Do you know what the number one critical mistake many affiliate marketers make?
Shhhhh, be very quite and I’ll whisper it in your mind!
It’s…..
Not cloaking their affiliate link.
Now now, hold on and let me explain. I DON’T mean, hiding the final destination resource or even covering up the ‘rover’ tag from ebay….instead, I’m focusing up
Stolen affiliate commissions.
With some vendors such as Clickbank, it’s very easy to do! Consider your typcial Clickbank Affiliate ID:
http://seoprofits.lingstar.hop.clickbank.net
The "seoprofits" is the affiliate (if it was you, you’d put in your clickbank ID here).
The "lingstar" is the vendor. The above link points to my 21 Days to a More Profitable Blog product.
Now! Let’s say that I’m an affiliate, I review the book….and I include the above uncloaked link to the product. What happens next?
Plenty of ickyness, let me tell you! Anyone who has a clickbank ID can peruse my review, say,
Golly Gee! I wanna buy that!
And substitute in their OWN clickbank ID for the link, like, oh,
Test it out yourself!
Use the above link to visit the page and click ORDER (but don’t fill in anything yet!)
Scroll down to the bottom – you’ll see:
[affiliate = richhermit]
Now try:
Click order again, and you’ll see:
[affiliate = earlobe]
Do you know what that means?
That means that if you leave uncloaked links in your recommendations, people can substitute in their own ID and claim the affiliate commission, thus stealing it from YOU.
Not good, eh?
Luckily, there are several ways around this!
One, you can hack it yourself – I describe this over at my affiliate tutorial.
Two, you can get more insights at my article
and also enjoy:
- A simple way to cloak your links
- Acquire the Ninja!
- Cloaking Links: Why Bother
- Easiest Way to Cloak Your Affiliate Links – Awesome New WordPress Plugin
- Issue 63 : Cloaking Affiliate Links!
- John Chow How to Hide Affiliate Links
- WordPress Link Cloak
Remember – you’ve done the effort in reviewing affiliate products…it only makes superb sense to obtain the commission you deserve.
Enjoy!
Barbara Ling
#BEGIN highlights of this blog writing post:
Beginners blogging tips: Some things are worth paying money for. Affiliate link cloaking is one of them, Ninja is what I recommend.
Intermediate and/or Advanced blogging tips: If you’re a techie geek, you can also use subdomain redirects like http://stripe.barbaraling.com .
#END highlights of this blog writing post
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ps – speaking about affiliate marketing, want some domains ready to go?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Very interesting post. It’s never occurred to me that people could steal my link in that fashion. Maybe that’s why Commission Junction offers you the opportunity to cloak your link; hmmm,… Thanks!
Mitch’s last blog post..Some Stats From June
My pleasure!
Cloaking links has been a MUST DO now for me ever since I started taking affiliate marketing seriously….back in the early 2000s.
Glad it helped,
Barbara
Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach’s last blog post..The one CRITICAL mistake many affiliate marketers make
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