Cookie Stuffing- What is it?

Most new marketers don’t have a clue when it comes to what some marketers consider unethical but highly practiced things that go along with internet marketing.  One of those things that is highly misunderstood is cookie stuffing.  Now before I disenchant my one reader with the thought that I practice such things, I will say for the record that cookie stuffing is not only black hat, it is very unethical.  I will explain my reasoning in a sec……

Where have I been? Unlike most bloggers, I actually work to make money online on other things rather than this site. This site is a labor of love of mine but not something that I intend to monetize. Because of this and unfortunately, me posting on this site isn’t a top priority although I love writing for this site more than my others.  I do try to post at least once a week but there will be weeks where I won’t have the time or energy to do so. I do hope that those who visit learn a little….

 

What is cookie stuffing and how does it work?

To understand what cookie stuffing is, you need to understand why someone would even bother to do it in the first place.  Let’s say that you are promoting a clickbank product.  In order for clickbank to recognize that you are responsible for driving traffic to the sales page, it has to drop a “cookie” onto the visitor’s browser.  This little cookie tells the merchant that you sent them to the site and will get credit for it if the visitor chooses to make a purchase.  Easy enough, right?  For those that don’t quite follow, below is a graphic of what typically happens….

You see, affiliate marketing is nothing more than you advertising someone else’s product or service and getting paid as an advertiser.  And this is where those that cookie stuff gets unethical…..

So, let’s suppose for a second that instead of this process, you decide that you want to get credit for the sale even if the visitor doesn’t go there.  Well, in this case, you could reverse the process.

So, at this point, I guess you may wonder what the big deal is, right?  Well, let’s look at it from the merchant’s point of view….

The merchant isn’t paying you just because they like you.  They are willing to give you a cut for driving sales for their product.  If you create a website and people respond by clicking through the ads and purchasing, then you should get the sale.  However, what if you aren’t getting clicks throughs?  What if people are arriving at your page and then clicking away because it wasn’t what they were looking for?  They still got stuffed.  And you aren’t driving traffic to the merchant’s site.  

In effect, it is like robbing a bank….

How cookie stuffing works

So, you know the basics as to why someone would entertain the idea of stuffing.  But how does it work?

Most cookie stuffers are amateurs.  They usually use something called an invisible i-frame.  What this does is open the merchant’s website secretly in an invisible window which loads the cookie on the unsuspecting visitor’s browser.  Others will use an image exploit to call up an actual website.  Finally, there are some that will utilize flash (which is highly advanced as flash doesn’t actually call up a cookie but helps obfuscate detection….I won’t go into a full blown tutorial into how to do it, since I don’t advocate it.  

I should also state that cookie stuffing isn’t just about some pimply faced kid in the basement stuffing his websites.  There are lots of actual companies that stuff as well….here is a a site that basically busts these unethical companies….

Most affiliate marketers (even the black hat ones) are idiots

I should state for the record that anytime you do a product search (such as a internet marketing clickbank product) and hit the adwords section of the search query, it is very likely that you have been stuffed before.  While most merchants have teams that watch for affiliate theft, clickbank doesn’t and there is a reason for this…..

Cookie stuffing unknown products or brands very rarely works.  The reason for this is two-fold…..

Unless the visitor goes direct (which is unlikely), chances are that they will go through someone else’s affiliate link (or their own in some cases).  In the case of cookies, the last one gets the prize.  So, if you are the first site they visit and they wind up clicking through using someone else’s affiliate link, then you won’t get the sale.  So, what’s the point, right?

The other reason is brand recognition.  A click bank product simply won’t have the mass appeal of a merchant like say ebay so they won’t be as likely to go direct.  In other words, stuff away on these low level no name products all you want…the chances of pulling sales by cookie stuffing using this strategy is not good.

The really good black hat marketers know this.  They know that in order to get the most bang for their buck, they need to stuff well known branded merchants in which the masses would likely visit over the course of the lifetime of the cookie OR they need to stuff in places in which product maven zealots are congregating (like a shoe or purse forum)  They also know that stuffing in high traffic places will give them the greatest chance of success…..and getting caught (which I will talk about in a second).

Problems that Cookie Stuffers Face

There are several issues that cookie stuffers face when stuffing cookies.  The first is trying to balance the CTR with the conversion rate.  Since most merchants have teams that watch this stuff, they can spot a rookie cookie stuffer fairly quick.  The first clue that they will get is to compare the CTR with the actual conversion rate.  Since a site that is cookie stuffing typically will stuff everyone who enters, the CTR is 100%.  And since the majority of people won’t go direct (even if it is a national brand) and make a purchase, it will make the conversion rate absolutely abyssmal.  In other words, a merchant who typically has a conversion rate of 4% will have a conversion rate well below 1% coming from the stuffed site.

The professional black hat marketers know this and augment it by carefully stuffing the right stores and merchants with the type of visitor they have.  Some will even go as far as create a rotator in which not everyone gets stuffed.

The bigger problem is if the merchant decides to check out the site and gets stuffed.  Digital Point forums (who allegedly was stuffing cookies and got caught) went as far as to block the IP’s of ebay to prevent stuffing the merchants themselves (I believe they actually blocked entire states that ebay employees were housed.)

 

….And then there is the Referrer Problem….

The biggest problem that cookie stuffers face is the referrer problem.  To my knowledge, there is simply not a good way to change the referrer because it happens on the visitor’s browser.  Here is how it works….

 

• Visitor goes to your site, gets stuffed with an iframe or some other form of cookie stuffing…
• The merchant can see where that visitor came from in their referrer logs and can visit the site.

 

While this doesn’t necessarily seem like a big problem, understand that most of the cookie stuffing doesn’t happen on a website but usually in forums and other places that are high traffic.  So, what happens when a merchant sees an unusually high number of clicks coming via a forum, visits the forum and finds that there is no clickable link linking them to their site?  Can you say some questions are going to be asked.

Some black hat marketers have tried to obfuscate the referrer by placing buffer ip’s but the problem is the same….all of the traffic will be coming from the same pipeline.

I am going to say that there are some ways around this but it uses flash and you must own your own site (and that is all I am going to say about that).  I bet that very few of the black hats even know it exists and you wouldn’t be able to find any literature on it anywhere though…(good luck finding it…I accidentally discovered it while building a flash program).

So why should this concern you as an affiliate marketer?

You are probably asking what does this have to do with you if you don’t intend to stuff cookies, right?  Well, it does affect your sales.  I will leave you with this little tidbit to chew on and then I am out of here…..

Now, you tell me if that wouldn’t affect your bottom line….until next time….