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The past few days, I’ve spent researching the topic of cloaking links. I didn’t know what I was in for. For those of you, that are like me, and kind of know this html, javascript and php thing, this was a task.

Many of us have heard about link cloaking, are you curious about how it works, can you and should you be using it on your website or links. There are many different reasons, why you would or wouldn’t utilize affiliate link cloaking.

From a business perspective

1. Affiliate links can be stolen, this is when someone, probably another affiliate, uses their link to replace the one you are using. They copy the URL and then replace your affiliate number with their own, basically stealing commissions.

2. Affiliate links can be bypassed, this is when someone goes directly to the merchant site, removing your affiliate link. People do this for various reasons, either they don’t want you to get the commission, or don’t trust the added affiliate link at the end of the url.

3. Good business practice

Another reason why you would want to cloak your affiliate link is that some of the affiliate links are long and not attractive, which can make prospective customer leary of clicking on them. Some will recognize an affiliate link as a sales pitch and avoid your link.

Which URL would you rather click?

http://yourname.com/cmd.cgi?cmd=aftrack&afid=123456&u=pcinfo.com

http://yourname.com/pcinfo.html

Both go to the same place, but which would you click on?

What is the difference between a redirect and cloaking?

Redirect uses a link that sends a user to a different URL than one clicked on

Cloaking shows a different URL in the browser than the one for the page shown

There are more indepth ways to define the differences which you can find on the great video http://linkcloakingexplained.com/video.html

If you do not have a website hosted, there are some free resources that you can utilize such as tinyurl.com and urlfreeze.com. Your links will read tinyurl.com/youraffiliatesite.com. Be aware that some sites do not allow redirects and you will violate their term of service.

There are affiliate marketers that do not cloak their links feeling that it is misleading to the customer. Cloaking your affiliate link is a decision that you will need to make if it is the right thing for you.