Reasons Why Link Cloaking Is Vital For Affiliate Marketers
There’s a lot of confusion about link cloaking. The term itself sounds suspicious, like it’s a black hat method of marketing or a way to disguise your identity. The fact of the matter is, it is nothing like that. What it is is something that any internet marketer should be aware of and use, for a variety of reasons.
After you are approved for an affiliate relationship, you are given the opportunity to embed widgets of code in your site. These are clickable links that direct customers to the site that sells the product you have affiliated with. In this way, the link is tracked back to you and you can be assured that if a sale is made, you will get your commission. It doesn’t always work out that way, though.
For one thing, many people have the mistaken idea that they will be overcharged for the product or service if they purchase it via your website. Thinking they are being clever, they remove your affiliate ID from the link before clicking through.When they do this, you lose the commission that is rightfully yours.
That is one problem. The next problem is even worse. There are very clever hackers who can use that ID as part of their hacking process. The good ones can actually redirect all or some of your commissions to themselves using that ID. Internet stores, even small ones, fall victim to this every day.
Link cloaking substitutes a unique URL in place of the one you have been given and then redirects back to your affiliate link without revealing it to the user. By cloaking the link, you have accomplished a number of things.
First of all, the customer will not have the opportunity to remove your affiliate ID from the URL. Most customers don’t do that anyway, so it’s only a minor problem, but it has been entirely eliminated. Many other potential customers are put off by that strange looking link and it can cause them to grow suspicious and not purchase the product or service you are advertising. Your cloaked link gives you the legitimacy you deserve in their eyes.
The most important thing you have done is protect yourself from hackers. They have nowhere to begin if they don’t have your affiliate identification. In effect, you have hijacked the hackers!
Far from being an underhanded way to trick people into believing you’re something you’re not, cloaking your links is a way to prove to them that you are a legitimate business and not just an amateur trying to make a quick buck. There is absolutely nothing black hat about it.
Another thing that internet marketers do is create an iframe page to give them an even stronger psychological connection to the company they are affiliated with. These are pages that look exactly like the page the user is going to be going to to buy the product. The fact that your page is identical to the page they are directed to greatly enhances your image.
If you are still worried about it, by all means contact the company with which you are affiliated and ask them what their policy is regarding link cloaking. The will appreciate your asking and probably agree that it’s a good thing to do.
It’s simple to learn more about ways you can increase visits to your site and click-through traffic using link cloaking. When you use a conversion tracking system, you will be able to improve your marketing and advertising efforts and increase your thriving business.
