Well, you know you can make a lot of money being an affiliate, but sometimes you need some quick cash for your projects or any other needs, so lets consider I need some quick cash for my children : lol, and I need it fast, I am already affiliated with Clickbank and have been promoting products there.  So lets do some sneaky tactics to get cash quickly..

Sometimes, since there are thousands of clickbank affiliates, if anyone likes your Ad / promotional information they will buy the product, but what they normally do is go and buy that product through their own affiliate link OR use their friend’s affiliate link, even if they first found that product through your website or your Ad, now thats what I hate most, been promoting a product and at the end someone else gets the affiliate commission. Ok, here comes the cookie stuffing rule

What you do is create a page for that specific product, and while linking to that product (clickbank link) dont use your hop link, this will make the person think that you are not even affiliated with clickbank. So now what we are doing it stuffing our cookie while the person is reading details, how ? The simple redirect cookie stuffing method with .htaccess Cool I can gurantee you will see a lot of increase in your commission. There is always risk involved in cookie stuffing, but I dont see any problems here since you are getting credit for putting the information and making a promotional page for that specific credit. So good luck !

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This is a post related to the previous post about ‘what is cookie stuffing‘. The most commonly used used methods are:

1. Using Javascript
2. Using iFrames
3. PHP Header redirect
4. .htaccess and redirect pages
5. With HTML Object
6. Exploiting Browser’s security flaws

Cookie Stuffing with Javascript

 There are tons of methods that can be used for cookie stuffing with Javascript. You can cloak the affiliate link and open it on your page, or open a popup in a new window and redirect user to your affiliate link, there are tons of scripts to open a popup from your page, however its less effective since people have installed popup blockers, here is the code to open popup

<script language=”javascript”>
window.open(‘YOUR Affiliate Link‘,’myWindow’,'width=300, height=300, toolbar=NO, resizable=YES’);
</script>

Its a good idea to drop your own cookie at the same time to see if that user has already been stuffed, if so, then do not open any more popups.

 <script>
<!– Begin
//Pop-under window - javascriptkit.com
var popunderSpaFinder=”http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=OEu024dtHXs&offerid=47053.10000304&type=3 &subid=0″
var winfeatures=”width=780,height=580,scrollbars=1,res izable=1,toolbar=1,location=1,menubar=1,status=1,d irectories=0″

var once_per_session=1

function get_cookie(Name) {
var search = Name + “=”
var returnvalue = “”;
if (document.cookie.length > 0) {
offset = document.cookie.indexOf(search)
if (offset != -1) { // if cookie exists
offset += search.length
// set index of beginning of value
end = document.cookie.indexOf(”;”, offset);
// set index of end of cookie value
if (end == -1)
end = document.cookie.length;
returnvalue=unescape(document.cookie.substring(off set, end))
}
}
return returnvalue;
}

function loadornot(){
if (get_cookie(’popunderSpaFinder’)==”){
loadpopunderSpaFinder()
document.cookie=”popunderSpaFinder=yes”
}
}

function loadpopunderSpaFinder(){
win2=window.open(popunderSpaFinder,”",winfeatures)
win2.blur()
window.focus()
}

if (once_per_session==0)
loadpopunderSpaFinder()
else
loadornot()
// End –>
</script>

Javascript Link Cloaking

This means obfuscating your affiliate link with some javascript, for example if your affiliate link is something like http://youraffiliate.com/id.php?id=1then after obfuscation it will look like “23X34Fx33×65″ (this is just assumption of the code, you may search many javascript obfuscation / link cloaking scripts online, this is also good enough because you can change the statusbar which hides your affiliate link.

Javascript Meta Refresh

One of the good method that also hides HTTP_REFERER is meta refresh method in which you make a separate page that redirects that page to affiliate page while keeping the referrer as “blank” so you can hide your source of traffic, here it is

<META HTTP-EQUIV=”REFRESH” CONTENT=”1;URL=http://AffiliateLink.com”>

Another way for stuffing cookies can be using the Javascript Blur Method.

Using iFrames

IFrame is quite an old method but it still works, but keep in mind it is one of the methods that have maximum ban rate and easily detectable. But the good thing is that you can get the referrer you want, I mean if you are showing affiliate manager that you traffic is coming from http://abc.com but you are sending them traffic from http://xyz.comthen it will display affiliate manager that all traffic is coming from abc.com by using an iFrame on xyz.com in which you open a php file e.g. http://www.abc.com/aff.phpthis aff.php file is automatically redirected to the affiliate link. But some people say that what if the affiliate manager directly checks aff.php, it will be redirected to affiliate link so you will get banned certainly, but there is one solution to this as well, you can do this by checking the referrer of the opener (the file that is opening the iFrame, if the referrer is not that domain, then simply show something else on that page otherwise redirect the page to affiliate link. Below is the iFrame code

<iframe src =”http://yourAffiliateLink.com” width=1 height=1></iframe>

PHP Methods

Use header redirect to redirect the page   

header(’Location: http://youraffiliatelink.com’);

The problem with this and many other functions is that it works very well, but using the image tag method, it does not change the referrer so it is still not a fool proof method.

While stuffing images with image tag, its always good idea to stuff an with image that doesn’t exist and then redirect that to a php file that has the code to redirect to affiliate link. For example you link to an image like http://www.yoursite.com/image.jpgand that image doesn’t exist, but you post this link everywhere, then you have something like this in your .htaccess file

Redirect /image.jpg http://www.yoursite.com/affiliate_redirect.php

 While stuffing in your own site, you can hide the image with setting image withing a hidden layer, e.g. <div id=”ryan” style=”display:none;”> put your image here </div>.

I will not discuss the other methods that I have mentioned here because of some limitations. So you can aways google and find our answers. I will post another article to avoid a few things to be on the safe side.

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Well, this topic has been hot in all times, but since its illegal and can make some serious money in no time, every newbie and every person tries it at any stage and some methods are still hidden in the dark rooms of many top marketing or blackhat forums. Before I continue to tell you all about cookie stuffing, I must clarify a few things,

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purpose only, this may help any newbie who are finding a way to some instant cash / ban from affiliate networks, depending on how greedy he is, and also help the affiliate networks to improve their system to catch such activities. 

Cookie stuffing is a method of dropping an affiliate cookie into user’s computer (cookie jar) transparently or without user knowing what is going on behind the scenes. Lets consider an example to explain it a bit in depth, e.g. you are affiliated with eBay and they have given you an affiliate link, which you can post on your websites to promote their products, if anyone clicks that (affiliate) link, a cookie is dropped on that user’s computer which tracks that specific user was referred to eBay by you (affiliate), so if the user makes a purchase you get commission, so simple. But while doing it with cookie stuffing, user is not clicking any links but at the same time cookie is dropped on his computer and if he makes any purchase you get commission. Evil !

Before I tell you more about it, the methods, the precautions, how to keep yourself under the radar etc, here are a few frequently asked questions you must know before reading any further:

Is cookie stuffing legal ?
No. Cookie stuffing is illegal and if any affiliate network finds out what you are doing, you will get banned for sure very quickly. Yes, it can be legal only if the affiliate network or the merchant mutually agrees and allows you to do so, which I don’t think you will ever get such a nice offer. LOL !

Can I get banned from an affiliate network by doing so ?
Yes. The affiliate networks are very strict about this method, and before releasing your funds, most of the times they verify each source of incoming traffic and verify all sites. But if you are lucky enough and under the radar you will get your check.

Should I try cookie stuffing ?
Well, as I have previously mentioned in my blog’s disclaimer that you are solely responsible for your activities and free to do whatever you want. I know hundreds of people get caught and banned but I know a couple of individuals who received that 5 figure checks from this method as well. So that’s up to you. I will not be held responsible if this information may cause any damage to you or to the affiliate network.

Will I give all the information, methods and tactics used for cookie stuffing ?
No. Honestly, it can be dangerous to give out all the methods and ready-to-use code to newbies or even the advance blackhatters that may cause serious damage to any affiliate networks. However I will generally talk about the methods that are being used and provide some live examples.

Ok, so how can one drop cookies on user’s computer without him clicking through the link. Well, there are hundreds of methods to do so, I will probably pick a couple of methods that are powerful to some extent. So here are a few

A few of methods for dropping affiliate cookie on user’s computer

1. Using Javascript
2. Using iFrames
3. PHP Header redirect
4. .htaccess and redirect pages
5. With HTML Object
6. Exploiting Browser’s security flaws

I will be giving more details about these methods in my next cookie stuffing series of articles because if I start writing about these methods in one article, I think it will become very long and boring as well.

What an Affiliate Manager would be looking for to detect you ?
Ths is very important question,  I am not an affiliate manager, however I can think if I was running an affiliate network and how I would catch such activities. I will check for

1. Source of traffic
2. Source code of that page
3. $_SERVER (all the environmental variables i.e. http referrer, request_uri, users’ ip address, time, host ip address etc)
4. Click though rate (total number of impressions and clicks)
5. Add more please in comments that you can think off..

What you (cookie stuffer) should take care of ?

1. Take care of $_SERVER variables
2. Balance the CTR (impressions and clicks)
3. Do not go crazy/greedy, just do it systematically, less is more..
4. Target the right places rather than cookie stuffing every page of your website
5. Stuff cookie per unique visitor

Ok, thats it for now, I have got some guests around, so I will probably go out for 4-5 hours and then go to bed. I will continue this series of cookie stuffing articles by unleashing some more facts and the methods that blackhatters use. So happy reading…

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