Affiliate Link Cloaking

I'm adding a bit more information on affiliate link cloaking to add to what I've already explained in earlier posts. To bring you up to speed, the concept of cloaking your links is to make them NOT look like affiliate links. Why? Because these links can sometimes be very long and look like spam to a prospective buyer, who may not click on something if he/she feels they are going to be hit with a pitch to buy something.

Most people use those short link cloaker url services, like tinyurl (the most popular one), but I NEVER do, and I'll tell you why. When you put anything important in the hands of someone else and their site, there is always that chance of losing your hard work. When you create a site, it becomes your "baby" and is important to YOU, but not really to anyone else.

Think about it. You register the name somewhere, then you host it somewhere else (ALWAYS host your site separate from the registrar!) and it's already basically in the hands of other companies. Not much you can do about that, except to ALWAYS make regular database backups, or get your own server. However, your links, which are the lifeblood of your site, are things you CAN control.

Here's the problem: shorter url hosting sites, like image hosts, are NOT owned by you and, therefore, can fold at any time. They don't care about your links, or information and, when they go, so do all those links you have up all over the internet using their affiliate cloaking service. Just imagine how many broken links there would be all over the web if the tiny url site owner decided to get out of the online biz!

Is it likely to happen? Maybe. It happens all the time with other services, image hosts, proxies etc. It's happened to me, and let me tell you that fixing dozens or even 100's of broken links is NOT my idea of a good time! NEVER leave it up to another site to keep your revenue streams intact, and that's what your important affiliate links are: your online revenue streams!

The solution? Simple. Use a subdomain! Both your registrar AND your hosting provider can set you up quickly with a subdomain redirection service (just like what those other cloak sites do) and then it's one less thing you have to worry about going down. You should have your own main domain name for your website anyway, and then just create as many subdomains as you need for each affiliate link.

For example, my domain here is www.adegreeofsuccess.com and for my degree affiliates program I use http://instant.adegreeofsuccess.com , which redirects to the sponsor site. Not only is it very easy to do in less than a minute, but it's also easier to remember your own links when you go posting them everywhere! It's MUCH easier for anyone to remember your new sub link than something like www.someurlsite.com/875ghy59l , which is how those things end up looking.

Oh, and one last bonus tip. When creating a clickbank username (or any other similar program), try to use a name that won't look odd in your new affiliate hop link, in case you decide NOT to cloak it. I made that mistake very early on. So many people use a "cutesy" nickname, like "babygurl" or "makemoneyguru" or whatever, and your link ends up with a "ref=makemoneyguru" at the end, which can look unprofessional and have privacy issues if you use your real name as your user login. Be careful! Try to use a series of generic letters and numbers instead.

That concludes today's lesson on cloaking your affiliate links. Now go forth and make some money! You CAN succeed online!!