Hey webber,
Unfortunately that's been an issue with affiliate programs for quite some time and I personally haven't done much to prevent it from happening to me. Some affiliates use link cloakers to hide the link so people don't see it's an affiliate link but that doesn't deter everyone.
For example, say you're already a Clickbank affiliate but you see a link on someone's site. You can usually tell a Clickbank landing page even if the link is cloaked. So you simply go to Clickbank, generate your own affiliate ID and buy from that one instead.
This is usually more of a problem with people who have sites related to Internet marketing because a lot of their visitors are pretty affiliate savvy. But if you have a site on gardening for example, many of your visitors may not be able to spot a Clickbank or CJ link for example so this is not as much of an issue.
That's why I like SiteSell's affiliate program because once you join, you are tied to the person that referred you. So even if someone I recruited buys from their own affiliate link, I would still get the commission because I'm tied to them in the SiteSell database by more than just a cookie. They check for last name and other identifiers, etc.
|