If you promote products or services as an affiliate marketer you probably have heard the buzz about how affiliate commissions can be stolen.
Actually you could stand to lose about 40% of your affiliate commissions …OUCH! That's because affiliate links are easily recognized and vulnerable to being altered. To avoid lost commissions you should make every attempt to hide your affiliate links.
Typically, most web surfers won't ever notice an affiliate link, nor do they care, it often depends on the industry you are in. For example, a woman looking for skin care products probably won't understand affiliate links, so an affiliate link probably won't matter to her. On the other hand, someone in the affiliate marketing industry or internet marketing may see an affiliate link, recognize it and avoid using it.
Why does that happen?
One main reason is that a surfer may not want to pay full price for a product so they sign up for their own affiliate link and use it to make a purchase, taking the sale away from you. This does not work for all affiliate programs; in fact many affiliate programs require you to make a purchase before you can obtain an affiliate link and this strategy helps cut down on stolen profits but not all affiliate programs work this way.
But what's even more unfortunate is that there are some individuals that are mean spirited and simply don't want to see someone make a commission from their sale, so they often cut off the affiliate portion of the link so you don't get the commission. You might wonder about that since it doesn't cost the individual anything to simply use the affiliate link, but sadly it's often just the way some people think.
A few more important reasons for cloaking your links is to consider search engine optimization and link clarity. It's much preferred to have a link that is clearly descriptive and not display with ugly, meaningless characters as in the following example:
Ugly link: http://www.affiliatesite.com/copy.asp?storefront=bom2341sdfr8
Friendly link: http://www.affiliatesite.com/mybestproductWhich link looks more appealing to click on?
In order to avoid loss of commissions and display a more appealing link, it makes good business sense to replace your long, ugly affiliate links with links that won't be so affiliate obvious.
There are several ways of hiding your affiliate links. Let's take a look:
Redirect Options
You can redirect your affiliate links yourself which is fairly simple to do. Here are two options:
Server Redirect
This is the easiest way to disguise your affiliate link and make it more meaningful.Most good web hosts offer a 'redirect' option on your server. For example, I use 'Hostgator' and they have an option called 'redirects' in the control panel or 'Cpanel'. Any host that uses 'cpanel' will most likely have a 'redirect' option. Cpanel redirect is very easy to use.
The redirect option will require you to enter your affiliate link, then it will request you to enter what you want your affiliate link to display as. Once you enter the options you are good to go with a new customized link.
A great case for creating a redirect link is that if your affiliate program ever decides to change your affiliate link, you can change it in the redirect option on your cpanel once and you're finished. If you use your regular affiliate links without doing a redirect you must change every location on your site that displays that link …very time consuming.
Redirect Script
This script allows you to create your own page redirect. Simply use the following script as directed below:Go to your file Manger on your host and create a new file. Give the file a name that relates to your affiliate product or service, for example if your affiliate product is called widgetabc, create your file as widgetabc.html. Once the file is created, edit the file and insert the following code:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=PUTYOURCOMPLETE AFFILIATE LINK HERE">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<p></p>
</body>
</html>Then replace the URL section of the code with your affiliate id. Save the file and you are done. Your new affiliate link will look like this:
http://www.yoursite.com/widgetabc.html
Creating redirects is a good solution but it is not the best solution, that's because once your viewer gets to the affiliate site your affiliate link is no longer hidden and it will display in the address bar of the affiliate site. This still leaves your affiliate link vulnerable to anyone wishing to cut off your affiliate section of the link. The only way to completely keep your affiliate link hidden is to use a good affiliate link cloaker.
There are several link cloakers available however I recommend a link cloaker like Powerlink Generator that resides on your server. Powerlink Generator is perfect for creating better looking links that don't get stolen. The hijackers can't see your affiliate ID, and you can track all your hits to every link you promote. It's loaded right on your domain and is super simple to use.
Don't allow your affiliate commissions to be stolen, protect them and you will begin to notice a substantial increase in sales.
Hope that helps,
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