Warning About URL Forwarding/Masking and Affiliate Tracking

A few months ago I was reading something about internet marketing (honestly, I do not remember where I was reading it) and they talked about using your own URL to foward people to your affiliate website.

Having a unique URL (like the one I use for my GCFN affiliate website) can really make a big difference - so I am told - in getting people to your actual affiliate page.

If you have a page with an address like www.24hourwebcash.com/myusernameis
a lot of people who see your link will just type it in as

www.24hourwebcash.com
and leave off your username. This results in visitors coming to the site, but not to your page (resulting in YOU not making money).

So the best thing to do is get your own URL
(GoDaddy.com is a good cheap source)
and then forward your URL (say it's http://www.mywebsite.com/ ) to your affiliate page.

BUT... (there's always gotta be a "but..")

Warning - Do not use URL Masking

What I discovered to my dismay in December however, is that if you "mask" your affiliate URL, affiliate systems will not be able to "drop cookies" properly to give your credit, and you will lose comissions.

Since the end of September I had been masking my affiliate URL...and not getting a single check since October! I had also been putting stickers on my postcards and having my own url (cashflowurl.com) over the regular url.

Oops!


What Is Domain-Name Masking?

Masking is an option you can set when you set up the domain forwarding, so that the person going to your URL only sees your URL name, and never sees your actual affiliate link.

For example, if you have a URL mywebsite.com and forward it to your affiliate link
http://www.24hourwebcash.com/myusernameis

then when someone types in "mywebsite.com" into the browser address bar, the browser will get forwarded to your affiliate website and show
http://www.24hourwebcash.com/myusernameis
in the address bar, not "mywebsite.com."

On the other hand, if you use the domain name masking option when you set up forwarding, when a person types in "mywebsite.com" into the browser address bar, the browser will still SHOW your affiliate page, but the address in the address bar will still read http://mywebsite.com

This way, the visitor never really knows they are looking at an affiliate website. Except you don't get credit for the sale either, so it doesn't help!!


Unfortunately for me, this also means if the visitor signs up for the GCFN online (by putting in their name & info, then reading the "one time offer" special page and signing up right there rather than calling in...) then I won't get credit for any sale.


The Solution
So I realized my mistake at the end of December and turned off domain name masking in my GoDaddy.com account. So now when somone types in my URL, they can see my affiliate page name in the address bar...and I should get credit if/when they apply for the CMPS program online.


The Reward: A $899 GCFN Check!

And guess what? I have not sent out postcards now for over a month, but I have been doing some free advertising at places like trafficswarm.com and some cheap paid classifieds.

And completely out of the blue, I got a check for $899 from GCFN last week.

(I took a photo of it before I cashed it in, but sorry - the photo almost too blurry to read. But it looked like real pen & ink on the signature, like maybe Mary Gersten actually signed the check herself!)






This thing with the domain masking explains why I didn't make money from my last postcard mailing in October, since I had covered up all of the original web addresses with my own address (which was using masking at the time).


I don't know if this will help any of you out there, but if you are using Domain Masking...stop doing it!