So What Is Cookie Hatter… And Can It Be A Benefit To Your Affiliate Business
This is a WordPress plugin that has been created by Ken Sar for use by affiliate marketers on their WordPress affiliate blogs…
What does it do?
It places a cookie on your visitors computer while they are viewing your page… This is done without their knowledge and is being marketed as a good way to stop commission theft… I wander what the FTC would really be thinking about this strategy?
And I am not doubting that it is but…
Firstly lets make something very clear and that is that this is definitely a “black hat” tactic and is frowned on not just by the many affiliate networks but also any of your site visitors and other affiliates that become aware of its use.
Why Would You Want To Use This Cookie Hatter WP Plugin…
Well for many affiliates that are trying to make a living online one thing stands out more than anything, and that is if a site visitor can drop your affiliate link they will meaning even though you have done all the work and provided all of the information you still do not get any commission for your hard work.
Frustrating Right?
Well lets think about this for a minute, if you are going to be creating site after site with only one or two pages on each of course you are not going to have any loyalty from your customers or even trust for that matter, you see you really are not offering them any value in what it is you are trying to sell as an affiliate.
This is one of the reasons why a product like Cookie Hatter could be useful to some affiliates. They have not done any real work to build up a loyal following which will then lead to trust, but instead have decided to take the fast track and suck as much money out of the marketplace as quickly as they can.
This is a very limited approach to having an affiliate business and is one of the main reasons that affiliate marketers get a bad name on the internet.
Some other aspects that Ken describes on his sales page is “COOKIE STUFFING” meaning that you can place multiple affiliate links that are embedded into one page or you can do this on multiple pages.To understand this terminology more see what Wikipedia has to say about cookie stuffing.
Again this is an extremely dangerous tactic and if you are discovered by the affiliate network that you are promoting for there is probably a very good chance that your account will be terminated.
Ken also goes on to say that the Wp plugin is that powerful that he is only allowing it to cookie two affiliate networks which are Clickbank and another called Action Profits. Well I can tell you for a fact that this is definitely a breach of the TOS on clickbank and will if you are caught get your account terminated faster than it took you to install this plugin..
What you might not know is that especially clickbank track every HOP that is generated which you can view in the analytic’s of your clickbank account.
So Who Is The Cookie Hatter WP Plugin Really Perfect For…
Again these are only my views on Cookie Hatter you might have your own… Which we would really like to hear
But if you have a blog and really don’t want to have a future with the affiliate networks, then use this plugin.
Anyone who is sick of commission theft, then if you use this Cookie Hatter plugin and have no commission at all.
So if you want to prevent people from cheating you out of your commissions then build a quality site. Do not resort to any form of Black Hat tactics as this will devastate your online affiliate business very fast.
You will also notice that I have not provided a link to the Cookie Hatter site so if you want to check out the Cookie Hatter sales page you will have to search for it on your own.
Please be aware I am not saying this will not work or that Ken Sar has done anything wrong, what I am saying is that it can be a very dangerous game to play with any affiliate networks your may be associated with especially clickbank.
If you are really genuine in wanting to make a go of your affiliate marketing business then you might want to check out How To Create A Product Review Site That Sells and no you want find any cookie stuffing tactics there.
About AffiliateX
I never heard of that plug in before. Nasty stuff in my opinion but the reality of it stopping interference with your cookie is probably purely fiction. If you are talking about adware users as the people overwriting your cookies, then this will more than likely have no effect in protecting your cookies. The adware usually sets the cookie directly on the Merchant site or calls for action directly on the site and since this places the cookie upon arrival to your site, not the merchant site if I understand you correctly, then the cookie will still be overwritten. If you cannot be convincing enough to presell and get the click without stuffing, you should go in to selling ad space because Affiliate Marketing isn’t for you. Just my opinions as well. Thanks for sharing this application.
On another note, you may want to add that if you have a review site and live in the USA or market to people in the USA, you should add in a disclosure for the FTC.
.-= Affiliate Management´s last blog ..What to do about your coupon code box =-.
Hi Adam
All it really does is stop anyone from virtually reading a review on your site and then leaving without following your affiliate link to go straight to the merchant cutting you out of the commission. It does this by simply placing a cookie onto your computer a lot like adware would do.
And you are right when you say about the cookie being over written if you visit another site and follow that sites affiliate link it is my understanding that the last affiliate link will be the one accepted so the first cookie that was secretly placed onto the visitors computer is no longer effective. What many don’t realize however that using such a tactic can be very easily tracked within your analytic’s account at clickbank meaning each time a cookie is placed onto a visitors computer it is tracked as a click in your account.
Yes anyone one getting into affiliate marketing today needs to have an FTC disclaimer placed somewhere on their website especially if you are showing any testimonials or endorsements from other people which in our case is in the footer of every page and also links to our complete site disclaimer from every page of our site. But the most common sense thing I could say is that if you are marketing something that you think is over the top and really not achievable stop doing it period…