Affiliate Marketing Blog

Affiliate link cloaking is nothing more than hiding (cloaking) your affiliate links and one of the smartest things you will do as an affiliate is to start cloaking your affiliate links today. Why? There are two reasons! The first is that research shows that visitors are less likely to click affiliate links or links that look like affiliate links. The second reason is that affiliate link cloaking helps keeps thieves and dishonest affiliates from stealing your commission.

So you know what affiliate link cloaking is and what the benefits are, but how do you cloak an affiliate link? Well there are several ways to do this. Some are paid and a some are free. While most of the paid versions are honest, I have heard of affiliate links getting rewritten and people losing commission while using affiliate link cloaking software or scripts. I prefer to use the free way below, because I can be sure that no one is trying to overwrite my affiliate links and it is free.

Now on to the best method (at least to me). The first thing you want to do is create a directory (folder) on your hosting account and give it a name. What i do is name the directory after the product or service I am promoting. Example a directory named hostgator would mean that I am promoting hostgator hosting.

Once you have your directory created, you would then want to create a simple php redirect (below) using notepad and add your affiliate link to the redirect. Once you have added the affiliate link, save your new redirect as index.php and upload it to your new directory. Example -  my affiliate link for hostgator would go into my new directory called hostgator. Now instead of some ugly affiliate link that scares away visitors, my new link will look like affiliatesblog.net/hostgator and my affiliate code is hidden from prying eyes.

<?php
header( ‘Location: http://youraffiliatelink.com’ ) ;
?>

While affiliate link cloaking does add a couple of minutes to your task, you are protecting your money and the hassle is well worthit. Feel free to copy the code above and save it as index.php and just remember to update the affiliate code each time you use it. To keep things uniform accross your site, I recommend using this on all outgoing links (affiliate or not), this way there is no difference in appearance of your outgoing links.

Be good!

Matt

As an affiliate marketer your affiliate commission is your life blood. Whether you are in it as a part time business or full time, your time is money.

When you mention affiliate commission theft, the normal response would be to blame zango.com, spyware, scumware, other affiliates and even anti spyware programs. No one seems to notice that there is an ongoing trend by some merchants that is costing you money. While the merchants may not be doing things to purposely steal your commission, the popular tactics below are costing you money and should be avoided.

• Phone Numbers On Banner Ads – Your visitor ends up calling and places the order over the phone. Unless there is a way to track the phone order, your money is gone.
• Live Chat - this seems harmless, but this can be a huge problem. If you drive a visitor to the merchant and a chat window pops up offering coupons or discount codes, you have lost the sale. While most of the live chat programs offer outstanding tracking, if there is not a tracking code in place to track affiliates the sale goes to the merchant.
• Squeeze Pages – these are extremely popular among Click Bank merchants. When your visitor arrives at the merchants site, they are directed to enter their name and email to get a free report or e-book. Once the lead is captured, you have lost the commission and the merchant has built their mailing list and possibly sold a product. Either way, your sale is gone.
• Newsletters – Another popular tactic by Click Bank merchants. You send the visitor and a few seconds after they hit the landing page, a slide in offer for a newsletter comes across the screen. Your visitor signs up for the news letter and they are immediately taken to another page or the landing page refreshes. Once the lead has been captured by the merchant, your commission is gone and the merchant has built their mailing list and possibly sold a product.

The list above is not all inclusive and there are other tactics that are being used. Before promoting a merchant, visit their site. Do you notice anything that is a leak? Do they have live chat? Do they have an phone number displayed on their site? After the visit, send an email to the merchants affiliate manager and ask about the problems you have noticed. Do they have a way to track sales that are directed to chat? Do they have a way to track phone orders? If they have procedures in place, you are good to go. If not, simply move on! I am not a big fan of Click Bank, but if you are promoting Click Bank products you need to make sure that you are not sending visitors to a squeeze page or a page that is immediately shown a newsletter offer. Remember that once the lead is captured by the merchant, your sale is gone.