If you are in a popular affiliate program with lots of products you probably have some concerns about other affiliates stealing your commissions.

For example, one of the most popular affiliate programs is Clickbank. When someone creates a digital product (or has resale rights to a product) they can list it in the Clickbank marketplace. As a Clickbank affiliate, you can advertise that product and earn a commission when someone buys the product through your link.

You can sell Clickbank products using a link like this:

http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net

You would replace "AFFILIATE" with your Clickbank name and replace "PUBLISHER" with the Clickbank name of the product creator.

But, when another Clickbank affiliate wants the product you are advertising, they can simply replace your Clickbank name with theirs and order the product. You will lose the commission and they will gain the commission.

It's in your best interest to try to prevent another affiliate from stealing your commission. One way to do this is to make it difficult for a purchaser to recognize your affiliate link. Here are a couple of ways to hide your affiliate links so they are less detectable as affiliate links.


== Hide the Link in the Status Line ==

At the bottom of your browser is a status line that typically displays the URL of the link your mouse hovers over. A Clickbank or other affiliate link will be obvious. You can prevent the URL from being displayed on the status line. This can be done from within the HTML code of the link itself.

Here, nothing will be displayed when hovering over the link. (Brackets are substituted for less than and greater than signs.)

[a href="http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net" onmouseover="window.status='';return true" onmouseout="window.status='';return true"]Link text or image[/a]

You can display a message on the status line (even a false URL) by entering text between the single quote marks after the onmouseover statement.


== Convert URLs to Numeric Ampersand Code ==

With this technique, the entire URL is encoded in ASCII numerics. The letter “h” is equivalent to "h", and so on. The generic Clickbank URL above becomes:

http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net

In the status bar, this looks like a nightmare that only a computer geek could love.

You can convert your affiliate links to numeric ampersand code at:

http://www.thatswise.com/free/tools/cloak_link.html

Just enter your affiliate URL on the first line, click Generate, and copy the encoded URL where you want the link on your page.

== Summary ==

Protect your affiliate commissions by hiding your affiliate links from easy viewing in the status line or converting them to numeric ampersand code. Preventing commission theft is both safe and easy.