subject: Cloaking Your Links To Protect Your Affiliate Commissions! [print this page] An associate of mine was looking through the stats from one of his affiliate marketing campaigns and he noticed that he was suddenly converting at less than 5%. Considering that he was using a sales package that had been tested again and again to convert at over 40% - he was extremely puzzled, to say the least. Of course he double checked all of the statistics and assumed it would pick up in a day or two. Well a week passed.
His campaign STAYED at under 5% conversion.
He just couldn't figure out why it was converting so low, so hebegan asking around. One of his online friends, an established internet marketer, just laughed and said, 'you aren't using anything to cloak your links, are you?'
Unfortunately he wasn't - adn worse, he actually had no idea how to cloak his links or why he should. After asking his advisor a little more about it he figured out why you should always cloak your affiliate links - there are people and programs that will change your affiliate link to their own and steal your commissions! There is a type of spyware that does exctly that. Whenever a user with this spyware on their computer visits a ClickBank product (as well as other affiliate programs), it replaces the referrer ID with the spyware creator's own, and so the spyware author collects the commision, and the person who placed the ad and ran the campaign that made the sale in none the wiser.
That meant that my associate was basically handing many of his commissions to these thieves. The worst part is that he had lost a few days of sales already, He really wished that he had known about cloaking links before that point. There are numerous ways to cloak links, but some techniques can break the cookies that will credit the sale properly, while others can screw up the redirect.
If you aren't confident that your sales being credited correctly, it could be that someone is stealing your commissions. This is particularly true if you've recently noticed a drop in sales, or if your campaigns are performing below your expectations. It isn't terribly hard to find a guide about link cloaking, but most don't take affiliate marketing into account and might cause you to mess up the cookies so you STILL don't get commissions.
Other than link cloaking there really isn't a definitive way to stop others from hijacking your affiliate links. Fortunately you can implement a cloak on your links quickly, you just need to find a good cloaking approach. The problem certainly isn't a lack of available programs - it's a lack of programs that actually work and get you the sale.
You can split test your campaign a thousand times and set up brilliant sales funnels, but it won't make a difference if you aren't using a good link cloaking program or service.
Discover more about link cloaking in the free Cloak and Dagger Affiliate Secrets report. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box. You can also include your affiliate link if you sign up at Clickbank Pirate.
