In internet marketing, there are two schools of thought with respect to link cloaking. Link cloaking involves making your links to affiliate websites look like regular links instead of affiliate links which many people recognise by strange letter combinations or URL names.
With school of thought number one, you might think it’s better to be up front about being an affiliate selling a product either by saying so or simply by presenting your link with your code in it without worrying about cloaking. On the other side, some suggest people are more likely to buy your product if they don’t think they’re being sales pitched or sold to. For some reason, a lot of people don’t feel good about someone getting a commission off their purchase. Some will even try to avoid your affiliate link if they really want to buy it and you led them there. This is why many affiliate programs will credit you with the sale due to a ninety-day http cookie.
You might consider conducting experiments and seeing what bodes better for you. If you choose to cloak your links, there are free tools like Tinyurl.com that can take a long URL and turn it short as well as make it difficult to see where someone is about to click through to. This type of tool can be useful for more than just affiliate marketing. It can be great in micro blogging environments like Twitter and Plurk or anywhere else that has a 140 character maximum.
Link Cloaking Tools
If you’ve decided that cloaking is something you want to do, there are link cloaking tools that are free and available for a fee. Do be careful you’re not cloaking beyond recognition or you could impact your ability to get paid through companies such as ClickBank.
About Sean Rasmussen
Hi Sean,
I’ve always thought it better to cloak any affiliate links, so that people don’t try to interfere with them. I’ve never heard of the ‘ninety-day http cookie’ before and I find it really interesting. This is good news because when I’ve genuinely earned a commission, I still have a chance to get it.
Hi Jazz
A lot of companies that run affiliate programs have the 90 day life of the hoplink.
There are some that have longer and even a few that don’t expire.
I am an affiliate for one that doesn’t expire.
Hi Gee,
Wow! I never knew that. I’ve got so much to learn.
Are you a affiliate for MS
I think it depends a bit on the context. On twitter a cloaked link is acceptable as there is a space issue. On normal posts it is questionable. I know that I sometimes don’t follow links because I can’t see where I am going.
Renee that’s a choice you have to make. However it is accepted in affiliate marketing circles that if you don’t cloak in some way you will lose sales.
I wasn’t aware of that Gee, though after reading through this article and posting a comment previously I am starting to understand that online marketing is no different really to offline businesses who will try and get a larger share of the market in their niche. Sometimes I tend to think we are more transparent on the internet because we divulge our thoughts a lot more and everything is written down. What do you think?
Hi Sean
Good tips here.
The recent move in the US to have affiliates put in a disclaimer about receiving commissions may have an impact.
Have you had an experience of this?
I always use cloaked links in Twitter and Plurk. I don’t think that I’ve ever used a cloaked link on my blogs. But then again, up until this point I haven’t been trying to sell anything from my blogs.
If you cloak your links for your affiliate products how does the parent site uncloak them in order for you to earn your commission? I guess I’ll have to hop on Google and check that out.
Another link cloaking site I use is ur1.ca.
Because of Twitter and everyone there using bit.ly or tinyurl etc many people now are used to cloaked links.
However, as Sean says, its also good to be upfront about being an affiliate – if folks don’t like to buiy that way, you probably won’t get them anyway (or am I being cynical?)
Clickbank now cloaks your hoplinks for you also.
Hi Sean
Maybe Clickbank can create a subsidary company and call it cloakbank (lol).
I could bemoan the unfairness of some people not wanting to click on an affiliate link for whatever reason but the fact is that internet marketers can be subject to foul play at times so forewarned is forearmed.
I would use tiny.url to cloack my links to protect my income by all means if this is the better way to do it, but I am sure that when people come to my site that will realise I am an affiliate.
Clickbank already cloaks your hoplinks for you automatically. It retains your nickname etc.
Hi Sean,
To Cloak or not to Cloak that is the question.
I think it is a personal choice, but from what I understand cloaking was to stop others bypassing your link in doing so not giving you credit for the lead therefore I think I would cloak.
It certainly has more pluses than negatives. And, additionally, that benefit of using something like bit.ly for tweeting and for the stats bit.ly provides.
Yes it is a good idea to cloak your affiliate link. It protects your sale against people bypassing and stealing your affiliate identity. I have enough faith in the products that I recommend and I tend not to focus so much on if people want or don’t want to buy. In today’s internet world I see affiliate marketing as a growing trend and an acceptable part of the way things are. Providing a solid combination of information and valuable products is the key. Online purchasing is becoming more and more popular as people are becoming so busy with life it is the convenience that will keep them coming back. So it pays to protect your affiliate links.
Losing a sale because someone fiddled with your link is disappointing. Lately I have actually been searching out people who are affiliates to support them and hope that I will be repaid later on (karma?).
I have been regularly cloaking URLs for twitter and have a spreadsheet for my affiliate links with the bitlys just out of habit.
That spreadsheet is needed – I have one too. Sometimes you don’t want to use a cloaked link – e.g. with anchor texts in the resource box at EzineArticles – or even in a content page.
Having the full affiliate link posted next to it cloaked version makes it easier to recognise and find.