Internet Marketing Scam Alert

The Image on the left was captured after testing a service called Go2-Url.com, a tracking / url shorting service. The benefits of these types of services can be beneficial if you wish to protect your affiliate urls or wish to not send out a long url in communication via email or other advertising venues.

There are many different URL shortening services available on the Internet. What made me take note of this one is the sales pitch they use to recruit you to their service.

Go2-URL.Com PREVENTS the #1 reason
affiliate marketers lose sales commissions

All affiliate programs provide you with a ’special’ web address (URL) to give prospects to buy their product or service. These URL’s are often very long, and always very confusing, but more importantly they are avoided by many who would click on them. You see, some people will not click on an affiliate URL because they do not want other people making money on their purchases. This reluctance to click affiliate URL’s results is lost commissions, and that is money out of YOUR pocket!

Don’t let this ‘commission theft‘ occur to your marketing efforts. The Go2-URL.Com system will take those long, confusing affiliate URL’s and make them very short and not distiguishable (sic)as an affiliate web address.

They are claiming that their service will protect your affiliate commissions, while at the same time stealing commissions from marketers by overwriting their cookies.

I first became aware of this when I was sent unsolicited email from a well know Internet Marketer promoting another service. I saw that Amazon cookies were being placed on my machine when I clicked on his link and decided to investigate further. While I was not able to capture those cookies I decided to do an independent test.

I created a tracking link for www.imscamalert.com and captured the Ebay cookie being planted on my machine. Nowhere in the terms of service at go2-url.com do they tell users that they will be placing their affiliate cookies when using their service.

The problem I have with this is they are touting that using their service will stop “Commission Theft” while at the same time they are potentially stealing from their users.

For those that do not know, cookies are how your affiliate commissions are tracked and credited through various affiliate networks. The Ebay.com cookie last for 30 days if you are recruiting new sellers and 7 days if you are promoting and auction through the CJ.com network. If you are actively using this service and promoting Ebay.com online, the service that claims to protect you may actually be taking your income.

The law of the land in affiliate marketing says the last cookie wins. Imagine you send a surfer to Ebay.com from one of your sites and they place an auction bid, which will end in three days. Now if that surfer clicks on any go2-url link and and goes back to Ebay.com to bid on any other auction or to increase their bid on the auction that your referred them to you have lost several commissions. Even worse is if they sign up top become a seller!! All of your prior work promoting Ebay.com goes down the drain because they clicked a link from them.

This may or not be a violation of the Ebay.com affiliate program. I have asked for their feedback and will post a follow up when Ebay.com gives their feedback. Good luck in your online marketing effort just make sure to do due diligence before taking any sales page for granted. Make sure you test services before using them in your marketing efforts if not you may be poorer for the process.

<<Update>> I have asked at the Ebay.com forum and this practice of “Cookie Stuffing” appears to be a violation of Ebay.com TOS.  Still waiting for official word from Ebay.com.