Discover The ‘TRUE’ Money-Making Tactic That Every Successful Affiliate Marketer Already Knows…

Affiliate Marketing has turned out to be BIG Business and it’s popularity is still on the rise with no end in site. It stands to reason too. Affiliate marketing benefits both the marketer and the program owners. Affiliate marketing allows those unable or unwilling to create or buy their own product the opportunity to profit very nicely from other people’s products and services.

While almost anyone can be an affiliate marketer, affiliate marketing is not for everyone. The truth is that most people will make nothing or very little with affiliate marketing. Some will add to other sources of online income streams and a few will make a full time living at it. The very best have and will continue to become very wealthy as affiliates.

While there are many reasons for the wide margins of success, most of which are the same in every marketing endeavor, today I want to focus on linking methods used to protect your sales and profits.

Many people will hesitate to click on an affiliate link that looks like this:
http://www.mypretendaffiliatelink.com/go/affiliateid?313
Whether they’re concerned about a security issue or just don’t want to deal with what they conceive a ‘middle man’, the bottom line is that it hurts your bottom line. You know when you move your mouse over an html link to view the target URL in the status bar of your browser? Well, you’re not the only one that does it and many people won’t click if it looks like an affiliate link.

Option 1: Ignore The facts: You could ignore the ‘reluctance factor‘ and saturate the net with so many links you can afford the missed traffic. You would be a fool but it is an option.

Option 2: Use The Recommends Approach: The ‘Recommends’ approach is a favorite among many affiliate marketers. It takes a little more setup time and it’s not very effective overall by itself but does resolve the reluctance issue of many potential clickers. To some this type of link will make the site visitor feel like you’re a friend recommending something but most will see way past that. Many will click the ‘recommends’ link even though almost everyone that’s been online for a while knows there is an affiliate link in there somewhere. They still click. They know it’s there but as long as they don’t see it, many people will click the link without hesitation. It’s physiological I’m sure but I’m not going to pretend to understand the humane nature behind it, I just know it works. You must have a website to use this method.

Option 3: Use a Tracking Link: Another favorite among many affiliate marketers but it’s a trade off. You get the benefit of tracking results and you can shorten and hide the affiliate url but the replacement link may also discourage them. It’s usually easier to setup, whether on your hard drive or a membership site, but the resulting URL is still an obvious tracking link. The trade off is that, just like the ‘Recommends link’, many will still click on the tracking link even though it doesn’t give that warm and friendly feeling of a referral. Tracking links are normally not very descriptive either. There’s also an added security issue that comes into play but it’s not exclusive to tracking links. Many have been burned with these redirected links before with spyware and even viruses invading their computer by some lowlife using a tracking link to deceive then into going to a site they would never knowingly go to.

So the best options seem to be options 2 and 3. Option 2 seems a little more effective and is free. Option 3 is faster and easier to setup plus you need the tracking statistics. What do I recommend? Use both! Use a recommends link that redirects to the affiliate link through your tracking link. It leaves a little more room for mistakes and takes up more time but it gives you the best of both worlds.

So problem solved right? Not yet…

We still have the problem with the end result of our effort. Let me demonstrate it like this:

They see
http://www.extremeezine.com/recommends/affiliate.html

That goes through the tracking link:
http://4u2bn.com/x54
but they can’t normally see it.

Then it lands on your affiliate link that looks like this again:

http://www.mypretendaffiliatelink.com/go/affiliateid?313

But now here’s where another problem comes in. The clicker, for whatever reason, takes the link in the address bar
http://www.mypretendaffiliatelink.com/go/affiliateid?313
and strips off the go/affiliateid?313 going directly to
http://www.mypretendaffiliatelink.com/

Now unless that affiliate program has it setup to deny direct access or used a cookie to embed your ID into their system, you just lost your commission. Incredibly, this isn’t a ‘once in a blue moon‘ occurrence. It happens all the time. Again, I don’t know why it’s in our nature to do these things but it’s real and it happens a lot! It might be that deep down we don’t want others to profit from our purchase or maybe they think they’ll get a better deal by going directly to the main site. Whatever the reasons, it costs affiliate marketers real money and is one reason many affiliate marketers never really succeed in this business.

There are several tactics that successful affiliate marketers use to solve this issue. Each has it’s own pros and cons just like everything else so it really comes down to your own testing and personal taste.

Cloaking: Cloaking simply means that the actual affiliate link is hidden from the visitor. The address bar will show a different URL. This can be an effective solution but it can also cause search engine problems but that’s a whole other topic. Some sites have frame breakers that prevent most cloaking methods but most affiliate programs have learned to refrain from such scripts.

This whole business of cloaking can really seem complicated because so many methods and options come into play.

Two linking methods using both a recommends link and a tracking link:

Recommends links ending in final URL destination yet going through a tracking link for statistics:
http://briandhawkins.com/recommends/track-your-ads-or-fail.html
to – http://4u2bn.com/fv17
to – http://extremeezine.com/track-your-ads-or-fail/

Recommends links ending in cloaked tracking link
http://briandhawkins.com/recommends/ad_tracker.html
to – http://4u2bn.com/fv16
to – (HIDDEN) http://extremeezine.com/track-your-ads-or-fail/

What do I use?

I use both methods. I use the first method for links like blog posts and newsletter links.You don’t want to hide every link, only those that cause you to loose commission from affiliate thieves, as they are called. If the affiliate site already has the issue resolved don’t bother cloaking. Cloaking when unnecessary just adds to the potential of redirection failure or possible mistrust by the customer.

Don’t forget to track your results. Try split testing using both linking methods.

Your online Marketing Advisor,
Brian Hawkins

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Link Cloaking