Affiliate Link Bomber Review By The Realistic Marketer
Affiliate Link Bomber Review
The reason for taking a look at Ben Shaffer’s Affiliate Link Bomber was because I have bought previous products from him and also I think that affiliate commission theft is a very real and growing concern for anybody who is affiliate marketing whether as a serious business or just earning some holiday money. I mean, why lose 75% or more of your income to commission thieves?
It’s unfortunate that Ben is using, like an increasing number of marketers, a video on the home page, where you have no control other than pause or play. You are FORCED to sit through the entire production and with a 22 minute video that is a big chunk of my time.
To be honest, as it was Ben I was prepared to watch but I don’t like this. Usually I load an entire video whilst doing something else and then skip past the usual big houses, fast cars and inflated ClickBank statements, (YAWN!), to get about 2 minutes of what the product is all about – if we are lucky. If this Forced-To-View trend continues it looks like I’ll be recording the videos with Camtasia for later viewing.
Fortunately, with the Affiliate Link Bomber video most of the content is very good and informative even if you don’t buy the product. Certainly newbies should take a look just to see what they are up against. http://www.affiliatelinkbomber.com
So What Does Affiliate Link Bomber Do?
In a nutshell it masks your affiliate link in several different ways so you get to keep a lot more of your affiliate commissions.
Yes, people do steal your commissions!
Yes, people do strip your affiliate link!
Yes, people really do hate affiliate marketers and go to great lengths to stop you being paid what is rightfully yours!
How Does Affiliate Link Bomber Protect Your Links?
Basic link redirect and masking: This is common to all masking products.
Subcampaigns: This is not new but not often seen. Affiliate Link Bomber allows you to use a hyphen and keyword combination appended to the end of the redirect so you can see exactly where your clicks are coming from.
For instance, if you set up a redirect for a product called Project X your link may look something like www.yourdomain.com/s/projectx. Now, you could use /projectx-soload so now you can see exactly how many clicks your Solo Ad campaign received. You could also use /projectx-soload2, /projectx-email1 or whatever you want to use. Very useful. In fact essential.
Using Cookies: Otherwise known as cookie stuffing some people regard this a black hat. Personally I think it’s a great way to protect your commissions. It also stops people who are not favorably disposed towards affiliates from getting angry when they see an affiliate link because they never actually see it. Think of it as your way of reducing the stress and anxiety on affiliate haters which is a good thing!
Using Popups: Whether you like them or not, they are effective and definitely have a place in your affiliate toolkit.
Viral Bars: I have to admit this was a new one on me
. I know the concept because it’s used all over the Internet, (Google Images use this method), but I hadn’t made the connection with using them to protect your affiliate commissions.
Affiliate Link Bomber lets you insert a top frame with whatever html you want. The main window opens up your affiliate program main page and the top bar could contain, for example, an optin box for you to grow your list. Powerful Stuff.
YouTube Bar: There is also a YouTube video embed option called a YouTube Bar which loads a video at the bottom right of your affiliate page.
Would be very handy to call up your video review of a product and have it load on the affiliate product main page.
The downside to this, unless I am missing something, is that your visitor can not close the video.
It sits there all the time. Clicking on the title in the video insert opens a new window to YouTube but really, after someone watches the video you want them to buy from the affiliate page and this is a big chunk of virtual real estate obscuring the sales page so I am still on the fence as to the usefulness of this.
Installation: It is a server side script so you need to install this. It’s quite easy as long as you have a basic knowledge of scripts but installation and setup videos will help you out.
Little Frustrations: 1. The tutorial videos do not expand full screen. Tried it on FF and IE.
2. It would be less frustrating to have a longer login time. It seems that if I go to make a coffee and come back I have to login again.
3. The “Viral Title” input box is presently a single line field. This would be more user friendly if it was a la
rger text input box so you can see your html more clearly.
The advantage to this is that you can easily do minor editing on the fly in the larger text box which is quite difficult with a one liner!
…
4. The script has some useful pop up tool tips when you hover your mouse over a question mark ?
Unfortunately with regard to the “Embed Type” tool tip instead of jogging your memory it sends you off on a time consuming task to find out the information. This could be better.
BIG Frustration: Logging into the members area brings up yet another FORCED-TO-VIEW video with no controls. Sorry, I just have thing about these videos!!
Export Function: This is really worthwhile. Not only do scripts stop working for their own unfathomable reasons but also your webhost is often making server tweaks which can destroy all your information. It happened to me using another masking script and was a sudden learning curve. You have to back up your data and this is just a 1 Click operation to save a CSV file to your PC.
Support: Ben Shaffer has always been good with customer support.
Upgrades: Free
Cost: Ridiculously Inexpensive One Time Payment.
Is Affiliate Link Bomber Worth Buying? If you don’t have an effective affiliate link masking solution then you must at least take a look at this. As I said earlier, even if you don’t buy you can grab some useful information that you may not already know.
Go grab a drink and snacks and take a look at Ben’s Affiliate Link Bomber over at:
http://www.affiliatelinkbomber.com/
UPDATE: April 20th
Looks like Josh Spaulding has just released a full featured FREE affiliate link masker called Clever Cloaker which is looking good. Here
thank you, very good post
Thanks for the review. Now i know what must i do!
Thanks. Good sharing
This Link Bomber actually does what it says it will do.
I know a lot of affiliate marketers that have gotten a lot
of commissions taken because of others going right behind
and taking it from them.
Safety First!
Hi,
Just wanted to know how people can steal my affiliate link (if I am using tinyurl or other shortening services)
Thanks.
Hey Mike. Using tinyurl or similar is a great first line of defense for us to avoid having our commissions stolen. What I feel we need to be aware of nowadays is the increasing knowledge of our average visitor and many will immediately want to know why a short url is being used – unless it is coming from Twitter of course where it’s common practice.
It all revolves around the mentality of people hating to see someone be paid an affiliate commission. Seeing a short url on a product review page immediately raises flags and certainly with Clickbank products it’s easy to follow the process through to see your affiliate ID. The thing is Mike, we can only take so many steps to safeguard ourselves but they are worth doing. There are always going to be a percentage where you cannot stop commission theft but you can definitely minimize it.
For a neo affiliate marketer, this information is invaluable and will help avoid the ensuing pitfalls.
I have found affiliate marketing yielding more revenue that any other format of internet marketing.
Without a cookie affiliate marketing is undone, but without affiliate marketing most internet businesses are undone.
Affiliate marketing is utterly dependent on the cookies it thrives on. A different take is essential in the long run.
Looks like a great tool, just wanted to know if the pop ups it produces are DHTML scripts based on timing or something like exit splash?
@Jay Thanks for your comment Jay. I would take a look at the free Clever Cloaker mentioned above as an update to the post.
Ade
Thanks Ade.
It would help if prior to playing the videos allowed the user to chose between high and low bandwidth – a twenty minute video can use up a lot of bandwidth for someone viewing over a mobile phone for example.
Realistic marketer, i like very much.
Thanks nice post i had subscribed your post.please update latest information.