Affiliate link hijacking and affiliate link bypassing are the dirty little secrets of Internet marketing that no one ever talks about.
* Hijacking is what happens when someone replaces your affiliate id with theirs in the affiliate link. Lets say your affiliate ID is live-well and the product site is www.sample.com. Then your affiliate link would be www.sample.com/?live-well.
Say the highjacker uses the affiliate ID of captain-hook. What he would do is replace your ID with his, and buy from the URL www.sample.com/?captain-hook.
The bottom line: You dont get your commission, and the hijacker puts your money in his pocket, in the form of a discount, by buying through his own affiliate link.
* Bypassing is what happens when someone sees an affiliate link and is either unfamiliar and uncomfortable with it, or just cant stand the idea of your getting a commission (even though youve done the work to put the information in front of them).