The Secret To Effective Affiliate Marketing

Have you ever heard of the term 'cloaking' before

? No doubt you have some connotations surrounding the meaning of the word. Cloaking simply refers to making your affiliate link not look like one.

Here is a useful example. An uncloaked affiliate link looks something like this: wwwyourproductcom/affiliatelink35890389/.

Whereas a 'cloaked' one looks more like this: wwwyourproductcom

There are many reasons why you should 'cloak, your link. Here are some of the main reasons.

1. Cloaking your affiliate link cuts down on 'cookie stuffing'. Cookie stuffing is an underhand tactic that is widely practised by some of the more unscrupulous affiliate marketers. It works like this. You visit a website promoting a product that practices cookie stuffing. A cookie is sent, unknown to you, to your computer. If you decide to purchase the same product from a different website, the cookie will override any affiliate links on that site. Therefore, the site which practices cookie stuffing unfairly earns all the commissions. Cloaking your link will combat this practice enormously,

2. Psychologically, having an uncloaked link runs the risk of people being resentful of you earning commissions. A sad part of life is that many people do not like to see other people make money from their purchases. Often they will try and cut out the affiliate aspect of your link in order to prevent you from receiving a commission. Cloaking your link removes this aspect of human begrudgers' resentment towards you making money.

3. Often a very long link is aesthetically unpleasing to the eye. There is a tendency for people to just chop out the affiliate part of a link and paste a truncated version into the web address bar. Sometimes with really long links it is simply easier to do this then copy the whole thing. If you have an uncloaked link, you run the risk of not being able to convert potential customers into commissions.

4. Finally, using an uncloaked link puts you at risk to Stealware. Stealware is software that overrides all uncloaked links with another affiliate link. This is an unscrupulous practice whereby your affiliate link is overwritten and someone else's is inserted in its place. Therefore, all of your commissions are lost as people steal from your pocket. Of course the practice is completely illegal but using a normal affiliate link is putting your commissions at the mercy of other people. Stealware practices are considered rare in comparison to cookie stuffing.

I hope from the above points I have convinced you of the value of cloaking your affiliate link. Doing this completely removes most of the above issues and greatly cuts down on cookie stealing and stealware practices. There is software available that will completely remove the threat of cookie stealing and stealware.

However, for the most part cloaking your affiliate link will be enough to safeguard your earnings.

Please take these points into consideration and safeguard your commissions. If you do so you will see your earnings increase exponentially.

by: Gary McGeown

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