STOP Affiliate Commission Hijackers
By S. Denise Hoyle
Some affiliate industry experts and concerned webmasters have
recently been voicing their opposition to a number of popular
free software downloads that divert commissions away from sites
actually providing affiliate traffic into the pockets of the
software providers.
The software, known in affiliate circles as thief-ware, pirate-
ware, steal-ware and parasite-ware, is made by close to 20
companies and is used by dozens more. Thief-ware is typically
installed when a user downloads free music or file swapping
software, and the consumer is generally not clearly informed that
by downloading the free software they are allowing their
computers to be electronically marked.
Thief-ware allows future purchases via affiliate links to be
overwritten and makes them appear as if they were made through
the software provider's links when they are not, and it continues
to redirect commissions on all subsequent sales - even if the
software is uninstalled.
Companies who provide the diversion software include Morpheus,
LimeWire, Kazaa, TopMoxie and BearShare among others. The
software has reportedly been downloaded by tens of millions of
Internet surfers, and the makers contend that they're doing
nothing wrong since users agree to their terms when they
download the free software. Amazon.com obviously disagrees with
the practice since they recently terminated Morpheus for
violating its policies - great news for their 800,000+
affiliates. However other large affiliate companies, such as
Commission Junction (cj.com), are so far refusing to take sides
in the battle because the diversion practices have not yet been
found to violate any laws.
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Some of the companies who provide the software, including
LimeWire and Morpheus, say that they have provided "fixes" for
the software so affiliate commissions are not inadvertently
overwritten. The "fixes" supposedly allow users to choose whether
to support their software provider, or in some cases earn a
"rebate" or "reward" for themselves by making purchases through
affiliate links and allowing the links to be overwritten with the
provider's code.
Although the debate over the legality of diverting affiliate
commissions continues, most webmasters who spend a great deal of
time and effort fine-tuning their sites with content to attract
users say the practices are unethical at best, and at worst
outright theft. There is little at this point that webmasters
can do to halt the practice of hijacking commissions altogether,
other than voice their opinions to companies they are affiliated
with and take steps within their own web sites to curb the theft.
To protect the affiliate links in your web site, and stop
commission thieves in their tracks, you can disguise all of your
affiliate links so they appear to be links to other pages
within your site by creating a "redirection URL" for each of
them. To do this, simply create a new web page that looks like
this:
Replace "affiliate_url" with your actual coded affiliate URL,
and remove the periods at the beginning of each line that are
used here for demonstration purposes. Now you will advertise
your disguised affiliate links by directing visitors to your
new URL:
Until there is some kind of consensus and perhaps action taken on
the issue, the best way to fight back against commission
hijackers is to protect your site as best you can, and inform
your affiliate partners of how thief-ware hurts the small
companies and sites that help make the Internet great - and
depend on their affiliate income to survive.
About the Author
S. Denise Hoyle is President and co-founder of
http://affiliatesifter.com, an affiliate directory site devoted
to providing links, news and information of interest to
webmasters and affiliate program managers.
(c) Copyright 2002, S. Denise Hoyle. All Rights Reserved.
