What is affiliate link cloaking?
In plain English, affiliate link cloaking is disguising an affiliate link so it appears as though the visitor thinks they are staying on your website. A better choice than having them hover their cursor over the link and it displays a URL with an array of random alphanumeric digits, which looks unprofessional. It could confuse the visitor and cause them to leave the page as it doesn't necessarily relate to what they are looking for.
Suppose you are at a webpage and are looking for more information about a product, you scan through the text on the page and come across something like this:
http:affpromolink.com.eji.hwcht.349078
Dots used instead of slashes so the link is not working and is for informational purposes only
It looks awful and somewhat misleading. So instead we need to cloak the link so it looks like this:
http:yourwebsite.com.affiliate
That looks a lot more like it, doesn't it? It's in line with what the website is about, it looks professional and will serve better in doing its job to keep the visitor following through with your material and make a purchase. It's re-directing them so when they click on the 'yourwebsite' link it takes them to the 'affpromolink' without the fuss, confusion and likelihood of them navigating away and never returning.
The sequence looks like this, [Your website] ? [Cloaked redirect link] ? [Affiliate website]
On a side note, what would you think when visiting a site with a view to making a purchase and saw an ugly irregular link? Would you be inclined to click it? If not, then don't expect your visitors to either.
Aside from wanting the link to look professional, we also want to protect it from being used by someone whose intention is to steal your commission and at the same time maintain credibility as an affiliate marketer. By not cloaking you're links you're in effect leaving money on the table. So with these things in mind, how do you go about creating your own cloaked links for your website and increasing your commissions in one step?
If you're using WordPress as a platform for your site, there is a plugin called Pretty Link which is very easy to use. When you're logged in to the WordPress dashboard admin area, on the left hand sidebar there will be a link labeled plugins, hover over that link and a drop down menu will appear allowing you the option to add new plugin, click on this and then type 'Pretty Link' into the plugin search bar and voila! You should have it right there ready to download and install with on screen prompts to help. Once activated it is simply a matter of selecting which affiliate links you want to cloak using the Pretty Link tool and it takes care of the rest while leaving you with professional, clean looking links.
Guy Salter is the publisher of Make More Affiliate Commissions - a free strategy report for affiliate marketers of all skill levels. Grab your copy today at http://onlinehomebusinesstalk.com/
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