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Originally Posted by PR_Tom
If someone wants to post a sample encryption routine, that'd be cool.
But ultimately, the decrypted URL *must* appear correctly in the clients browser, so I think you can only do so much and then just track click counts as noted above.
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Correct, but the point of putting encrypted links on affiliate pages is to ensure that your own bounce script gets called without getting detoured so affiliates can count their outbound traffic (the bounce can bump a counter and/or the script itself will be seen in the affiliate weblongs).
Then, when the bounce redirects to the public affiliate link, any 'unfriendlyware' taking that traffic to another account will result in the sponsor raw hits being less than outbound hits for the (victimized) affiliate.
It really is time for sponsors to disclose raw/uniques to their affiliates so they can respond to theft of this nature.
But with the recent GFY thread of 1/2 life of cookies which preserve an affiliate's claim to a surfer in the eyes of a sponsor being as short as the lifespan of U92-236, I won't be holding my breathe for sponsors demonstrating more proactiveness.
Throw in cookie stacking/overriding and for many sponsor programs the affiliate is simply promoting the sponsor brand (with all the sponsor domains visibly watermarked) with less and less chance of being rewarded for their marketing efforts (esp. if the surfer decides to type in the sponsor domain the next day and the (if/any) affiliate cookies have crumbled).
I have a growing respect for sponsors who let their affiliates generate ALL the sales - no conflict of interest then. Sponsors can focus on managing their programs and keeping their affiliates honest rather than competing with them.