WARNING: Link Cloakers are Costing you Aff. Commissions! (IE8 Cookie problem)

April 22nd, 2010 | 15 comments

cloaker problem with ie8 A few days ago I released my new link cloaker, which is the only cloaker on the market that I know of, which beats the IE8 cookie problem.

I’ve received ALOT of very positive feedback from users and many affiliate marketers are already seeing increased commissions after user CleverCloaker. Actually, they are probably generating the SAME amount of commissions as before, but NOW they’re getting proper credit for them all.

However, I’m also getting one question over and over again. A question that I should have answered in the beginning, but didn’t. That question is basically:

What exactly is the problem with Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and affiliate cookies?

The problem actually started with IE6, when Microsoft decided to start implementing P3P policy measures. However, with IE6 many cloakers were able to overcome the issue, so few commissions were lost.

With Firefox, Safari, Chrome and most other browsers cloakers still work just fine, but the problem is that something like 80% or more of all browser usage comes from IE! So chances are, at least 80% of the people clicking on your affiliate links are using IE and most of them are using IE8.

With IE8 came more strict P3P standards, which made it virtually impossible to get an affiliate cookie set from a cloaked link on a user’s system if the end user is using IE8.

Most affiliate link cloakers available today use different techniques to get affiliate cookies to work, but with IE8 they just don’t work. From 1px X 1px images trying to set the cookie to frames and iframes, cookies just aren’t set. Even using the recommended P3P Policy and compact headers, which although gave little success in IE7, just don’t seem to help with IE8.

In our testing SOME cloakers did effectively set cookies for SOME affiliate links, depending on the affiliate network etc. Some defeat one or two of the P3P measures, but none defeat ALL of them meaning that some claokers will effectively set a cookie for, say ClickBank for example, but not for, say HostGator for example. That is until now!

CleverCloaker is the ONLY affiliate link cloaker on the market today, that I know of (until others copy it, which won’t take long) that effectively set every affiliate cookie we tried during testing (and we tested it with all of the major affiliate networks.)

So whether you use CleverCloaker to cloak your affiliate links or not, I hope you take this post VERY seriously if you are currently using a Cloaker, because chances are you’re LOSING COMMISSIONS AS I TYPE THIS!

If you would like to give CleverCloaker a try, just visit http://www.CleverCloaker.com/ (It’s FREE)

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15 comments

Jonathan Beebe
23rd April, 2010 at 12:53 am

Thanks Josh for the clarification! I was one of the people who originally asked on the forums about what exactly IE was doing (the day you sent released CleverCloaker actually).

It’s a real shame that IE is the standard out there, but I think the percentage is getting smaller each year (thankfully)… but I think your cloaker is a great idea even if IE8 wasn’t nuking cookies!

For anyone who hasn’t tried it, get it now! It’s easy to set up because of the included instructions, and once you get in it’s a breeze. The interface is simple, easy to navigate, and VERY straight forward.

The ability to track your clicks is also a HUGE plus… I can tell this is going to go far at least in the Clickbank affiliate world.

Great job once again Josh!
Ajith
23rd April, 2010 at 8:31 am

Josh,

Will I also stand to lose commissions if I get to use meta refresh or redirect a link from a folder on my site to an affiliate link?

Something like domainname.com/recommends

Ajith
Angie Berg (45 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 9:34 am

I have to admit that I never cloak my links, so I suppose IE isn’t an issue with standard affiliate links.

Do you think cloaking links is really necessary when it comes to non IM related niches.

Before I got involved in affiliate marketing I had no idea there even were such things as affiliate links, so I never noticed if a link was cloaked or not.

Angie
Alex (4 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 9:35 am

Josh, what the heck is “implementing P3P policy measures”?

Never heard of it!

I’m still using a cloaker that produces a redirect page – is that affected by these browser changes?
cathy (1 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 9:36 am

Josh,

I had no clue that this was ever a problem. I’m a Mac user so I never really use IE anyway. But it pays (literally!) to remember that plenty of people DO use IE.

So I’ll go get the free cloaker.

Thanks for this post.
Edwin (2 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 11:11 am

I asume you are talking about cloakers using javascript as when you use a php redirect where the actual url is stored in a database that still works. Would be strange if it didn’t as it would mean that the actual affiliate url wouldn’t work

Edwin
Bob (1 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 12:10 pm

On several of my website I note that MS Internet Explorer usage ranges from around 20% to 60%. Your figure of 85% is probably a little high. So, I’m not sure IE is the “standard” any more.

I also am not really understanding what P3P policy measures are all about. Maybe you could explain a bit more about exactly what is not working and why.
Linda (20 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 12:21 pm

Thanks for making us aware of the probs with IE8 and the cookies situation. That cloaker sounds like the ticket – couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
dave
23rd April, 2010 at 12:56 pm

is this an issue even if you use a redirect from your own domain to the clickbank sales page?
Maurice | TheCaymanHost (8 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 2:26 pm

To clarify things a little – the cloaking method that causes problems is the use of frames. If you are using a straight php redirect you won’t encounter a problem, but such redirects are probably the least secure as well.

With frames, IE will reject any cookies that come from a different domain to that shown in the browser’s address bar if they do not have a compact third party privacy policy.

In theory networks like CJ or Clickbank who do have such a policy should be OK but in practice, it’s not always the case. If you are using frames, as many link cloakers do, you might want to check those links to ensure your cookies are being set.
Renae (2 comments.)
23rd April, 2010 at 2:33 pm

Josh,

I use php redirects on wordpress sites and create a separate redirect page on some other sites. Does this problem apply with redirects?
Josh Spaulding
23rd April, 2010 at 6:31 pm

To those of you who respectfully commented about my guestimate of 80% IE usage (notice “…something like 80% which means it’s a guess) and to the a**hole who left a very inappropriate comment calling me a liar, which got his email reported to Akismet as spam, you’re forgetting that different niches have different user demographics. Some niches like marketing and tech related niches naturally have higher FireFox and Google Chrome usage, but the average, everyday internet users are about 80% IE users in my experience.

Thanks for the response, Maurice! That should answer the other questions above.
Josh Spaulding
23rd April, 2010 at 6:36 pm

P3P – http://www.w3.org/P3P/P3FAQ.html
Maurice | TheCaymanHost (8 comments.)
24th April, 2010 at 1:08 am

It is a fact that the majority of internet users are still using IE6, 7 and 8, for the simple reason that it comes installed with their OS (Mac users notwithstanding and many people don’t even think of an alternative – some are probably not even aware there are any alternatives! 80% or 51%, it’s not really the point – I’d say the a*****e is the person who dismisses a good free tool in favor of being pedantic.

Sure, the tech and marketing crowd are far more likely to be using a decent browser and if you only want to sell to Firefox users don’t worry about it.

Bottom line is this – I paid good money for two advanced link cloaking scripts and Josh is now offering one for free. If I didn’t have my own scripts in place already, I’d certainly have already adopted Clever Cloaker.

Using a script to cloak your links saves you oodles of time, makes it easy to organize, track and alter any links from one admin panel and is worth using for those reasons alone. One of the key components of a good tool is its ability to save you time and make life easier.

I’ve written about cloaking at length over on my blog if anyone is interested and discussed all forms of redirects – if you read some of those posts you’ll probably want to come back and get CC once you understand the pitfalls and problems of different methods of redirection, because although I recommend two very good cloaking tools, neither of them come in at the price point you’re being offered here.
Truth About Abs Package
3rd May, 2010 at 12:58 pm

The CleverCloaker sounds like a good deal. You know what they say, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” I’m glad you decided to take this on and thank you for providing it for free to the rest of us.