Masking CCBILL links = BAD IDEA?
 

So i have blog that is #1 on google for a particular solo shemale performers name, its not a highly competitive term but number #1 nonetheless. It was weird to me that i only made to 2 sale with this site for an entire year. So i looked at my links. I use the pretty link pro plugin for wordpress to mask most affiliate links. I only counted the uniques to each particular link. The sponsor im pretty sure has multiple redirects enabled. What i found was that i had 5000+ unique clicks on the pretty links and only 2700 counted links in ccbill. In addition to the pretty links i also leave some ccbill links unmasked like banners under the gallery or video, so the total click amount should be more than 5000+ correct? If someone can show me where im looking at this incorrect i would appreciate it, but it looks like i shouldnt be masking ccbill links...oh and i promote around 50 ccbill sponsors :(

Hmm this could be bad (or good) news.

I mask ALL of my links as well across all the sites I promote, I have always wondered if my method mess up the original affiliate URLs.

I do not use pretty links or any other plugin for this.

Will keep an eye on this thread and see what comes out of it.

thoughts?

All Bots don't accept all redirects so some never make it to ccbill.

do these plugins/masked links act as redirects? (i dont use them) there are plenty of redirect blocker browser options and plugins out there

also would determine how the plugin counts a unique (cookie? ip?) as cookie blocking or proxy may cause undetermined clicks to be counted as unique

Theoretically short links should work better but in reality some people and or bots bail on redirect.

Shortened links can be more effective to control your traffic in case you want to swap links out though.

hmm interesting and if almost half are not making it i have a serious issue...

Bots dude, fake clicks. :2 cents:

Pretty link has a standard forwarding parameter so when i enter a nats link the parameters in the standard syntax for example the pretty link http://yoururl.com/coollink?product_id=4&sku=5441 will forward to the target URL and append the same parameters like so: http://anotherurl.com?product_id=4&sku=5441.

However that doesnt seem to work with the ccbill links, so i dont enable it and just use normal redirect.

maybe the url after &HTML= is confusing the plugin. might not be coded to determine which url is the one to send parameters too.

definitely sounds like your redirects are getting snuffed. by bots or people is what you need to figure out.

I have never had a problem with masked links myself...

i here ya, im looking at cystats and statcounter and seeing similar discrepancies though...

The difference in stats or click-thrus could just be that your system and CCBill's count differently.

If CCBill accepts that a unique is only recounted after twelve hours but yours recounts after six, you could be seeing double the number of clicks on yours than in theirs.

Are you counting raws or uniques?

:D

i see what your saying i rather be safe than sorry...and i only look at uniques