Protecting Your Affiliate Links
62
Protecting Links
Do You Protect Your Affiliate Links?
See results without votingDon't Lose Money - Protect Your Links
How many of Internet Marketers have lost affiliate money because we
don't protect our links? We'll never really know but let's stop it from
now. Click Here to see my favourite tool to do this.
Link cloaking sounds like something we shouldn't be doing, but for those of you who are internet marketers, I guess you need to really take a look at the benefits. It's nothing bad, illegal or rule breaking.
In the context I am talking about, it is simply to reformat the URL to ensure people aren't able to divert sales from you to them.
For example if you were to sell a product for me as an affiliate, I would give you a link that would tell me it was you who had sold the product. Knowing this I can then pay you your commission.
It would probably look something like this:
http://ebizadvice.net/specialoffer/aff=myaffname
However some unscrupulous people are able to divert these sales once they know your affiliate code. They take off your code and add theirs! You get nothing and they get a discount on their purchase.
My link would be changed to look like this:
http://ebizadvice.net/specialoffer/aff=roguename
Another way you lose out is that if their is an obvious affiliate code at the end of a URL, many people take that code off to stop you getting the payment!
My link would then look like this:
http://ebizadvice.net/specialoffer/
This is where a cloaker comes in as a much needed tool to ensure that these people never know the affiliate code.
Using a cloaker they cannot work out any details of yours or the sellers until you have established a connection with the Seller. They then credit this visit with your account - so for the length of the cookie you will make earn your commission.
Hope this is of help to you.
Sue Berry
Ask Us For Help
- Find out More About Affiliate Marketing
ebizadvice helping you generate more cash from your site. - Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Twitter and find out more about Affiliate Marketing.
No Amazon products found
CommentsLoading...
Thanks for the comment Ross. I used pretty link but found the same as you, traffic going to my links but no conversions. I searched for as tight a link cloaker as I could where I have control of what the link says and how it performs. If you cloak a link but the provider is easy to work out, you still have a problem. If you use, say, RegNow(one that I use) you need to make sure that you don't let people work that out. If they do work it out, it's then too easy for them to clear their cookies and go straight to RegNow sign up and get commission on that product themselves. Seems a lot of work but that's human nature. People are out to make a saving. Perhaps the Affiliate Companies should take a small deposit that's returnable after a certain period. I know of one that does that. I'm sure it would stop some of the opportunists out there Unfortunately if you've not cloaked your link properly, you may fall prey to this activity and lose your sale. Not nice but it seems to happen a lot.
However I also have a theory that there are other reasons why you might lose sales but that it possibly another article - I guess I will just need to word it carefully so as not to upset anyone.
Sue
Hi ebizadvice Thanks for responding to my questions, should I stop using pretty link altogether,means a lot of work to replace existing aff.links. It's difficult I guess to know which is the most efficient cloaker to use. But, if you and others had similar conversion rates with pretty link then I am switching.
I will look forward to your new article.
Hi Ross
I've tried several cloakers and the one I've settled for is not expensive but you do need to install it by FTP. The consideration I used was that i wanted a cloaker that I had complete control of. I had no need to let anyone else have my passwords etc. To use any cloaker software you need to give thought to wording you use when cloaking. It's no good giving the cloaked link the specific. Use a highly popular keyword that people use when searching for that product. The cloaker I use also enables me to have several products for one keyword. This allows me to randomise products. Better for SEO.
You can check my link in the post for the product I use.
Regards
Sue
Great, thanks Sue, I hadn't thought about using keywords in the affiliate url,duh, and thanks for that link. Cheers.
No Problem Ross - anytime.
This is the very first time, I've read about Link cloaking. Pretty interesting. What you've said makes plenty of sense to me. Thank you.
I shall take a close look at RegNow. From your reply to Ross it appears to be a commercial WordPress plugin.
Yep, human nature is kind of strange. There will always be someone who tries to ensure you do not get the value of your affiliate link.
There are those that hijack you pages and do all sorts of unpleasant things, luckily these are a small percentage of all the decent people around.
Hi Opensourcevarsity
Thanks for your comment - I used RegNow as an example of one of the conanies i use as an affiliate. If you want more about cloaking click the first link in my article. Yes as you say - it's only a small majority of people that are unscrupulous. Never the less getting some protection is better than losing your sales to someone who's deliberately taking customers from you.
ross670daw 20 months ago
Link cloaking is an important part of affiliate marketing, I use a wordpress plugin called 'Pretty Link', but, how do you know if your sales have been stolen? I seem to get a lot of clicks but hardly any sales, which makes me suspicious, or would this be more related to the offer not converting.
Thanks for the hub