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How To Mitigate The Impact Of An Affiliate Bottom Feeder

If there is one thing that annoys me more than any other working online it would have to be the bottom feeder scumbags that copy my affiliate sites.

Just a couple weeks ago I was analyzing some numbers for a newish campaign that had been completely rocking.  All of the sudden I noticed a small but significant conversion rate dip.  With a bit of research I found the reason.  A bottom feeding POS had decided to reproduce everything on my site and tweak it just enough that it wasn’t an exact copy.  By “tweak” I mean mix up a few sentences, change the color and make the logo fit his domain.  Literally a 98% copy.  In addition to that he decided to run my exact Adwords copy on all my keywords.  Needless to say duplicate ad copy for the same keywords with a close to mirror site is going to lower my conversion rate.

I’m well aware of the saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but it honestly does nothing for me.  I literally despise non-imaginative people that stoop to copying other because they can’t come up with an original idea.  Regardless of how much it needles me though I do understand that it is part of the game.

To avoid writing a book here I’m not going to go into what my response is to such an action.  Instead I’m going to give you all a few tips on how to contain this issue to just one site.  You see, if this guy rips my site and turns a profit it is only natural that he is going to try and find more of my work and coat tail it as well.   That’s not going to happen.

How To Mitigate the Impact of an Affiliate Bottom Feeder
So what I want to do here is give you some tips to ensure affiliate scum don’t spread to your entire network of sites.  As you may know there are numerous ways to find domains and sites a person is associated with.  Some of the information points that can be traced include your:

• whois email address
• whois name or company name
• name servers
• site ip address

Your hosting provider and domain registrar can also be used to aid in tracking your holdings.

So, as you all do a reverse look up on this domain over at domaintools.com I can tell you that you won’t find anything I don’t want you to know about.  You can probably figure out that my name is attached to well over 5,000 domains but you’re not going to find my affiliate money makers.   How can I be so confident of that?  Let’s take a look.

Covering Your Affiliate Tracks
Here are a list of tips you can use to ensure an affiliate bottom feeder doesn’t rip your entire network.

1. Use Private Registration
I realize many of you probably don’t like the idea of private registrations but it is very effective as it takes the email and name tracing out of the picture.  If you really don’t want to use private registration I’d suggest using a slightly different name (middle name?) and a different email address for your whois info.

2.  Use Different Hosting Accounts
This is probably the most important point.  Instead of having all your sites on a dedicated server or VPS use a separate hosting account for each of your affiliate sites.  I recommend Media Temple, Yahoo or MidPhase.  The key here is keeping the name servers and IP address unique.

3. Don’t Link To Your Other Affiliate Sites
I realize there is temptation to cross promote and pass link juice but don’t do it.  They will find it.

4. Use Multiple Domain Registrars
This one is pretty paranoid but I do it anyway.  The domain registrar isn’t a point of direct tracing but it is information that can lead to more information.  I literally have domains at more than 10 registrars.

Taking the time to ensure your information tracks are covered will keep your hard work as safe as possible and save you from a lot more frustration.

Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 2 Comments »

Best of the Web Affiliate Program Does it Right

On the heels of my cookie tracking concerns with IE8 and my call for more cookieless affiliate tracking I’d like to point out a program that does it right.

The Best of the Web offers an affiliate program for their product that uses a direct link referral based tracking method.  This method is easily the best way run an affiliate program today because it not only eases some of the affiliate tracking concerns but it also gets the program direct links with juice (assuming people like me don’t nofollow them).

As an affiliate used to long string parameter links the idea is a little head scratching when you first see your affiliate url is a direct link.  In reality the method couldn’t be much simpler.  All you have to do is claim a site you’d like to promote from and you’re set.  This is done by verifying ownership through a meta tag or file upload similar to Google’s Webmaster Tools.  Once your site is claimed all tracking is done via click-through referrals which means the affiliate doesn’t have to worry about any cookie stealing or blocking.  Easy enough right?

Affiliate Managers please take note.

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, SEO | 4 Comments »

The Affiliate In Me Is Not Liking IE8

Microsoft currently has its IE8 browser in Beta 2 and available for download.  While MS does seem to have made some changes for the better regarding how IE handles CSS the one feature that really sticks out to me is a new addition called InPrivate Browsing.  The idea is that if turned on a user can browse without storing cookies, history, temp files and other identifying data.

The cookie thing is simply not cool from an affiliate perspective.  There is no doubt affiliate programs need to implement more cookieless methods to track affiliates but I think it is going to take a good amount of time to see such changes.  Unless there is an outcry from the affiliate community merchants don’t have all that much motivation to initiate a change.  After all, when traffic comes without cookies commissions aren’t paid.

Looks like a bit of a rough patch is ahead.

Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 1 Comment »