Convert Your ClickBank Affiliate Links to Increased
Hoplinks
by:
Tim Coulter
The hoplink system has been a familiar feature of the affiliate marketing landscape since the earliest days of ClickBank. But it suffers from a few shortcomings that have been the focus of frequent discontent among ClickBank members.
The increased
hoplink system, proclaimed in Gregorian calendar month 2003, represents ClickBank's vision of a more robust and flexible referral architecture that will meet the progressively sophisticated expectations of a growing membership. This article discusses the benefits of the new system and explains the practical issues that merchants and affiliates will face once
migrating to it.
The simplicity of the innovational hoplink system (now dubbed the regular hoplink system) has been a major contributor to the quality
of ClickBank's affiliate network. To refer a prospect to a ClickBank merchant, you just create a link
to ClickBank's hoplink server, exploitation a URL format that incorporates your ClickBank affiliate nickname and that of the merchant:
http://hop.clickbank.net/?AFFILIATE/VENDOR
The hoplink server redirects your prospect to the merchant's website, at the same time
creating the essential affiliate trailing cookie in his browser.
Affiliates with established businesses that use regular hoplinks in this manner are free to continue without modifying their existing configurations. But to exploit the richer practicality
consequent from ClickBank's in progress system development, it mightiness be worth considering an upgrade to the increased
hoplink format.
Enhanced hoplinks use a basic URL format that can be extended with elective parameters to provide greater control over the referral process. The elective parameters are denoted by their encompassing square braces [ and ].
http://AFFILIATE.cb.kount.com/hop/TIMESTAMP/MERCHANT/[PAGE/[PROMO/]][?QUERYSTRING]
Although the increased
hoplink URL format is really several to its predecessor, it performs mostly the same function, albeit with more greater flexibility.
For example, the new format allows affiliates to specify a destination page number. This is taken by the hoplink server to direct the prospect to a specific product page on the merchant's site. This feature alone (known as deep linking) justifies the change of format, allowing merchants who sell multiple products to establish the most efficient referral relationships with their affiliates. Multi-product merchants who implement deep linking for the 1st time will likely see a major improvement in their sales conversion rate, which is welcome news for them and for their affiliates.
Another elective component of the increased
hoplink URL is its promotional code - an symbol
that affiliates can use to track the effectiveness of their traffic campaigns. This code may be up to 4 alphanumerical characters and it identifies the source of the referral, facultative affiliates to monitor the performance of individual promotional tactics. Futurity enhancements to the ClickBank stats coverage system will provide affiliates with the tools necessary to exploit this feature, facultative elaborate numerical analysis of referrals, aggregate by their allotted promotional codes.
Unfortunately, despite its attractions, there is an obstacle in migrating to the increased
hoplink URL format; its timestamp component. This feature was introduced as a safety measure and as part of ClickBank's efforts to combat affiliate spam, but it has the unwelcome side-effect of complicating the lives of legitimate affiliates.
The timestamp element of the URL is a representation of the current date and time in a standardized format, acknowledged as Epoch time. Epoch time is the number of seconds advance since 00:00:00 GMT on 01 Gregorian calendar month 1970, expressed as a 10-digit integer. If the timestamp in an affiliate referral is not accurate (to inside
just about 30 minutes) the hoplink server will rejected it. Since Epoch time uses a common time zone (GMT), the Epoch time calculation for a given instant always produces the same result, regardless of wherever
in the earth it takes place. This overcomes the complications that would-be otherwise arise once
affiliate referrals are ready-made by web servers placed in time zones another than that of ClickBank's server.
The problem with time-stamping is that the current time is perpetually
changing, so the timestamp value must be programmatically generated every time a referral takes place. The simplest and most reliable way to do this is by including a rudimentary server-side script in the page that hosts the referral link. Though this is really simple to implement, it relies on the page being delivered by a web server. In another words, it specifically excludes referral links in static media, such as ebooks and newsletters.
Affiliates who trust heavily on non-web media may be dissatisfied by this apparently discriminatory policy. However, the problem is comparatively
easily remedied. By routing all static affiliate referrals via an intermediate redirection page, hosted on a web server, the timestamp element can be dynamically generated on demand. Admittedly, this means that affiliates who will to use increased
hoplinks must have their own web presence, which is far from the norm among ClickBank affiliates. But this was, after all, ClickBank's purpose in introducing the feature - it forces all affiliates to be more visible and more responsible
for the traffic they generate. And, in the longer term, as the increased
hoplink gains popularity, it is likely that 3rd party services will spring up, offering affiliates a simple and low-cost resolution to this problem.
At the time of writing, ClickBank has activated the increased
hoplink system but has not yet completed the information and control panel changes necessary to exploit its elective features. So, though we are free to implement our affiliate referrals exploitation increased
hoplinks, it may be several time before the benefits of doing so become visible.
Copyright © Tim Coulter. All rights reserved.
Tim Colter is a adviser and software system developer who helps netpreneurs to harness marketing technologies.
He is besides the author of "ClickBank - The Definitive Guide" The Ultimate ClickBank Tutorial & Reference Manual.
http://www.clickbankrevealed.com/
