Tips, Tools and Tutorials for Making Money with Adult Themed Blogs | Adult Blog Builder

Affiliate Identity theft;  affiliate link theft;  affiliate commission theft;  – whatever term you use, it means without link cloaking abilities, you, as an affiliate marketer, are being ripped off.  You’re being robbed of your affiliate commissions.

Is affiliate commission theft a serious problem? I really don’t know with absolute certainty. Searching for an answer on the internet has coughed up conflicting information. However, the way I see it, whether you’re losing 5% or 40% of your commissions, a loss by any percentage is still a loss.

Can you prevent affiliate commission theft?

Yes, you can, but not by using any of the free scripts.

There are several methods available, some with free redirect scripts and with some using commercial software. While free methods may reduce the incidence of affiliate link theft or affiliate commission theft, they are unreliable and do not cloak your link, making bypass of  your links really easy. To get full link cloaking you will need to spend some money. The bright side is that the very first affiliate commission theft you prevent will probably pay for the software a couple of times over.

I’m sure you’re aware that simply cloaking or hiding your links isn’t going to bring you ‘rivers of cash’ flowing into your ‘bank vault.’ Link cloaking may merely lessen the frequency of affiliate commission theft, and could reduce the amount of commissions you would have lost.

Now back to those long, ugly and in-your-face affiliate links,  just how do you go about shortening and cloaking them, and how can you prevent commission theft?

1. Some people recommend using free services by websites that shorten your link.  I disagree totally with this method.  These are actually for links to be included in emails, and are not for online website linking purposes.  But, if you insist on trying them, use these services with extreme caution.  They are just re-directing services, and store your information on their servers.  If they go out of business, or remove your link for whatever reason, your links are kaput, gone, ground to dust.  If you’ve used those links in article marketing, blogs or any other media that has been syndicated, you’ll have your links on perhaps thousands of sites all leading nowhere. What a colossal waste of your marketing efforts!

2. Use a re-directing script yourself and upload it to your own domain. This means you’ll need your own website and know how to use ftp, and know how to create a link. Your host server must also allow php. The re-directing script is simplicity itself.

However, note that while this shortens your link into something more attractive, and gives you full control over it, it does NOT cloak your link.  When your visitor lands on the redirected site, your full affiliate link is visible, allowing your visitor to bypass your affiliate ID to deny you your commission.  Why?  I really don’t know either.  But it happens.  Some people simply don’t want anyone earning a commission from their purchase even though they pay the same price with or without using your link.  Go figure.

You need to remember that you cannot cloak or re-direct links for every application. Some affiliate networks and Google Adwords do not allow re-directing or cloaking.  Carefully study the terms and conditions of affiliate publishers before signing up with them or you could be expending a lot of effort for nothing.

3. You can also choose to buy your own cloaking software which gives you more options and complete control not only over link cloaking but commission theft from parasite software as well.  This is the recommended method for serious affiliate marketers – those who actually plan on earning real income from affiliate marketing.

Effective cloaking software not only hides your affiliate links but also protects you from parasite software.  Simple redirects do not offer this protection.

Parasite Software [which apparently is covertly installed on 80% of PCs,] activates after your visitor has landed on the merchant’s web site.  Since the parasite software strikes only after the visitor has arrived at the merchant’s site, redirects are totally ineffective as a protective measure.

It is well worth the cost and effort to keep your affiliate commissions out of other people’s pockets and put it in your own.  After all, you’re the one who spent so much time marketing the product.

To protect your affiliate commissions against link hijackers, link bypassers and parasite software with a comprehensive affiliate link cloaking system, I suggest you check the advanced features and complete cloaking function of Ninja Affiliate, a WordPress plugin that will hand you full control and management of all of your affiliate marketing links.

Besides link cloaking you’ll find that Ninja Affiliate provides you with a terrific combination of link management tools:

1. Easy Affiliate Link Management – You can easily give each affiliate link an easy-to-remember name.
2. Flexible Link Management - Accepts every affiliate link format out there, so you don’t have to waste time with various affiliate marketing tools.
3. Create Professional Redirect Links – Use professional looking redirect links that let your prospects know you’re a pro marketer.
4. Manage Links by Groups – Too many affiliate links? Ninja Affiliate allows you to easily create different groups to manage your links..
5. Prevent “Affiliate Theft” – Cloak your affiliate links to prevent link theft and affiliate sabotage. No one will ever steal your hard-earned commissions again..
6. Insert Affiliate Links Directly – Add your affiliate links directly for your WordPress blog editor – you’ll never have to hunt for links again.
7. Transform Keywords to Links – Automatically turn keywords in your blog to affiliate links. You can set a limit too, so your posts don’t look like a spam blog!
8. Advanced Display Options – Ninja Affiliate allows you to display any text you want in your web browser’s status bar.
9. Use “No-Follow” Links – Control your link juice and escape punishment from Big Daddy Google with ninja precision. In fact, you can control your links any way you want to.

Co-Author: Ashutosh

Well, it’s been a little over a year since the free adult blog host platform located at SexBiro.com first opened its doors.  The site rates high points for a number of features including 

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In addition, SexBiro.com also provides each account with about a dozen of the top WordPress plugins, including one that lets you automate populating your blogs with Sponsor Hosted RSS feeds. Design templates are numerous (over 150), plus if you have a theme you really want to use, the owner will check it for compatability and probably upload it for you! So if you’re needing some new free hosted blogs setup, stop by SexBiro and create your free account today!

Here’s a truly wonderful addition to the WordPress family of plugins: a Theme Authenticity Checker (or TAC for short). If you want to be sure that malicious code hasn’t been added to a Wordpress theme you’re thinking of using, TAC can show you if, and where, any suspect code is located within that theme.

The developers of TAC at Builtbackwards.com discuss why they decided to code this valuable plugin:

TAC got its start when we repeatedly found obfuscated malicious code in free WordPress themes available throughout the web. A quick way to scan a theme for undesirable code was needed, so we put together this plugin.

After Googling and exploring on our own we came upon the article by Derek from 5ThirtyOne regarding this very subject. The deal is that many 3rd party websites are providing free WordPress themes with encoded script slipped in – some even going as far as to claim that decoding the gibberish constitutes breaking copyright law. The encoded script may contain a variety of undesirable payloads, such as promoting third party sites or even hijack attempts.

Currently, TAC searches the source files of every installed theme for signs of malicious code. If such code is found, TAC displays the path to the theme file, the line number, and a small snippet of the suspect code. As of v1.3 TAC also searches for and displays static links.

Here’s a screenshot of the TAC plugin in action:

Just because the code is there doesn’t mean it’s not supposed to be or even qualifies as a threat, but most theme authors don’t include code outside of the WordPress scope and have no reason to obfuscate the code they make freely available to the web. We recommend contacting the theme author with the code that the script finds, as well as where you downloaded the theme. But the real value of this Plugin is that you can quickly determine what and where code needs to be cleaned up.

What if I find something amiss in the code or links?

The developers say to contact the theme’s original author to double check if that section of code is supposed to be in the theme in the first place – chances are it shouldn’t be there as there isn’t a logical reason to have base64 encoding in a theme. Static Links aren’t necessarily bad, TAC just lists them so you can see where your theme is linking to.

If something is malicious or simply unwanted, TAC tells you what file to edit, then you can just click on the file path to be taken straight to the WordPress Theme Editor. Just be sure you have chmoded your theme files to be writable (777 usually) in order to do your edits within the WordPress Admin panel.

Click here to read more about the Theme Authenticity Checker and to download it for free.