Affiliate Abyss: The Links That Led to Nowhere

I built my business around links.

Amazon affiliate marketing. Niche blogs. SEO-optimized content. All it took was clicks—clicks that turned into commissions. And I was good at it. Real good.

Until I found The Link.

It showed up in an anonymous affiliate product forum. The post was already deleted by the time I clicked on it, but the code remained in my clipboard. A product link like any other.

Except it didn’t lead to a product.

It led to a blank page with a message:

“Thank you for finding me.”

The Curiosity Phase

I thought it was a prank. Maybe some experimental campaign.

Still, I embedded the link in an old blog post—one with little traffic—and forgot about it.

Two days later, I checked my dashboard.

421 clicks. 0 conversions.

Weird.

I checked the page again. Now it said:

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

Clicks with No Source

I refreshed my analytics. The clicks were coming from strange places—dead forums, abandoned Tumblr pages, archived Usenet threads. Some weren’t even indexed on Google.

I replaced the link with a real affiliate product.

The next morning, the original link had returned—on its own.

And the blog traffic kept rising.

The Descent Begins

A week later, I got an email from a burner address.

Subject: They’re not buying. They’re watching.

Attached was a video.

It showed screen recordings of users clicking the link—only their faces weren’t visible. Just silhouettes hunched in front of screens. Silent. Endless.

The video ended with a static screech and a single line:

“Now you’re part of it.”

The Link Changes

Each time I visited the page, the message changed.

“Do you miss sleep?”

“Your wife checked the link too.”

“There is no conversion. Only transformation.”

Naima asked me one night why I looked so tired. I told her I was tracking a strange campaign. She said, “You’re not sleeping, you’re syncing.”

What did that mean?

She didn’t remember saying it the next morning

Offline Doesn’t Work

I deleted the site. Erased the post. Wiped my affiliate history.

Still, the link showed up in my bookmarks. In my search bar suggestions. On sticky notes I didn’t remember writing.

My ad revenue plummeted, but the link kept getting clicks.

Hundreds. Then thousands.

Each one came from an untraceable user ID. Like ghost traffic.

I called tech support. They found no such link on the backend. They told me my site had been offline for weeks.

But I was looking at it. Right there.

The Final Conversion

One night, I clicked the link again.

But this time… it didn’t load a message.

It loaded a mirror of my site, with an article titled “Affiliate Abyss: His Final Post.”

The author name? Syed Umar.

The post described everything I had experienced—word for word—right up to the moment I clicked.

I tried to close the tab.

But all other tabs were gone.

Only one thing remained on the screen:

“Thank you for joining the program. Your mind is now monetized.”

Epilogue

I don’t blog anymore.

I just sit. And click.

Because if I don’t, the link clicks me.

And the clicks never stop.