Affiliate websites are ubiquitous these days. Countless webmasters put up referral links in the hopes of cashing in on heavy traffic to their sites. However, the internet browsing-public quickly caught on. When users see affiliate links, they either wonder if the linking company is any good or know for sure that it isn't, leading them to think that the webmaster put the link there just to get a referral bonus. These users proceed to remove the affiliate text from the link (i.e., the "55310" in "www.blahyadablah.com/55310") and sign up as though the affiliate did nothing to refer them to the site. This results in lower profits for the affiliate and a distrustful attitude sown among many users.

If the affiliate link itself is both the pipeline to revenue and the obstacle to revenue, then it ought to be dealt with immediately, the webmasters think. The following are two of the most commonly used tactics for webmasters to conceal their ulterior motives by masking their affiliate status.

1. URL Encoding - With this tactic, the characters in the referral link are encoded with hexadecimal characters, which the browser then reads and translates to regular characters. For instance, "http://microsoft.com" translates to the following: "amp;#104;amp;#116;amp;#116;amp;#112;amp;#58;amp;#47;amp;#47;amp;#109;amp;#105;amp;#99;amp;#114;amp;#111;amp;#115;amp;#111;amp;#102;amp;#116;amp;#46;amp;#99;amp;#111;amp;#109;". Then, the webmaster creates a page within the same server with the same title and content as the affiliate link page, linking to that "fake" page instead of the real affiliate page. The "fake" page is supposed to make the user think the real affiliate page is actually part of your server, even though he/she is directed to the page whose URL you encoded. The user is usually none the wiser.
2. Status Bar Masking - This is quite simple, but not as effective as URL Encoding with the advent of Mozilla Firefox. By using the "onmouseover" command, the webmaster can change the status bar to show an "unaffiliated" link. In IE, this scripting technique works seamlessly, but with Mozilla (a more secure browser to say the least), it falls flat--Mozilla's settings prevent JavaScripts to change status bar text by default. Instead of seeing the "unaffiliated" link in the status bar upon hovering over a link, the user sees nothing. This leads the user to determine where the link goes rather than actually following the link. So, whenever you don't see a URL's destination, check to see if the webmaster employed status bar masking by holding down the left mouse button

There are more complicated ways for webmasters to mask their affiliate status, such as server-side scripting, but the two listed here are the simplest and most commonly employed. If you find out any other ways to accomplish this task, let me know, and I'll do the same if I discover any other ways.

Copyright 2006 The Paid Online Survey Center
(PaidOnlineSurveyCenter.com). All Rights Reserved.

Anthony Serrano

Anthony Serrano is the webmaster of The Paid Online Survey Center. He is a Southern California native, but a New Yorker at heart. He went to an all-boys Catholic high school in California, where he played no sports and contributed to clubs by taking up space on the roster sheet. Enraged and perturbed by the communist theocracy of the aforementioned four-year prison, he nevertheless graduated in the top 10 of his class. With only a few study guides at his disposal, he "tested" well enough to earn a National Merit Scholarship and gained admission to NYU's College of Arts and Science in 2002, graduating there with a B.A. in Economics and Philosophy in just 3.5 years.

He turned down corporate associate positions at Ernst & Young and The Bank of New York in order to become an entrepreneur and have more flexibility in choosing a career path. By harnessing his experience in the financial services industry and his technological know-how, Anthony plans to sell his own brand of customizable personal computers very soon while attending law school.

Anthony runs The Paid Online Survey Center in his spare time as a way to tell people of his interesting yet little-known hobby: completing online surveys for cash and prizes. It is a non-profit website that is operated and maintained primarily for kicks. Any revenue goes to renewing his website domain rights and buying blank DVD-Rs at Fry's when they're on sale.

Also in his spare time, Anthony enjoys training in muay thai/Thai boxing, weightlifting, solving sudoku puzzles, and reading. He rarely watches TV, and he likes to listen to East Coast hip-hop from the '90s. He can't stand improper grammar, bragging/overcompensating, and political bias, but he tolerates White Castle cheeseburgers and Miami Heat losses.