If you've read anything about how to do affiliate marketing you have already been told that you should be cloaking your affiliate links. So today I'm not going to give you the standard reasons for cloaking your link. Instead I'm going to share a true story about what happened this morning and tell you when to use the different options available for cloaking your link.
Here's the story:
While reading my email I saw the title of today's tip in the subject line. It was an announcement from 1 of the affiliate programs I'm in and it seems they are changing their affiliate manager software. After the end of this month our old affiliate links won't work.
Because I make money every month from selling their affiliate products through blog postings and comments, I immediately rejoined their affiliate program so I could get my new affiliate links.
Now most would think I would then have edited all the blog articles to change my affiliate links and write off all the links in comments because they would no longer work. But I didn't. You see, I didn't use my affiliate link when I posted or made a comment to the blogs. I had cloaked my affiliate links with redirect files. So all I had to do was change the redirect files and now all those blog articles and comments can still make me money.
This story shows 1 of the under-stated but good reasons to cloak your affiliate links. By having your links in redirect files you can easily change them and keep those links working wherever you've placed them.
But what if you don't have your own web site? Should you still take the time to cloak your affiliate links?
Yes!!! Every affiliate link should be hidden somehow.
Here are 4 options for hiding your affiliate link and how to choose the 1 to use:
- Tracking URL - These are the urls created by tracking services and many autoresponder services. They not only cloak your affiliate link but they also count the number of times the link was clicked and are used primarily in emails for testing and tracking. I guess you could post these urls anywhere you wanted however they are usually very long and ugly so putting them in a blog or forum comment or in your author bio for an article isn't recommended.
- Redirect file on your web site. This is the best way to go if you have a web site and you are placing your link in blog comments, forum signatures, in article bios, on other sites where you can not access the link to change it and to send in your email to your list.
- Redirect services like linkbrander and viralurl. When you are placing your link in all the kinds of places listed in item 2 and you don't have a web site this type of service works well because you still have only 1 thing to change to keep your affiliate link working.
- For affiliate links that you are only advertising in places that change frequently (like our classifieds) you can use services like tinyurl and snipurl. If your affiliate link changes you can create a new url to post when the place gets updated.
While hiding your affiliate link is important, keeping your affiliate link working is just as important. So don't waste your time posting and emailing your naked affiliate links. Be prepared. Changes happen and it could be your affiliate links that are affected next time.
To Your Success,
Susan
P.S. Please leave a comment and tell me what you thought of this tip.
Tags: affiliate link, affiliate marketing, redirect, cloaking, affiliate program
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