Adware Can Steal Your Sales!

It seems there is always something new to be learned when you're doing internet marketing and today I want to share some things I learned just this week. (Actually I want to rant about it but instead I'll just give you the facts.)

Now you should already know about affiliate commission hijackers and how they can steal your affiliate commissions by replacing your affiliate link with their own when they buy something. And of course you already know that you should be using an affiliate link cloaker when you post or email your affiliate link.

Recently I received some information from DiscovercPanel.com that I want to share with you because:

1. This is something all affiliates need to know.
   
2. I know 1 way it's done.

First - The Information

Subject: before you install those cute smileys I was just on the Warrior Forum browsing through all the posts that I'd missed and I came across one that really struck my eye. The title was about how your Clickbank commissions get stolen. Now I know probably 90% of the tricks that are used but something made me click through to see what all the fuss was about and I soon realized that this was not your typical person bypassing an affiliate link or replacing their affiliate id with yours. Instead, it was something that is NEVER talked about and is very common yet no one, not even Clickbank is able to stop it. It's adware. Commonly known as spyware, but adware is cleverly disguised as your cute little avatars, smileys, and even free games. I can go on and on. It's estimated 30-50 million computers in the US are silently infected with adware. Watch this video, it's not my video but I had to show you exactly how this stuff works, watch the video below http://www.keywordthinktank.com/public/adware/clickbank_adware.html

Although the video is not the best quality, I hope you took the time to watch it because it shows how some use adware to rob honest and hard working affiliates by stealing their traffic and sales.

Second - How It's Done

Before I give you some information on how it's done let me stress that this is a method that I find totally dishonest and recommend that you never, ever do it.

As you know there are many sites that offer free downloads for things like greeting cards, music, games, smilies, etc. Some, not all, some of these sites embed adware in the code you must download to use the freebies they offer on their site. This adware may cause popups to appear for no reason, change your homepage, change your search engine default, etc.

And while most would think it is always the user of the infected PC who is the 1 to suffer from the ill affects of the adware, that is not always the case.

I recently bought a product from a site with this headline ...

LEGALLY ROB YOUR COMPETITORS BLIND!

STEAL THEIR SURFERS & TRAFFIC WHILE PUTTING THEIR MONEY IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT

And I must admit I was very curious about how one could legally steal surfers and traffic.

My first clue that this method of getting sales was not totally legal came from the disclaimer as shown below...

And what was contained in this product? It contained the instructions for setting up advertising campaigns on a site that offers free downloads, has adware embedded in the downloads and uses that adware to do what was shown in the video. You can read all about this site on Wikipedia.

Now I am not going to tell you how to set up an advertising campaign on this site nor will I tell you the name of the product I bought because I don't think this type of information is of any real value except to know that it does exist and that it currently affects those affiliates selling big name ClickBank items, those buying Pay Per Click search engine traffic for popular terms and possibly many others. And according to the product I bought, there is no way to know if you're losing traffic or sales to adware users and there is currently no good way to protect yourself.

So what can we do about these affiliate commission hijackers?

1. Use some good anti-spyware, adware and virus software to keep your machine clean.


2. Avoid downloads except from trusted sites and if you notice your machine performing strangely after a download - clean your machine immediately.


3. Do not support this type of unethical business conduct by putting adware on site visitors machines or by supporting a company that does.

Remember. even though the number of people who have downloaded this type of affiliate commission hijacking adware is in the millions, they still account for very little of the total internet traffic. And while you may be losing some of your traffic and sales to these hijackers, you must keep going forward and not spend your time stressing about things you can't control.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think about affiliate commission hijackers or this form of stealing.

Tags: affiliate commission hijacking, adware