Stolen Affiliate Commissions - Defend Yourself From Stolen Affiliate Commissions
Stolen affiliate commissions are a growing problem among affiliate marketing today. Many affiliates simply do not do anything to protect their link for being changed and their commission being stolen away from them. Having your commission stolen away from you is costing you hundreds if not thousands of dollars lost to stolen commissions.
There are several reasons why you would want to cloak your affiliate link.
Your affiliate link can be hijacked from other affiliates. This can happen when another affiliate changes your link to their link and then purchase the product you were trying to sell. They will then get the credit for the sale. Also, there are some affiliates that use “cookie stuffing”. Cookie stuffing is where an affiliate “stuffs” their customers with their affiliate links. So if the customer buys the product they are an affiliate for, that affiliate will still get credit for the sale. They will still get credit for the sale even if the customer does not buy the product through their link.
Another reason why you should cloak your links is to prevent the customer from bypassing your affiliate link. Simply, this can happen when the customer goes directly to the merchant’s site, instead of going through your affiliate link. For some reason, people just do not like that fact that you would be getting a commission from the product they are buying.
Finally, there is the cosmetic reason why you should cloak your affiliate link. There are some affiliate links that are just plain ugly. They appear unappealing and discourage the customer to click on the link. Most people do not like being sold to, so if your link is unattractive, they will not click on your link.
So, how exactly do I hide my affiliate links?
If you know a little HTML, the easiest way to cloak your links is to create a framed page. If you are not that technical or do not own a website, you could use a free cloaking service like tinyurl.com. What tinyurl.com and other services like it do, is they take your affiliate link and create a redirect for you. The redirect will be in a form of a shortened URL. If you are doing pay-per-click campaign, be aware that some programs and sites do not allow the use of redirected URLs.
Another way you can cloak your links is to use cloaking software. The software will do the same thing that tinyurl and like it do, but will make the link more attractive. Instead of having a link that looks like: www.tinyurl.com/merchantsite, using software your link could look like www.yourdomain.com/recommends/merchantsite. It makes your link more attractive, and more people will click on it.
So, to protect yourself from stolen affiliate commissions, cloaking your links is necessary to your online business. If you did not cloak your links you could lose a lot of money by not doing so.
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