3 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
3 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

News Alert: Avoid those long, strange looking website links...

by Alan Petersen
2 replies
I was watching the news last night and the consumer affairs reporter was doing a story on preventing getting "scammed" online during the holiday shopping season.

One of his tips was to "bypass those long, strange looking hyperlinks and go direct to the merchant" because you just can't trust those strange looking hyperlinks you see on websites or you get in emails!

Wow! Talk about screwing the stats that merchant are trying to track or the hard work affiliates do by encouraging them to bypass those links and go direct.

But this underscores the importance of cloaking your links! A lot of attention is given to cloaking your links to protect you from affiliates hijackers/thieves but in my opinion it's more important to cloak your links because a lot of folks don't know that it's an affiliate link.

They get scared when they see that long, weird looking link...is it phising... is it a Trojan virus... I better not click on it!

This is especially true if you're promoting products outside of ClickBank where most folks don't know what an affiliate link is.

So cloak your links! Use simple php directs. No frames, No hard masking! Just a simple php redirect.

Believe it or not this scares people...

http:// merchantwebsite.com/yada_yada_yada/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&toolid=10005&campid=5335966518&custom id=affID&icep_item=230556361702&ipn=psmain&icep_ve ctorid=238401&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=rss


This does not...

http:// mywebsite.com/offer/link
#affiliate link cloaking #alert #avoid #links #long #news #php redirect #strange #website
  • Profile picture of the author JackPowers
    I'd be interested in some hard data on ctrs on this.
    Signature

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2936896].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Alan Petersen
      Originally Posted by JackPowers View Post

      I'd be interested in some hard data on ctrs on this.
      Me too. I've tried and all I find is wild claims from folks selling link cloaking software.

      The Marketing Sherpa folks have released their 2011 email marketing report for $300. Looks like they studied/tracked a lot of things but not sure if redirection was covered.

      [SherpaStore] 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report

      (above not an affiliate link).

      I still think for the effort involved it's worth it to cloak your links. Now this isn't scientific AT ALL but I asked a few non-techie friends and they said my eBay affiliate links scared them. Ask your non-IM friends and it will be interesting what they think about it.
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2937014].message }}

Trending Topics