Appending affiliate links to my users' forum posts?
Submitted by Haltingpoint on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 02:18.
I have a site that is frequented by users who are active eBay users. My site is a BANS-style site and in the next iteration of it, I'd like to add a forum to build the community.
Unfortunately, I fear that by doing so, I'd be missing out on revenue if people posted eBay links to their own auctions, since it wouldn't have my affiliate code in it.
Is there a way to setup a forum so that if someone posts their own eBay link, the forum would automatically edit the link and put my affiliate code in it? I'd like to make it as seamless as possible so that it just changes it automatically when they submit their post...
Cheers,
Mike
What you are asking for is technically simple.
I'd estimate the cost of this at no more than $100 -- and probably half that. Shoot, if you find a programmer that it already familiar with the software you choose, it could easily cost no more than $25 at either eLance or Rentacoder (it's a 2 minute coding job -- any other time spent would be spent integrating the code with the forum software you choose).
Basically, the section of the forum code that makes posts would just have to rewrite URL's to include your Affiliate ID *if* the URL points to Ebay (the same would apply to the code that allows users to edit their own posts, etc., so the code's complexity is the major factor in determining cost).
If the URL they post was a tinyurl type URL though, you'd be out of luck.
However, if I understand Ebay's affiliate program correctly (I may not -- I've never used it) the simplest solution would be to do a type of "cookie stuffing". For instance, you just iframe in an Ebay auction using your Affiliate ID as the iframe's source. This will cause a legit "cookie stuffing" to happen automatically and the end result is that if/when a visitor clicked an Ebay link, it's OK because they're already cookied with your ID, etc.
On second thought, I'd do both I guess :)
Interesting, thanks for the suggestions there. I had already thought about the URL rewriting although I didn't know if that was technically possible but the iframe is a great approach.
Can you clarify a bit on it though? How exactly would that be setup? I'm not understanding how the iframe would be initiated by the user if they are just posting a link in my forum.
Probably the easiest way to do it is to use your forum software's advertising feature.
Most forum software allows you to insert ads. Simply insert, as an ad, a Ebay link that contains your Affiliate ID. Virtually every user's browser will auto-load the "ad" and this places the cookie from Ebay (with your ID) on their PC automatically.
If this wouldn't look good for some reason, go to the forum's main page and insert a "hidden iframe" anywhere on that page. The code for that would be something like (if this will show here -- it may not, LOL!):
<iframe src="http://your-ebay-affiliate-link-here" height="1" width="1"></iframe>
The user doesn't have to click a link or anything like that (there's nothing for them to see or click). But their browsers "sees" the iframe and auto-loads it and you get your cookie placed just the same as if they had clicked a link, etc.
The 2nd method mentioned above is "grayhat" (depending on Ebay's rules it could be OK -- or it could get your account banned if you were caught -- I don't know which as I'm not familiar with their program, so use at your own risk or, better yet, ask Ebay, LOL!).
The first method is almost certainly "whitehat" (Ebay is OK with it).
People just have different/strange ides about what's kosher and what ain't when it comes to setting cookies :)
Yeah...I'd have to check with ebay on that as I know there is a lot of vagueness in their policies around what is acceptable in terms of loading that cookie on a users machine.
I'd probably just load the iframe as a 1x1...although wouldn't it basically load the entire ebay page I used the URL for within that iFrame? Like, wouldn't that cause scrollbars to display and massively increase the pages load time?
I don't think there's a way to just have a "blank" ebay affiliate link...I think it always has to link to SOMEWHERE on their site...
This is great info though so I really appreciate the responses.