Have you been conducting research regarding Affiliate Link Cloakers? Are you getting a little discouraged with all the varied opinions out there just like I am? Well, I've been setting up a blog regarding Link Cloakers and decided I needed to cloak my links based on a majority opinion that my sales would be stolen by other affiliate marketers, or removed by the savvy computer user just because they don't want someone to profit on their purchase.
For all of ten minutes I tried TinyUrl.
com.
Here you enter your link address and they return you an address of alpha-numeric, representative of your link.
So you copy the new link into the Hyperlink box of the product you're using to build your website, fill in the "Display as" information to give it an enticing name, and you think you've successfully cloaked your link.
Not true! Try clicking on it.
What show's up in the page tab? What shows up lower left as you move to the page? To the Affiliate Marketer, it's an attempt to cloak a link.
To the average Joe, it looks like some BIG Secret place you're being taken to that may load your computer with viruses, or flash some of those wacky sales pages we all hate to see as a surprise, and then send us emails for the next year that we didn't ask for.
It looks downright sneaky! And then, of course, there are the hop-links provided by ClickBank that are immediately recognizable, and that provide no attempt to conceal that an affiliate marketer is in control.
Nowadays, Clickbank is providing an alternative, but the new links, even though they don't show the affiliate marketer's ID, do raise a few eyebrows in that they are a mixture of nonsensical, alpha-numeric characters'.
Instead of being "TinyUrl's", they are "Big URL's".
The obvious next step for me was to look into "Free" Link Cloakers (URL Masks)...
software or code that persons or programmers had come up with and decided to share with all of us for "free".
Most of these are very simplistic and do the job of masking the link, along with the page forward and page title very well.
However, the masterminds of these products very rarely provide support (that's why they gave it away for free to begin with).
If something goes wrong, like some new software update you upload to your server is incompatible, you may lose your Link Cloaker and all your links with it.
Additionally, there is a risk of "Free Link Cloakers" being shut down for being misused by inappropriate, unethical sites.
After realizing that "Tiny" and "Big" and "Free" didn't give me that warm and fuzzy feeling I needed in order to be assured that I wasn't losing up to 60% of my profits, my research turned to purchasing a reliable, host-based Link Cloaking Software.
My Blog is full of articles I used to help me research and find the one that was right for me.
Please check it out, I welcome your comments and questions.
Link Cloaking Software can come with various functionality.
In addition to letting the customer believe they are remaining on your site, there are tracking features, cookie dropping features and light box/list gathering abilities.
With my chosen software, I have also been able to cloak within my autoresponder, redirecting the customer to the sales page all the while seeming to have returned them to my website.
You'll need to find the best method of Link Cloaking for you, based on your needs.
But before you purchase, be sure to check out the reputation and popularity of the product, so that you know your Link Cloaking is in good hands.
Cloaked affiliate links will boost your traffic.