John Chow posted today his “evil affiliate marketing trick of the day“, allowing you to get credit for sales even if your visitor doesn’t actively click on an affiliate link.
John writes:
The problem … is you still need to get the reader to the affiliate site in order to set the cookie. Here’s an evil way to do that without requiring the reader to click on anything.
Embedding The Cookie With An IFrame
The problem is that you need the user to actually click on an affiliate link?
What are you hoping to get paid for if not for referring a visitor?
He goes on to boast in his post that you, the reader, have been sneakily cookied with an affiliate tracking code by his hidden iframe.
Now I can say, “Hey! Check out AuctionAds and make money online†without using my affiliate code in the link URL and I would still get credit for signing you up because I’ve already opened the AuctionAds home page with my affiliate ID in this post. Can you find it?
John, this is soooo 6 years ago. It’s called cookie stuffing and it’ll get you kicked out of just about every affiliate network and program out there.
This is covered in most terms of use and service agreements that the networks have in place. For example, from the Publisher Code of Conduct in use by both Commission Junction and Performics:
Non End-User Initiated Events. Publishers may not use invisible methods to generate non End-User initiated impressions, clicks, or transactions. All click (“Clickâ€) events must be initiated by an affirmative End-User action.
And from Linkshare’s Terms:
4.2 Valid Referrals Only. You will place or use qualified links of a Network Merchant only with the intention of delivering valid sales, leads, applications, accounts, clicks or other specified compensable tracked activities for the benefit of such Network Merchant. You may not, nor knowingly permit any person to, activate a qualifying link or inflate the amount of any sought-after or resulting tracked activities through any method or technology that does not actually deliver an end user to the destination Site associated with such qualifying link.
In fact, according to an update that John provided on his post, it looks like his actions got him kicked from the AuctionAds program.
Be careful with this advice. And as usual, if it seems wrong, it probably is.
