Protect Your Affiliate Links
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The Web Publishers’ Code of Conduct was created by Commission Junction/Be Free and Performics in December 2002 (and updated in February 2003 and July 2004) to help protect affiliates against badware.
The Code of Conduct is intended to protect affiliates against the redirection of their affiliate links, and the system seems to be working. But there is one aspect of the new standards that you might not know about.
If you redirect your affiliate links through META tags, .htaccess, or any other method, you will need to add a parameter to your links, so that the various adware applications will know not to pop up and take over your link.
All you will have to do is add &afsrc=1 to the end of your affiliate links from Be Free, CJ, or Performics.
According to the Code of Conduct, “This ‘afsrc’ parameter option is provided to address the case where affiliates modify or mask the links provided to them from the affiliate service providers and it becomes impossible to determine that they are affiliate links based on their appearance.”
For example, the a typical affiliate link might look like this:
If we were going to redirect this link, we would add the parameter from the Code of Conduct, and the result would be:
- Posted in Affiliate Tips
Great tip on how to protect one’s affiliate link from getting “replaced” or stolen.
reply to this commentOh my…I wasn’t aware of this. How much does this afflict those that don’t add the parameter but use .htaccess to redirect the affiliate link?
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