Tracking affiliate links with Live HTTP Headers
If I had a “tool of the week” award it would definitely go to the Live HTTP headers plug in for the firefox browser.
So what does it do?
Well, in non techy speak it allows me to record and track the different URLs and variables that often flash before my eyes in the status bar. This then allows me to back track, dig deep and find the info I’m looking for.
Ok, great but what use is that to me?
I often have to track down affiliates who are not playing fair and following the program rules. Naturally these rogue types don’t like to splash their identity all over the place and like to make my life difficult.
With Live HTTP Headers I can now slow the process down and grab the affiliate ID which must inevitably be passed though to track the sale. In doing so I can then identify the affiliate and pass this information onto the networks should they need it.
But there’s more, it works a treat with Spyware/Adware too.
I attended the Buy.at 2006 Speakeasy event and was keen to pull Ben Edelman to one side and pick his brain about possible spyware detection techniques. Something that I was not too familiar with before hand was how a merchant or affiliate could claim that they are not promoting themselves using spyware when there’s clear evidence to suggest otherwise – or to put it another way, claim that they had no idea this was going on and actually mean it.
It was put to me that it’s never really a simple affiliate > spyware > merchant scenario and that the levels in between go much deeper. In some cases Ben has found more than 8 companies each buying traffic through each other and then finally the last link in the link chain are employing unscrupulous spyware tactics. In this case it’s easy to see how number 1 in the chain would have no idea that thier marketing budget was filtering down to dirty bottom feeders.
Live HTTP Headers works a charm in these scenarios. As I mentioned above, each HTTP request is recorded and fed back to me, all I have to do is click a link and sit back and watch the picture evolve.
Dowload Live HTTP Headers here.
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