Top 10 Reasons To Cloak URL
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009The top 10 reasons to cloak URL of your Affiliate Programs has nothing to do with decieving anyone, or taking advantage of somebody. Affiliate Programs don’t care if you cloak their links to hide URL. They want you to make money. When you make money they make money. URL cloaking is used to make your affiliate links look more like a natural link would on your site, or in your promotions. You are making it flow better with your website, and the rest of the links you may have.
Affiliate Programs have to have a way to decipher what affiliate is making the sale, and to do that they need to be able to give each of us a unique ID. That is where the ugly, unmistakable looking links come from. Their only purpose is to make each of us unique so the Affiliate Programs know who is who.
Your Affiliate Information is Private, just like any other information about you should be. You don’t post your Password, or your Cedit Card information unless you are on a Secure Server. Well your Affiliate Information is the same thing. It allows you to communicate with your Affiliate Program, and in turn for them to know who you are and Allow you access to Your Account
The Integrity of your website and the content you offer to your visitors is what builds trust. If you offer great content, good advice, etc., your visitors know that you also stand behind the promotions that you place on that site. Your Affiliate Information has nothing to do with it, and shouldn’t. If I recommend a Hosting site it is because I stand behind what that site is offering to my visitors and, or I use it myself and it has helped me.
There are some Affiliate Programs that take great strides in trying to help their affiliates by not having their affiliate information in the address bar of the destination page. But you still have the ugly affiliate link to deal with and it is unrealistic to think that all Affiliate Programs are going to be able to do that for their affiliates.
That is where a URL cloaker comes into play to help the affiliate encode, encrypt, or hide URL of Affiliate Programs so the link looks as professional as we truely are. We are running a business and that business should not only act professional, but look it too. You are also protecting yourself by URL cloaking because your Affiliate information is not visible for some one to use that information to steal your commissions you work so hard to earn.
1. Better link appearance - On the internet appearance is everything and the more your Affiliate Links look like they belong on your page the better. You want them to look natural and with your own Domain Name as part of your link. It is alright to have a unique ID from a Affiliate Program so you get paid for your work, but when it comes to the visual appearance of a Link on your website your own domain name in the link sure looks better. Not only does it look better, it improves your click through rate dramaticly.
2. Shorter URL - Generally when choosing a Domain Name you want to keep it as short as possible. In doing so, your cloaked link will generally be shorter as well. Using Link Master your Cloaked Link is saved to a stand alone HTML file, so not only does that allow for a shorter URL, but it also gives you plenty of options. If you name your file index.html and put it in it’s own directory you don’t need to include the index.html filename in the link address because index is the default file name. That would make your URL shorter.
For example lets say I Cloaked one of my Affiliate Links and named it index.html and I put in a directory named jello I could now make my link like this http://linkmastercloaker.com/jello/ and make it look like this on the page. Do you like Jello? If you move your mouse over the link Jello, you will notice in the Status Bar at the bottom of your browser index.html is not in the link. If you click on the link, the index.html file is then opened. If I had a file named pudding.html in the same directory that link would not open pudding.html because without using the filename, it looks for a file named index. You would have to have pudding.html in the link to open it. I got a little wordy, but I hope this helps.
3. Better for Google Adwords Campaigns. - I am no Google Adwords expert, but I would think that if you are going to pay your hard earned money you would be better off using Cloaked Affiliate Links, and your own URL. I added a link to Googles Adwords Learning Center if you would like to learn more about Google Adwords. They have a lot of information there for you check out. Great site!
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4. Gives you more control over your links. - Cloaking your Affiliate Links definitely gives you more control when you use Link Master Affiliate Link Cloaker. I have seen cloakers that do nothing but hide your link address in the status bar by using simple mouseover events on the links which does nothing to your link, just hides the real link in the status bar. Beware of what you are using on your links. I have also seen just simple PHP redirects being pushed off as the next best cloaker. Also people say just use redirects from your hosting.
None of these do what is important, and that is to encode, encrypt and hide your Affiliate Information. Mouseover efects just hide the link in the status bar, PHP redirects and hosting redirects give you a better looking link to click on, but they all have your Affiliate Information in the Address Bar after you click on the link and land on your Affiliate page.
Link Master ecrypts your link, and you save it to a stand alone HTML file. After you click on a Link Master link your Affiliate destination page shows your URL in the Address Bar, not your Affiliate Information. If you use a different Affiliate Link Cloaker, just be aware of what you are using and that it suits your needs.
I just want to say one more thing about redirects. Redirects are just fine for the Affiliate Programs that have made strides in not having your Affiliate Information in the Address Bar at the destination page. If you have a lot of Affiliate links, it might be better for you to use redirects on those types of Affiliate programs, and cloak the rest.
5. Better tracking capabilities. - Some Affiliate Programs allow you to add a tracking ID (also refered to as Sub ID’s) to your link. Always use a tracking ID so you know what is working, and what isn’t in your promotions. Clickbank allows you to add a tracking ID to your links, and others do as well. Use a different tracking ID for each promotion, or ad so you know what working. Test, test, test…. track track track two important things that should be in all of your promotions.
Link Master Allows you to name your Link file whatever you want so you could even use your hosting stats to track different file names for the same Affiliate Link. Always add your tracking ID to your link THEN cloak it with Link Master. You have to do it before cloaking your link so everything is ecrypted and safe.
Make sure to keep track of your different ID’s, and or file names for each ad or promotion in your Link Organizer Files that I created for you to use, or something else that works for you.
6. More professional - There is no doubt in your mind that a cloaked link as I have shown you looks better in its appearance. In saying that would you also agree that if you had two links side by side, one a unmistakable Affiliate Link and one a cloaked link from a Hosted Domain Name that the Cloaked link would undoubtedly get many more clicks. It sure would, and by far.
Your Domain Name, and Hosting carry weight and your cloaked link benifits from that because it is natural to your site. They come together as a whole, and are looked upon as a serious link compared to the Affiliate link. It is more professional in appearance even if both links were for the same Affiliate Program. I am not saying that you MUST have your own Domain Name and Hosting in order to make your cloaked links work. It will still carry more weight than free hosting but you have to work within your means. Either way a cloaked link is the best choice.
7. Protection for your Affiliate Information and your commissions. - In cloaking your links you want a few things to happen. You want your Affiliate Information to remain private. You want it to be encoded, or encrypted so that it is just not worth someones time to try and fiqure it out in order to steal your commissions. Plus, you want it versatile enough that it allows you numerous ways of presenting the same link. That is what a Cloaker should be able to do for you, and what you should expect to protect your Affiliate Information, and your commissions.
8. Increases your click through rate for your links, - We have already established that if compared side by side a cloaked link that looks natural to the website versus an Affiliate Link that is untouched the natural link is more appealing, and would surely be clicked more then the Affiliate Link. Thus the click throught rate would be greater for the Cloaked Link versus the Affiliate Link.
9. Increases your income - If cloaking an Affiliale Link improves your links appearance, looks natural to your site and improves the click though rate, it just goes without saying that it will also improve your earnings as well. Just like more traffic to your site means more sales, more clicks means the same thing.
10. Most of all it gives you peace of mind. - The best thing about cloaking yor links to achieve everything I have just talked about, is the peace of mind you will have knowing that your links are going to function at their best. They are going to fit in naturally with your site, and your information will be protected. You will be looked upon as someone who is serious about what they do and the professional that you are.
