subject: Affiliate Link Protection [print this page] It's an unfortunate reality that commission security is a necessity in affiliate marketing. If you are careless in this regard it could end up costing you a lot of money. People who are succeeding in affiliate marketing are taking no chances and are engaged in affiliate link protection. I see obvious affiliate links all the time with no effort taken by the affiliate to hide their affiliate links. It's a shame you have to go to those lengths but that's just the way it is.
There are various link cloakers that protect you from these internet pirates. Everyone involved in affiliate marketing needs to guarantee that their hard earned commissions are not being stolen. It's easy to keep a notepad on your desktop and just have one location to retrieve all your "cloaked" affiliate links, it will save you a lot of heartache and probably a lot of money.
There are companies out there who can help you protect your commissions, build mailing lists, track your commissions and build extra ad credits. You need to use every tool at your disposal in the crazy game of internet marketing. Affiliate marketing is a competitive industry but success can be had, a fundamental tool for success is security and I would suggest highly you upgrade that aspect of your business, especially when it can be done for free.
Not only is cloaking a great idea for security, but also the fact that long affiliate link URL's just happen to look terrible. I must be in the minority because things like long URL's and URL's impossible to remember don't bother me (mainly because I just copy and paste), apparently they do bother others. Tracking your new URL's though is another benefit of some of the companies offering URL protection and of course list building.
One of the problems with affiliate marketers is that they get bogged down with shiny new "things" they can get here or there online and these tangents they head down them prevent them from doing what they need to be concentrating on....which is marketing, driving traffic, and monetizing their sites the majority of the time. Successful affiliate marketers spend the majority of their time "marketing", sounds simple ?
It may be simple but may marketers are obsessed about the latest and fanciest program all the time (which is just like a shiny new shovel), eventually you need to start digging, no matter how pretty the shovel is.
