It is not clear exactly when this change took place, but at some point Dirty Tony changed the affiliate referral link for his web site tour. The original link is still published at CCBill and the new one is only published in his affiliate newsletter. While it could have been included in one of his past newsletters, I do not recall any notification of this change.
The original link provided by CCBill and the link displayed on his webmaster site, Dirty Ducats (banners page), go to a version of the site tour that includes a pop up link to his blog. In addition, the join page has a newsletter sign up form.
When I questioned Tony about the link published by CCBill he told me that if a webmaster chooses to use a link other than the one posted in his newsletter, or on his affiliate site he/she is violating the Dirty Ducats affiliate agreement. When asked if I could see this agreement my request was dismissed, or perhaps inadvertently overlooked…wink wink. It is pure speculation on my part, but when Tony made that statement I’m guessing he didn’t realize the link published on his affiliate site also resolves to the leaky site tour. In any case, Tony made it very clear that anyone using the link furnished by CCBill is in violation of the Dirty Ducats mystery affiliate agreement. I’ll just go out on a limb here and suggest Tony probably didn’t think this one through before hitting the send button.
My guess is the leak free link, published ONLY in his newsletter, is the result of complaints from affiliates that send a lot of sales. The fact that the link published by CCBill and the one on his affiliate site still resolve to a leaky tour suggests, to me, Tony is in no rush to inform his affiliate base of the alternative leak free URL, or that there is a difference between the 3 links. This is further evidenced by the fact his affiliate web site makes no mention of these deferring links.
Any webmaster that’s been in the business as long as I have has witnessed numerous programs play the link shuffle game. Is this what Tony is doing? You be the judge.