Is Link cloaking really necessary?

[Challe77]

Is link cloaking really necessary to do for a non IM related product?
Have you noticed that your affiliate commisions have been reduced if you have not used link cloaking?

Sincerely
Karl

[operationivy]

its not necessary, but you WILL lose some amount of commission. even people not too familiar with IM will sometimes see an affiliate url and choose to go to the root domain instead of just clicking. i think this has more of an effect than people who sign up under their own affiliate link instead (most people are too lazy to do this)

but say you lose about 5% commission... if you are running big numbers through your site this 5% could be a lot

[yaz8888]

cloaking and tracking are absolute musts or guaranteed you'll lose sales

[Jared Alberghini]

Karl,

There are some nasty malware viruses out there that can hijack your affiliate links.

Let's say someone is surfing around with an infected machine, what these nastly little scripts do is search and replace any clickbank hoplink found in the html (in all the websites the user browses) with their own hoplink.

How many infected computers do you think are out there? How many affiliate sales are being hijacked by just this one way? How many other ways do you think are out there to hijack affiliate sales? Survey says: a lot.

I believe it is VERY important to cloak your affiliate links properly.

Jared

[EmailMarketing101]

if you plan on making 50% less... i guess yes do it.

[affilcrazy]

Originally Posted by Challe77

Is link cloaking really necessary to do for a non IM related product?
Have you noticed that your affiliate commisions have been reduced if you have not used link cloaking?

Sincerely
Karl

I would say NO it's not really necessary. If your product is non IM related, Weight Loss, Relationship advice, whatever, the majority if not all of your potential customers will never of heard of an affiliate link. If they don't buy straight away, but have an interest in your affiliate product they will bookmark and come back to it at a later stage.

Obviously IM related products..well again does it really make that much of a difference? For example, if i come across a great sales page and then look to purchase, i will know straight away for example if it is a Clickbank Product. If it is, sorry folks, i will purchase through my own afiliate link to get the product for 50%, 75% off!

[Rebtl]

Originally Posted by Jared Alberghini

Karl,
Let's say someone is surfing around with an infected machine, what these nastly little scripts do is search and replace any clickbank hoplink found in the html (in all the websites the user browses) with their own hoplink.

How rampant do you think it is outside of clickbank?

-like from regular web companies who simply offer an affiliate program?

[longdrv4u]

You need to mask you AFF. link It will look better and other IM won't think your a Noob

[Challe77]

Ok, thanks for all the replies, looks like it might be better to cloak links to be on the safe side.

A question, can I cloak links that appears in an iframe like this?:

<iframe src="http://affiliatelink.net?teaser2=1" width="700" height="155" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Sincerely
Karl

[Rebtl]

Oooh, I second the question that Challe asked,

Is there is a workable way to cloak affiliate links in iFrame or is it just the same as reguarl

(i am currently using gocodes)

[Sonni]

I kind of thought if they were techie enough to do this they could do it even though it's cloaked.
Sonni

[Alice Seba]

I don't cloak in the IM or any niche (been doing this since 2002). Thieves will always find a way to thieve.

[Alice Seba]

Originally Posted by longdrv4u

You need to mask you AFF. link It will look better and other IM won't think your a Noob

Interesting perspective. Guess I've been "noobing" it for a while. ;-)

Masking makes your referrals think the site they order from is yours...if you sell a lot and something goes wrong...enjoy all the support questions you'll have to deal with.

And as mentioned before, thieves will find a way to thieve. They can search for the text on the page in Google and find the original website, etc. Not sure what masking actually protects you from.

Alice

[MarieReyes]

Yep, cloaking your link works as a protection for your affiliate commissions. You will be assured that you will be credited with the sign up or sale and you will earn more commissions.

[matthewd]

Screw that "you will look like a noob" and "your commissions will drop 50%" crap!

I used to think 100% that cloaking was necessary in all markets.

Then last week I installed some tracking software on one of my non IM sites and it doesn't work with cloaked links, so I had to use straight hoplinks... my sales have not gone down at all from it.

I think it is a bit more necessary in the IM market, but if they are going to switch an uncloaked link, they are probably going to switch out a cloaked link too.

I will continue to use cloaked links in my IM stuff just because they look a lot cleaner, but for my other niche sites that I drive PPC to, I am not going to cloak them anymore.

[Aries26]

Yeah, it is necessary so your links look professional. Most online buyers are scared to click on those long, ugly urls.

There are free software to use such as the one from buzz creators.

Aries26

[Alice Seba]

Originally Posted by Aries26

Yeah, it is necessary so your links look professional. Most online buyers are scared to click on those long, ugly urls.

There are free software to use such as the one from buzz creators.

Aries26

You can actually simply create a redirect on your own domain name. That's enough to look professional and makes it easy for you to update if you need change the link later.

Alice

[Mr_Julian_S]

Yes are are some valid reasons to cloak your links:

• If your affiliate ID is taken from the link, so you will not earn a commission. In that case, you definitely WANT to cloak your links, don’t you?
• Another reason to cloak links is that you want to count how many people have clicked on them. Thus you can discover which links work well and which don’t.
• Yet another reason could be, because your (affiliate) links are long and ugly. Especially when using them in text email they take a lot of space and sometimes break up into two or more lines.

Regards

[TimRobinson]

Most of the time people use cloaking so their customers don't know they are getting a commission from the transaction.

Like if I send out an email promoting a product and have an affiliate link at the end people may think "Oh this guys just promoting it to get a commission, he doesn't really like the product", and not want to order it.

While if it is cloaked they don't get upset that I'm actually earning a commission promoting this product.

I'd never promote a crap product purely for commission, I only ever give high quality products to my lists, but whenever I use affiliate links a lot of my customers may think that... (especially new ones that don't know me well).

[Ramage]

Remember Zango? Unless you want them hijacking your links, then you should cloak. It also looks better and most importantly, you get to track every click and basically anything you want.

[Michael Taylor]

Cloak those links!

If you're not cloaking through a tracking service, you have no idea where the sale came from.

Also, do you really want the merchant to know where you get your traffic?

[Daniel Scott]

One thing I have found that is useful with "cloaking" (what I really do is just a re-direct, but most people wouldn't notice) is that I can change the URL the link re-directs to.

Very handy if I want to change where that link goes for any reason (site re-design, different affiliate program, testing/tracking purposes... etc).

-Dan

[Peter Bashforth]

Why lose sales.
Once you have your domain it only takes seconds to mask.

Have a Nice Day

[JaniG]

if you don't cloak your links you just look like an amature so make sure you cloak your links!

Jani

[Sagar Mehta]

Is it necessary? NO. It's really a personal choice on how you want your links to be. There are pros and cons to cloaking and not cloaking alike.

To me, the number 1 reason why I CLOAK my links is because I want to test and track everything. I not only want to know that a sale came in, I want to know WHERE the sale came in from. I like testing the placement of my links on my blog etc. I like changing its position from time to time to see how well it does. And I promote the same product as an affiliate on a number of my sites so cloaking is the only way to know which site got me the sale.

Besides, I like how link read after they've been cloaked:
MyName.com/recommends/product-name

It reads like a whole complete sentence in itself - I kinda like it

Hope this helps

Sagar

[Challe77]

Will a cloak link still work you use search box?

For example you use a search box where you enter some info and you are then redirected to an affiliate page.

Does it still work?

Sincerely
Karl

[Mark Kaye]

What is the difference between "cloaking" and "redirecting." I redirect my links...they are a lot cleaner in my sales materials, but they still redirect to my hoplink.

Should I be doing something different? How do you cloak effectively?