Do You Cloak Your Links In NON-IM Niches? WHY?!

by 21 replies
24
Well...do you?

I've spent a decent amount of time cloaking every
affiliate link of every website of every niche
I'm currently in. And most of the niches I'm
in are NOT in the Internet Marketing niche.

Other than "looking like a scary link" to a
lay-person, for what reason would you
cloak a link in a NON-IM niche?

(And I'm not even sure if the "scary looking
affiliate link" reason is good enough to
cloak a non-IM affiliate link)

What do YOU think?

Best answer gets a prize.
#main internet marketing discussion forum #affiliate #cloak #links #niches #nonim
  • This goes in my article:

    http://jayjennings.com/likes/clickertraining/article

    This goes in my PPC ad:

    http://jayjennings.com/likes/clickertraining/ppc

    This goes in my forum sig:

    http://jayjennings.com/likes/clickertraining/sig

    Now, at any time I can check my stats and see where the most traffic is coming from.

    That's why I cloak almost all my links. The more data I have, the better I can plan.

    Jay Jennings

    PS - I wrote an article that explains all about how link tracking can save you hours of time:
    http://jayjennings.com/link-tracking-saves-time.html
    • [1] reply


    • What Jay said

      +

      Much easier to change products when needed.
  • [DELETED]
  • How does it track auto-responder eMail links as an affiliate
    through Clickbank?

    In other words, will it be able to easily track which
    eMail in my A/R series made the affiliate commission
    (eMail 1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 24, etc.)?
    • [1] reply
    • Wow is there a tool like what Emmanuel asked for..
      Something that can track which link made
      the commission..

      I think this could be done manually by creating
      multiple affiliate links with different tracking id's
      then creating as many cloaked links and using
      each one per email in the series.

      That way you'll know which cloaked link drove
      the sale.

      But can this be done programmatically? Like
      all you have to do is to pass a parameter in
      the cloaked link per email to tell the script
      to use the appropriate afflink?

      maybe in this format:

      funny, it will again look like an aff. link beats the
      purpose of cloaking I guess.

      Just a thought

      Omar
  • I cloak regardless; it has numerous benefits. However, I think what is more interesting is that *not* cloaking might be considered being in compliance with the new FTC regulation for announcing yourself as an affiliate. I know, it doesn't follow the letter of the regulation; however, I think the argument is justified (though not substantially so) that posting a non-cloaked link showing your affiliate ID would be grounds showing that you effectively announced yourself as an affiliate of the product you're promoting.

    Do I get the prize now, Emmanuel?


    • [1] reply
    • Oh, interesting. In the real world my links look like this:

      http://jayjennings.com/likes/sonicsneak

      ...because I like the way it reads, but I could just as easily do...

      http://jayjennings.com/affiliate-link/sonicsneak

      I wonder if that would be good enough?

      Jay Jennings
  • With Cloak and Tracker or Sonic Sneak I can pass things from the cloaked link to the destination link, and since CB allows a Tracking ID, you can track from the click in an email all the way through to a sale.

    For example, a link in an email might be:

    http://jayjennings.com/likes/cloak-and-tracker/em02

    When someone clicks that they go to my site, the click is recorded, and they're redirected using the Clickbank link -- with that "em02" tacked onto the end as a tracking ID.

    Jay Jennings

    Edit: Of course, that only works with affiliate programs that allow tracking IDs, like Clickbank.
    • [1] reply

    • What about affiliate programs that do not have tracking IDs?
      How would you track them (from an eMail followup series)?
      • [2] replies
  • Affiliates have been cloaking links for many years does not matter what industry they are in and mainly due to people would cut them out of commissions if they though it was an affiliate link. Yes there are people that will cut you out just so you do not make a sale...

    Some do it based on tracking also so they can tell where and when their clicks are happening. Plus when doing tracking, if your affiliate network says you did not make a sale you have proof with tracking that you did send someone to the merchant site.

    As an affiliate manager years ago part of my job was to test links with real sales. You would be shocked to know the % of merchants that used to not pay on actual valid leads and sales. Things have much improved since then but this is one reason why tracking is important if you are dealing with affiliate links.

    James
  • not exactly after the prize - just want to ask you how long does it take to cloak a link . Maximum 10 secs . type bit.ly ...... enter ur link and get a new link that allows you massive traffic stats in addition to cloaking ..... all that for free ..... and only takes a couple of seconds ..... why would you not cloak?

    - n Yes that big scary link does look suspicious to alot of ppl..... IM or not

    - And if you simply wanted to place a link somewhere .... and not hyperlink it .... would look much better to copy paste 'bit.ly/xxx' other than something like ' hoplink.xxxxxxx.xxxxxx/xxxxxx etc'

    - As I have mentioned that doing all my link claoking at bit.ly I am extremely used to their traffic tracker feature ... it is both in real time and extremely accurate - u just need to make an account with them (free) - so this is one big reason for me

    for me its just too little effort to even think about a cost benefit analysis - DEFINITELY WORTH IT!
    • [1] reply
    • I agree with Jay .. you should be using your own server and not some other 3rd party for links.

      The site could go down, then you lose sales
      The site could be backup with traffic, then you lose sales
      The site could stop working or go out of business, then you lose sales
      The site could get black listed as a spam site, then you lose sales

      Huge benefits to using your own server vs using a 3rd party service for short urls...

      James

      • [1] reply
  • The only thing I use bit.ly (or tinyurl, etc.) for is throw-away links. If you're using them in articles, reports, ebooks, etc., or any place where you're actually trying to make a sale , I'd say watch out. Putting your redirect on your own site makes more sense to me -- you don't know how long those other guys will be around and it would suck if all your links went dead.

    Jay Jennings
  • Sometimes, sometimes not. It depends.
  • Absolutely... but the primary reason is to simply TRACK the links. How many hits, is the advertising/promotional model working, etc. Because every now and then you'll hit a winning combination - perhaps a nice article that is widely distributed, or a press release works wonders, or a short video is creating all the traffic. But how would you know if you don't track EVERYTHING?
    • [1] reply
    • Irregardless of whether it's in the IM niche or not, I always cloak my links. For one, I'm a stat freak. It helps to know where you are getting most of your results from and try to improve on that more. Furthermore, if the affiliate link that you're promoting is down or the product is being withdrawn, all you need to do is to simply login to your script's admin area and change it to a different direction. This is tremendously useful if you put these links into viral reports etc. Lastly, although not a big problem in the non-im niches, I do cloak links to prevent commission theft.
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