The Importance of Link Cloaking - Protecting Your Links, And Your Income
You may have heard of link theft, or link hijacking, but may still be unaware of how destructive it can be to your efforts to make money with an affiliate marketing program. What can happen is that someone clicks on your affiliate link, and buys the product, but in the process your affiliate ID is stripped from the link, and an ID belonging to someone else is substituted for yours. The buyer arrives at the affiliate marketing site, buys the product, and moves on -- but the commission ends up in someone else's account!
Net result: You made the sale, the hijacker collected your commission -- and you were none the wiser! Links can be stolen in a number of ways. It can be as simple as someone editing your link to replace your affiliate ID with their own, so that they can buy the merchandise and collect the commission themselves. Links can also be stolen by spyware on a user's computer, which intercepts the link as it is being transmitted, and inserts the hacker's affiliate ID instead, allowing them to collect the commission you earned.
The best way to defend against this kind of theft is to use affiliate link cloaking. Cloaking your links allows you to protect your commissions by preventing link piracy. The key question is, how do you accomplish this?
There are several ways to do it. If you are really into web-site coding, you can design your own link cloaks -- but let's face it, most of us don't have that level of expertise. Another way to disguise your links is to use a link shortening service, but there are some reports out there on the 'net that in at least some cases these services can mess up tracking cookies, rendering your affiliate ID useless.
Another way to manage and protect your links is use a link cloaking service. These services are maintained by professionals who know all the "ins and outs" of the programming world, and who have your best interests at heart. Using a cloaking service allows you to protect your links and commissions, while at the same time directing your time and efforts to the parts of your campaign that will produce the best results.
