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Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

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Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#31

Post by curiously »

DigitalSea wrote: post #22

Quite interesting to see so many commenters claiming this is "cookie stuffing", this isn't cookie stuffing. Essentially non-affiliate links are being turned into affiliate links and quite a few people do this. A couple weeks ago on Shark Tank Australia there was some lady trying to get funding for her website "Rich Gurl" ( http://richgurl.com/ ) essentially what she does is goes out and scrapes sales from all of the…

don't get how she can make money just by scraping. I mean anyone can scrape. The problem would be generating traffic so enough people could click on the ads.

I'm confused as to what she was doing differently, amazon even offers product ad widgets to put on your page.

Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#33

Post by ChuckMcM »

joshu wrote: post #26

I called this in 2009. URL shorteners are the gift that keep on giving. > We hope the shortener never decides to add interstitials or otherwise "monetize" the link with ads, but we have no guarantee. http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners

Its the easiest way to monetize them. I'm really surprised it took this long. One of the interesting things to look at is CTR and affiliate payout, you may find that only 30 - 40% of the affiliate links "stick" only because so many people between where the link is and the vendor end up trying to stomp on the affiliate tie in.

It is an affiliate eat affiliate world out there.

Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#34

Post by davidu »

This is a clear violation of the Amazon and eBay affiliate programs. These shortened URLs were already clicks being sent to Amazon or eBay (or whoever the affiliate is). No overt attempt at promoting a sale or purchase of a product is taking place.

We contemplated this kind of thing for about 2 milliseconds when OpenDNS had an ad revenue business and we couldn't ever wrap our heads around how it's even remotely acceptable behavior.

Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#35

Post by guiambros »

downandout wrote: post #17

This is right in the same vein as cookie stuffing, which Shawn Hogan went to prison for [1] [2]. Keep in mind that there is no "cookie stuffing" statute - he was charged with Wire Fraud - and using your position in the link chain to steal revenue from other affiliates seems to definitely fall under the definition of wire fraud. I can't imagine what lawyer told Bitly that this was a good idea given this precedent, but…

Horrible indeed. But sadly this is a common practice. Once I called out [1] the folks from Read It Later (now Pocket) for silently changing Amazon links. In their defense, at least they acknowledged and promptly "fixed" the API/policy in a couple of hours [2].

Another one that does the same is TabCloud Chrome Extension [3]. It scans all the tabs you saved, and stuff Amazon's affiliate links there. I fixed mine locally, but it's not a public license, so can't just fork and re-publish it.

[1] http://twitpic.com/4p9cpt

[2] https://goo.gl/YbYhTG

[3] https://goo.gl/OGdV3H

Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#37

Post by jMyles »

downandout wrote: post #12

You can still use Bitly, but have the bitly point to your own site first, then redirect to your affiliate link from there. With a bit of work you can do the same with any post you make to Pinterest, so that they don't hijack your affiliate links either.

...but then why use bitly?

Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#38

Post by jMyles »

ceejayoz wrote: post #8
mblevin wrote: post #3

Rule #1 of the internet - if you're not a consumer and you're not paying for something, you're actually the product.

http://powazek.com/posts/3229 > We should all stop saying, “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” because it doesn’t really mean anything, it excuses the behavior of bad companies, and it makes you sound kind of like a stoner looking at their hand for the first time.

...but seriously - your hand is awesome.

Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#39

Post by downandout »

jMyles wrote: post #37
downandout wrote: post #12

You can still use Bitly, but have the bitly point to your own site first, then redirect to your affiliate link from there. With a bit of work you can do the same with any post you make to Pinterest, so that they don't hijack your affiliate links either.

...but then why use bitly?

Because its unlikely that you own a domain that short. They also own j.mp ...a 1 letter domain. Good luck getting one of those on your own :)

Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links

#40

Post by skuhn »

voltagex_ wrote: post #20
dmitrygr wrote: post #4

One does not anger one's users in a market where one is replaceable with zero effort. So long, bit.ly

Let's just hope that when they do die, their link database is given to archive.org - http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam#Dead_or_B... URL shorteners are a terrible idea.

URL shorteners are a great idea, but for very limited use cases. I think they only make sense when run by a particular service for use with that service's URLs, like t.co or db.tt, and live and die in tandem with the underlying service.

General purpose URL shorteners are just time bombs waiting to go off. They'll die and break all of their captive URLs or they'll realize they need to make some money and do something like this (or much worse). There's no third option.

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