This is a little trick that can be used to make thousands of dollars a month driving traffic to simple review pages for affiliate products. It is almost too simple to take seriously, but try it and see for yourself.
Cookie stuffing doesn’t always have to be against the terms of service. I constantly get permission from merchants to cookie stuff my link on my own pages.
The bottom line is that you are spending time and money to get potential customers to your landing page/affiliate link, so therefore, if they buy, you deserve the commission.
The problem with affiliate links is that almost everyone knows what they are these days, and I don’t care what you do to pretty them up.
Regardless if it’s:
www.domain.com/ref?aff=1287 (says I’m an affiliate who has no idea what I’m doing)
or
www.tinyurl.com/brb18s (says i’m an affiliate that makes no money because you’ll never click this)
or
www.mydomain.com/recommends/youngteenagechicks (says I may have power link generator but people still know what I’m trying to pull)
or even………….
www.domain.com secretly embedded with your affiliate link (says I’m at least sneaky about it but you were also smart enough to hover the mouse over)
A good percentage of the time you are losing the chance at those visitors because you have now lost credibility instantly.
The rest of the time is spent losing the commission because the buyer just hacks your affiliate link off the domain, or does a type in.
People today are so against you making money that even if you do get them to click an embedded cloaked link like xyxyxyxy, once they see what the site is they will actually delete their cookies and visit again so your cookie is in the trash can.
If instead of the above, you did a review site or landing page that told the user to go to www.domain.com with no affiliate link, it looks like a real deal review.
I only use this for high traffic sites like a webcams.com, buy.com or new hot IM products that are gaining a buzz.
The whole point is that the person knows instantly that its not an affiliate link, yet it doesn’t matter because as soon as they landed on your page they were stuffed with your cookie.
This also works fantastically because a lot of times a person will search multiple sites looking for information and yours is seldom the one that causes the sale right then and there.
Luckily, since you stuffed that cookie, and that visitor probably won’t be clicking any affiliate links, they will simply do a type in like www.commissionblueprint.com when they decide to buy a couple of hours or days later, and guess what?
You still got the commission.
What’s most comical about this is that I really didn’t want to give this little gem up, but you’re probably thinking it’s a waste of time or at least something you’ll save for a lot later.
It’s a shame because if I didn’t make the money I do from other streams, this one tactic would be my full time job and I could easily earn $300,000 or more a year setting up stuffed page after stuffed page.
One of the best ways to do this is to look like a total noob, and by that I mean set up a blog called something stupid like www.darwinscoolblog.com.
Instead of your typical review site page put up just for a specific product, make it a blog post as if you bought the product, use the service, etc and make it seem like you are just having general conversation about it.
The point of this step is actually psychological. Even without an affiliate link your URL is www.whatevertheproductisreview.com, and you are advertising it, your visitors will know that something is up, and if nothing else, assume you probably own the product and are promoting it yourself.
If it’s just some random blog, many people will assume you’re just promoting it for readership and not whatever post they happened to land on. This, in their minds, makes you an unbiased third party on the subject.
Everyone thinks cookie stuffing is mainly for ebay and that it has to be illegal in the eyes of the merchant, and that’s just not the case, nor is it the smart way to utilize such an amazing income generating tool.