While browsing the Internet I quite naively stumbled across the term ;quot;cookie stuffing;quot; and had to do some research on it.;nbsp; I'm not overly well versed in black hat SEO techniques, but this one is both clever and morally shady.

Black Hat SEO is the art of doing questionable (read ;quot;bad;quot;) things in order to improve SEO, therefore Black Hat Affiliates will do questionable things in order to make money.

So what is cookie stuffing?
The act of cookie stuffing is the means of injecting affiliate information into an unknowing visitor's cookie.;nbsp; Therefore if you inject your own Dell affiliate details into a user's cookie, if that user then goes and buys a product from Dell, you're seen as being the referer and therefore you are paid commission.

Understanding how cookies work
A cookie will remain on a machine for a finite period, be that until it's set to expire or the user manually clears their cookies.;nbsp; Most affiliate schemes have cookie-referal lifespans of about 30 days, so if you inject your Dell cookie into every user, if any of them buy something from Dell within 30 days, you get the commission.

Seems like a great way to make money!
It's a way to make a lot of money I'm sure, but not only is it immoral to do it, but you can expect to be banned from your affiliate vendor should they ever catch you (which will become increasingly likely if the practice starts to pick up).;nbsp;

My advice would be to understand what it is and never do it.;nbsp; Karma will always catch up with the dishonest.

While browsing the Internet I quite naively stumbled across the term ;quot;cookie stuffing;quot; and had to do some research on it.;nbsp; I'm not overly well versed in black hat SEO techniques, but this one is both clever and morally shady.

Black Hat SEO is the art of doing questionable (read ;quot;bad;quot;) things in order to improve SEO, therefore Black Hat Affiliates will do questionable things in order to make money.

So what is cookie stuffing?
The act of cookie stuffing is the means of injecting affiliate information into an unknowing visitor's cookie.;nbsp; Therefore if you inject your own Dell affiliate details into a user's cookie, if that user then goes and buys a product from Dell, you're seen as being the referer and therefore you are paid commission.

Understanding how cookies work
A cookie will remain on a machine for a finite period, be that until it's set to expire or the user manually clears their cookies.;nbsp; Most affiliate schemes have cookie-referal lifespans of about 30 days, so if you inject your Dell cookie into every user, if any of them buy something from Dell within 30 days, you get the commission.

Seems like a great way to make money!
It's a way to make a lot of money I'm sure, but not only is it immoral to do it, but you can expect to be banned from your affiliate vendor should they ever catch you (which will become increasingly likely if the practice starts to pick up).;nbsp;

My advice would be to understand what it is and never do it.;nbsp; Karma will always catch up with the dishonest.

Around November last year I dedicated a reasonable amount of time to build a Wordpress plugin to make managing affiliate links and campaigns very easy.;nbsp;

Unfortunately someone else released their almost identical plugin 2 weeks before I was ready, so I've sat on it for all this time.;nbsp; Now, I've released it.

What it does
Wordpress Campaign Manager allows you to replace any keyword or keyphrase in your blogs content with an incentivised link.;nbsp; So I can take the word ;quot;hosting;quot; and replace every instance of that word with a link to a hosting affiliate scheme.;nbsp; From one administration panel I can manage site-wide campaigns on every post ever written.

Affiliate Link Masking
Another crucial feature is the ability to cloak affiliate links, so www.alongunfriendlyurl.com?affiliate_id=123456789 can become www.yourwebsite.com/go.php?l=kitten.;nbsp; This means you can assign a friendly alias (kitten in that example) which will then redirect the user to the affiliate campaign, but the link they saw in their browser was on yourdomain.com.;nbsp; All the big affiliate money-makers do this and it's an important factor in making money online.

As a bonus, Wordpress Campaign Manager will also tell you how many times your masked links have been clicked.

It won't mess with your other campaigns
Wordpress Campaign Manager has been created so that it won't hijack links or break your content, instead it only uses instances of your keyword (e.g. hosting) that aren't being used in titles, forms, images or other links.;nbsp; Therefore it does no harm to your pre-existing affiliate campaigns but allows you to leverage unused keywords.

The price
All of the competing products retail for $97 which I think is too much for what they do.;nbsp; Wordpress Campaign Manager retails for only $40, not because it's worth less than the competitors (in fact, it does more!) but because I think $40 is a more realistic price for a Wordpress plugin.

Click here to visit the site and purchase Wordpress Campaign Manager.

;nbsp;

Around November last year I dedicated a reasonable amount of time to build a Wordpress plugin to make managing affiliate links and campaigns very easy.;nbsp;

Unfortunately someone else released their almost identical plugin 2 weeks before I was ready, so I've sat on it for all this time.;nbsp; Now, I've released it.

What it does
Wordpress Campaign Manager allows you to replace any keyword or keyphrase in your blogs content with an incentivised link.;nbsp; So I can take the word ;quot;hosting;quot; and replace every instance of that word with a link to a hosting affiliate scheme.;nbsp; From one administration panel I can manage site-wide campaigns on every post ever written.

Affiliate Link Masking
Another crucial feature is the ability to cloak affiliate links, so www.alongunfriendlyurl.com?affiliate_id=123456789 can become www.yourwebsite.com/go.php?l=kitten.;nbsp; This means you can assign a friendly alias (kitten in that example) which will then redirect the user to the affiliate campaign, but the link they saw in their browser was on yourdomain.com.;nbsp; All the big affiliate money-makers do this and it's an important factor in making money online.

As a bonus, Wordpress Campaign Manager will also tell you how many times your masked links have been clicked.

It won't mess with your other campaigns
Wordpress Campaign Manager has been created so that it won't hijack links or break your content, instead it only uses instances of your keyword (e.g. hosting) that aren't being used in titles, forms, images or other links.;nbsp; Therefore it does no harm to your pre-existing affiliate campaigns but allows you to leverage unused keywords.

The price
All of the competing products retail for $97 which I think is too much for what they do.;nbsp; Wordpress Campaign Manager retails for only $40, not because it's worth less than the competitors (in fact, it does more!) but because I think $40 is a more realistic price for a Wordpress plugin.

Click here to visit the site and purchase Wordpress Campaign Manager.

;nbsp;