Hi Patrick,
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Instead of using the straight affiliate link in your pdf file, you'd use a placeholder link that contains a redirect.
Thus, let's say that my affiliate ID is "lingstar' and my affiliate link I want to use is
http://lingstar.richhermit.hop.clickbank.net .
Of course, I don't want to use
http://lingstar.richhermit.hop.clickbank.net
in my pdf file, as anyone can substitute their ID for mine. ie, instead of clicking on your link, they can look at the link, remember it, type it into notepad, change the affiliate ID to their own, and then copy that back into the browser. Result? A lost commission.
Instead, I will create a NEW file on my own website/server/homepage/etc. that redirects people to the product via my affiliate link - ie,
http://www.lingstar.com/explore/richhermit.html
http://www.lingstar.com/explore/richhermit.txt
shows exactly how the above is done. It uses the "meta refresh" tag like so:
meta http-*****="refresh" content="0; URL=http://lingstar.richhermit.hop.clickbank.net"
The "content=0" means, forward immediately (ie, wait 0 seconds), and the URL=http://lingstar.richhermit.hop.clickbank.net means, forward the person to that particular URL. Notice how it has my affiliate link embedded.
Thus! To recap:
Instead of using:
http://lingstar.richhermit.hop.clickbank.net
in my pdf file, I would use:
http://www.lingstar.com/explore/richhermit.html
It cannot be modified from the pdf and it does a good job in hiding my affiliate link.
Hope that helps!
Best wishes,