Widget for hiding an affiliate site cookie on your blog

August 29 th

Widget for hiding an affiliate site cookie on your blog

Posted by Andy Bailey

2,430 views

I made another widget! I had a hard few hours trying to figure out why my last widget wasn’t saving it’s options, I had to go through every single bit of code to figure it out and it turns out that I had missed an equals sign! just a piddly little character can throw a spanner in the works!

Now I know whats up, I can churn out widgets left, right and center!

Here’s my latest one…

It’s called GetCookie, it’s a widget that can’t be seen.
Just input your affiliate site URL into the options and save. The widget will add a hidden layer to the html and load the affiliate site in the background without the user knowing.

What’s the point? hehe, the point being ;

If someone visits this blog, they will receive the cookie my affiliate site sends when a user surfs there via my affiliate link. They can then go off and carry on surfing, if they come across the site without an affiliate link (ie. if they search Google for the product and click through direct to the company url from the results shown) then the affiliate site will think that they came through my link because of the cookie they got when they visited my blog.

The widget obfuscates the code so someone looking at the source wont be able to see the call to the affiliate page. (the previous post about decoding bin2hex gives a hint at the obfuscation code)

Here’s the options on the widget:

Get Cookie options

I only wrote it for myself so I didn’t have to manually put the code into the template code. You can download it here:

GetCookie Widget

Download and extract file, upload getcookie.php into your plugins directory and activate it. You can then see “get cookie” in your widgets tray, drag it to your sidebar and click the options icon to add your affiliate url (as above) and you should be good to go.

I’ve tested it with a few different affiliate links in Firefox and it worked. If you have any problems with it, let me know. Note: if your affiliate site has a break frames function on it’s page then this widget wont behave.

If your affiliate company finds out you’re using a method like this then you’ll probably be banned!!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Category : Wordpress

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Comments

valmg (1 comments.) October 11, 2007

Hi Andy.
neat idea.
do you know if several different affiliate codes can be loaded into this?
Thanks.

valmg’s last blog post..This email made me laugh

Andy Bailey October 11, 2007

I suppose it could be adapted like the text widget so there can be more than one on a page, I’ll look into after I update Commentluv and make my new QR code widget…

LGR (2 comments.) October 24, 2007

You do realize this is called cookie stuffing and it is against the rules of most, if not all, affiliate programs. It will get you kicked out of the programs and your cash will be gone.

LGR’s last blog post..One Week Left

Webhostingpad Coupon February 28, 2008

Hi, this is a nice plugin, so I would like to say thanks.

Anyway, this will increase your affiliate sales but do you know that this might make your affiliate account get banned? If anyone wanna use this plugin, play this with your own risk.

Andy Bailey February 28, 2008

I made it as a proof of concept, I don’t actually use it on any of my sites.
One legitimate use of it is if you want to link to the base url of your affiliate company from your blog. having the cookie already download means you can link out without your affiliate link and the site will still know the link came from you

LD (1 comments.) March 3, 2008

I’ve been following the cookie stuffing discussions over at a few blackhat forums and followed one thread were the thread starter shared his journey with an amazon stuffing campaign. On day 7, he got banned. I am unwilling to risk my accounts so I won’t dabble in that. I guess the ultimate problem is that your CTR vs. your impressions will be off and the second an aff manager notices the parity, they’ll investigate. Even if they can’t find the cookie, they will still have discretion to cancel your account for suspicious activity.

I’m still on the fence about the legitimacy. This was never a legal issue. Ultimately, I think it’s less about making money off the aff networks and more about screwing up competition between publishers.

In any event, commendable work. Why don’t you give it a go on a site and see if you get picked up? (Make it a network you don’t care about.)

Andy Bailey March 4, 2008

LD : you are correct, any glance at the disparity between impressions versus click thru rate will be easy to notice. it’s why I am not using it myself. It was a fun little widget to make though!

thanks for your input.

patrick6411 (1 comments.) March 6, 2008

I think I will play with this widget a little bit. I promote a lot of porn and think this might be something that I may can make good use of. Yes this can be considered cookie stuffing but it can also be used for other productive uses.

Please let me know if you are going to modify this widget to allow more the one affl link. Thank you and great widget!!!

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Charles (1 comments.) May 7, 2008

I would like you to change it to where multiple links can be put in…that would be amazing. This plugin is great for Amazon.

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Webhostingpad Coupon (2 comments.) May 10, 2008

I just received an email from my friend stat that he get banned from ebay. Really no luck on co*okie st*uffing.

Webhostingpad Coupons last blog post..Webhostingpad Coupon - $3.96 Per Month And Free 6 Months Hosting

SEO Training Mumbai (1 comments.) July 4, 2008

I liked the idea of your plugin, but I know that cookie stuffing is against the TOS of most affiliate programs and people using this tool may lose their affiliate commissions and even get banned. This kind of tool may work only if you could stuff a cookie on only that page of the blog which has some information for a related product and the cookie is set only at random intervals - it is kind of blackhat technique.

Internet Marketing (2 comments.) July 4, 2008

Nice work buddy , well its is getting more necessary for the webmasters who are running there own blogs , its quite hard to save your blogs from spawmmers the first reason there are so fast and the secound they are so many …

Mike (1 comments.) July 14, 2008

Would it be possible to randomise the widget so that it only stuffs like 1 in 10 visitors or rotates the link that it stuffs? I think this would be a better way to stay under the radar.

Celeb (1 comments.) July 27, 2008

I havent had any trouble using this widget.
Its just great.

If you are concerned about your clicktrough ratio, just buy some cheap traffic and send it all to the link.

Celebs last blog post..Heather Locklear Has Left Rehab.

Rohan (1 comments.) August 22, 2008

Dont u think u will get banned by using this kind of stuff?

Rohans last blog post..Digg integration in the Flock Browser

abansb August 28, 2008

this widget does not hide the referrer I just tried it and it does not it shows the referrer as my blog

Andy Bailey October 15, 2008

rohan: I don’t use it myself, it was one of my first plugins to see if I could do it. using it will probably get you banned from an affiliate program!

abansb: it’s not supposed to change the referer.

Jenn (1 comments.) October 21, 2008

Thanks for such an important articles about coupon. This is a very needed info about online coupon, free coupon etc.
Jenn

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