got back to the frame site.

[rfung]

nfinland:

I had the same problem. Framing will not store the cookie on the user's computer because it's considered a third party cookie since its a different domain than yours, and most browsers have this disallowed as default.

What I have done and may not work for you, is to have two links side by side 'bookmark/buy now' where 'buy now' would take the user to a new window. Granted if they bookmark the new page there's not much you can do. The 'bookmark' feature doesnt bookmark on the browser, but on the site (through a cookie, if you do not have logins), so when the user logins again or visit your page, they have the item link there. - my site is such that users can search for items, so this has the obvious advantage that the user doesnt need to search for it again. If your link is right there for one single item, then this probably doesn't apply to you.

HTH

[vanderbolt]

nfinland

I think there is one other issue to consider when framing. Generally the "purchase" or "signup" page will not appear as a secure page. In other words, no lock icon on your browser to show that it is a secure page. I found that a lot of potential customers aborted their purchase when the lock did not appear. I switched out from framing and sales went up by about 20 to 25%!