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February 9 2010

Affiliate Tracking ID Cloaker

Written by / Posted in pubcon poker tournament / 11 Comments

I have been spending a lot of time lately learning the affiliate marketing industry. It all started with my famous selling of a Slap Chop. In my talks with big wigs in the affiliate industry both affiliates, and companies, it has been presented as a challenge the fact that when you crack the code on an affiliate offer and get it to back out (be profitable), the affiliate company can get all the info. The problem with this can be that if the affiliate company can see exactly what you are doing, then they have the ability to compete with you on what you found to be successful.

Eric Itzkowitz the famous San Diego Internet Marketer, has been working on a solution for this, if you are sending the user to an intermediary word press landing page, before hitting the final merchants offer page. It Cloaks the Affiliate ID, so you don’t get ripped off.

Eric made a wordpress plugin, easy to install, easy to use, and easy to learn, and free so that you can gather all of the info yourself of what is working, but not let the affiliate company or the merchant get any tracking data.

Here is how it works.

When you are using Google Adwords, you append the destination URL with a ?kw=

This tells google to automatically append the url with the keywords the person was searching for when they hit your ad.

When the customer hits the wordpress landing page, Eric’s plugin, PPC Keyword Tracker, captures the keywords that google passed on to it.

Eric’s plugin randomly assigns a number to that keyword, that is passed on to the affiliate company instead of your real keywords. Eric’s plugin then becomes the decoder to let you take the tracking numbers that converted, and see which keywords they came from.

It looks easy if you are doing testing, and then if you are doing some volume, you can export it in excel to do more complex analysis.

  1. Bryn Youngblut said on February 10th, 2010 at 11:31 am

    DK, have you checked out prosper202 or tracking202? It’s free and does everything you could ever want for tracking your campaigns.

    Reply
  2. Eric Itzkowitz said on February 10th, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Guys, here are just two threads on the Prosper202 Forum. Sadly, it appears that you will need to be a bit more technical than the Average Joe/Jane affiliate marketer to use Prosper202 / Tracking 202 with a WordPress-based blog, landing page, etc. So, for all of the regular folks out there who want an easy tracking solution… (:

    > http://prosper.tracking202.com/forum/11/2/does-anyone-know-how-to-add-lp-tracking-code-to-wordpress

    > http://prosper.tracking202.com/forum/17/26/adding-tracking-codes-to-wordpress

    Reply
  3. Eric Itzkowitz said on February 10th, 2010 at 3:46 pm

    @Eric Itzkowitz:

    After reading a couple of the forum threads for Prosper202, it appears that you will need to be a bit more technical than the Average Joe/Jane affiliate marketer to use Prosper202 / Tracking 202 with a WordPress-based blog, landing page, etc. So, for all of the regular folks out there who want an easy tracking solution… (:

    http://prosper.tracking202.com/forum/search?q=wordpress

    Reply
  4. mike said on February 11th, 2010 at 10:11 am

    Hey Eric, that’s a great plugin you’ve created.

    Even if the aff. company is highly regarded and acts professionally, there’s still a chance that one of their employees could ‘come up’ with an idea to make some extra-money.

    good post dk. nice photo too.

    Reply
  5. Khoa said on February 11th, 2010 at 2:58 pm

    This would probably be a good option for the less tech-savvy marketer as Eric said, but if you want a lot more data, which is practically gold in this industry, using Prosper202 provides you with all kinds of goodies like time of conversion, time of click, and tons more.

    Not here to pimp P202 or anything, just giving my two cents to other marketers out there. Btw, good stuff Eric! Glad to see more quality tools out there being offered to us affiliate marketers for free.

    Reply
  6. Eric Itzkowitz said on February 12th, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    @Khoa:

    Thanks Khoa! Curiously, do you know how to make Prosper202 work with WordPress? I could not find anybody who knew how to do it. Maybe they just have the time to help. I’d love to know.

    Quick thought on the affiliate marketing world… there are far more less experienced (newbies) and/or less technical affiliate marketers than there are savvy ones. As you say, options are wonderful!

    Reply
  7. Eric Itzkowitz said on February 26th, 2010 at 1:43 am

    UPDATE: When storing multiple variables in the Stored Variables field, do not use a space after a comma.

    Wrong: var1, var2, var3

    Right: var1,var2,var3

    Reply
  8. Eric Itzkowitz said on April 29th, 2010 at 4:46 pm

    UPDATE: I am now selling my plug-in via ClickBank and offering a 50% commission to affiliates. There are two options 1) $47 for a single license and $94 for unlimited use license. Friends of DK and myself get unlimited for $47 or free if you promise to do a lil write-up on your blog.

    Reply
  9. SnowBall said on July 17th, 2010 at 4:42 pm

    Sounds like a useful tool. I did not know that affiliate marketers could steal your ideas! That’s no bueno, I’m glad Mr. Itzkowitz has the brains and creativity to come up with something like this. It seems like it’s the easiest to use out there too.

    Reply
  10. flace said on September 10th, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    This is a great tool to have for your own business. You need to protect your business nowadays you never know whom to trust or not. You would not like other people to steal your ideas or projects from you.

    Reply
  11. Eric Itzkowitz said on January 25th, 2011 at 7:28 pm

    DK, sorry for the late comment on what is now an ancient post, but I am now giving my plug-in away for free. Yes, paid versions with a bit more ooomph are available.

    Reply
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