You know already that it’s probably a good idea to cloak your affiliate links. The more savvy surfers become about affiliate marketing and the links that represent your “paycheck,” the greater the likelihood that someone unsavory is going to hijack your affiliate ID and substitute it for their own. If they’re truly bloodyminded, they could choose to bypass it altogether and simply cut you out of your hard earned commission.
So a variety of solutions have appeared over the years to make it harder for the bad guys to win. There are a number of free services that will cloak your link for you, like TinyURL, KlasLink, and others (some of which are paid services), which serve the dual purpose of hiding your ID and shortening a very long link into a tidy bit of more manageable code. While handy, surfers are becoming more familiar with them, and jump to the instant (and understandable) conclusion that clicking on one of these links is going to take them directly to a sales page. Unless their credit cards are already out of their wallets and poised for service, most people are going to choose to forego the sales pitch, and your persuasive copy will never have a chance to work its magic. Continue reading »