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How To Hide ("Cloak") Your Affiliate Links And Make More Sales Like The Super Affiliates It's an old axiom in sales that people love to shop and to buy stuff, but they hate to be sold. That is the whole reason behind hiding or "cloaking" your affiliate links: If prospects realize there is a conscious effort being made to sell them something (you appear as "pushy sales person), or that a commission is being paid to a sales person, their guard goes up and they are less likely to buy. Solving The Link Theft Problem Getting fewer sales overall from prospects because they became defensive and skeptical as a result of obvious sales tactics is one thing, but in the affiliate marketing world, there's even more reasons to hide your affiliate links: LINK THEFT. Suppose someone clicks through your affiliate link and discovers a product for the very first time as a result of your referral or recommendation. When they land on the product sales page and they like it and want to buy it, if they sign up for an affiliate account, clear their cookies, and replace your affiliate ID with their affiliate ID and then buy the product they effectively order through THEIR affiliate link and they get the commission for the sale instead of you. If you're a long time internet marketer then you might have heard of this before. If you are new to this game then you might be freaking out right now thinking that people will be stealing your commissions. Relax my friend... There's good news! You can prevent a lot of this link theft by hiding, cloaking or redirecting your links. In the "make money on the internet" sector, link theft is absolutely rampant because all internet marketers know how to order through their own affiliate link, so this will help to protect your efforts. Another thing is that affiliate links are usually pretty ugly and have no sales value. For example, tell me which of these three links you would be more likely to click on: http://listbuilding.com?AFFID=9724 Tough choice ehh? You would be more likely to click on the 2nd or 3rd link right? Why? Because one thing many affiliates forget is that link URLs are part of the sales copy. Domain names, in and of themselces are like headlines! Use Domain Names To Protect Your Links, Increase Click Through Rates and Boost Your Sales! The difference in click throughs of a good URL with sales value and a bad URL with No sales value can be astronomical. Split test it yourself in your Google Adwords and web or e-zine ads if you don't believe me. By the way, that reminds me, with the "Google Slap: and changes in google landing page policies, I'm not sure what google's policies are on using forwarded or masked URL's in their ads. Check the google rules for yourself as they seem to be changing often. I also recommend Perry Marshall's course on google ad words at: www.MarketingWtihAdWords.com Here's Exactly How To Hide ("Cloak") Your Affiliate Links Okay, so now you know WHY you should hide your links, now let's get down to the HOW TO do it part... Method 1: Hide webpage links in your HTML using a different display and destination link The lowest level of hiding your links is simply to use your unique affiliate link as the destination link and the actual URL you want the potential customer to see as the display link in your HTML. This requires you that you know a little HTML of course and you realize that display and destination are not the same. If you need help with HTML, go to the bookstore and buy "HTML for Dummies" or "HTML for the world wide web," or you can find numerous free HTML primers online such as www.htmlprimer.com For example. If your affiliate ID is '9724' your affiliate link to send people to the main page of the List Building Club is: http://listbuilding.com?AFFID=9724 Your goal is to hide this obvious sales-promoting link (Did I mention these affiliate links are super long and super ugly too?). If you've been leaving your affiliate links raw, exposed and naked for all the world to see, well.....ooops! But no worries. That's why I'm here to help teach you the tricks of the List Building Club super affiliates so you can improve your marketing in the future. When you are putting a link on a web page, always hide the affiliate link in your HTML and show the destination URL as ListBuildingClub.com (or your own custom redirect link). Example HTML code: <a href="http://listbuilding.com?AFFID=9724">ListBuilding.com</a> This HTML will display ListBuilding.com but send people through your affiliate link (be sure to replace the '9724' with your very own unique affiliate ID that you recieved when you signed up for the LBC affiliate program. Method 2: Purchase a domain name from Go Daddy for the sole purpose of cloaking your affiliate link. There are more domain name registrars out there than you can count, but if you register your domains with a company that offers free forwarding service with URL masking, then by all means use it. I use www.GoDaddy.com for many of my domains because it's only about 9 bucks per domain to register and that includes free forwarding and masking! All you need to do is register a domain and keep in mind how important the name you choose is to your click throughs. Your choice of domain name alone can give you an unfair "Super Affiliate" advantage. Then log into your account and click "domain forwarding." Type in your affiliate hoplink as the domain to forward to. Then click on "mask domain" and enter the display URL to match your new chosen domain name. It's that easy! Method 3: Purchase Link Cloaking Software There are more link cloaking software programs out there than I can even keep track of anymore. All you need to do is search Google for things like "link cloaking," "link cloaker," "link cloaking software," and so on and you will find many to choose from. One which was recommended to me and is currently being used by some of our members is: COVERT AFFILIATE and it can be found Here I have not used covert affiliate myself (yet) but I'm mentioning this one first because I know it is being used currently by many affiliates and it is quite slick and does more than just hide your links. I also know it is used by A-list internet marketing gurus like Mark Joyner. This is software that sets an affiliate cookie for you then re-directs the visitor to any page you specifiy. This is a sweet tool because if you have a website and you are publishing our articles, you can actually drop your cookie on the vistor's machine before they even hit the sales page! I've been told this works well, and most people will never know ther are going through an affiliate link. There are a ton of other
tools to use, so find one you're comfortable with and use it. Method 4: Use third party link or "link shrinkers" Did you ever see a url that looked like this: http://tinyurl.com/yb27esy or http://snipurl.com/s4dfn What you see above are examples of "links that have been shrunk!" There are numerous 3rd party services you can use to hide your affiliate link and shorten it at the same time. I have used this service in the past with success and it is especially useful in e-mail marketing because it is fast and easy. Click on that link above to see it in action - it will take you to ListBuilding.com Here are a few examples: http://www.tinyurl.com Just a warning about using third party link shrinking services. I would recommend these for e-mail marketing as a last resort, but getting your own domain then forwarding and masking is the ideal solution. Don't be an el-cheapo! It costs nine lousy bucks to get a domain. Alternately, purchase a quality link cloaking service or software application. Many of these, like www.adtrackz.com offer cloaking along with tracking so you can kill two birds with one stone (tracking will be the subject of another lesson). The trouble with any free 3rd party service is these sites come and go and if they go, your link could go with them if they shut down. Also, some of these sites have been temporarily shut down because spammers have abused these services, so be aware that you have no control over the shrunk link in the long term. I would not recommend using these for any permanant links such as embedding them in PDF's or placing them on web pages.
This is a 3rd party service that simply forwards a URL to another website. There's nothing fancy - no masking of the URL, just forwarding from one URL to another. You can redirect from a domain of your choice to your affiliate link. Then simply use the domain you chose to promote the product instead of your exposed affiliate link. This doesn't mask the end of the affiliate link once they get to the sales page, but it is a useful tool to know about. Method 6: Put Your Geeky Programmer To Work! If you have a good webmaster with programming skills, then you can simply have him or her create a custom script that performs some of the functions listed above, now that you know what to do and look for. In Conclusion: Be a Good Affiliate With Integrity...Because What Comes Around Goes Around There you have it. You are now a stealthy link-cloaking expert and you know all the tricks to increase your clicks and protect your links as much as possible.
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