Cloaking

[genuwine4532]

Can you please define cloaking? and the advantages?
Especially as pertaining to Clickbank?

I have received differing explanations and would like some clarity.

Thank you

[Larwee]

genuwine4532, this thread will answer a lot of your questions How to hide your affiliate links

[NicheGooRoo]

Hello,

You would be surpized but sometimes people dont like purchasing something through an affiliate link.. because they know you will receive a commission from their purchase.

So, if they see what looks like an affiliate link they would rather type in the url to the direct site instead of going through your affiliate link..

This is why cloaking your links is important. The way this works is you would put your affliliate link in and the program will generate a new link for you, with out your affiliate ID being visible. A good way to hide your affiliate ID/links.


I sell clickbank products and cloak my links using Affiliate shield, It's really easy to use. There is also TinyURL which is free to use.

Some people "Haters" and would do anything to make sure another does not benifit from their purchase!

[tw0manyhats]

Do a search on PHP redirect it's easy and you wont get penalized. At least not yet

[Linda Buquet]

Just be sure with redirects you know what you are doing and
test to be sure the redirect passes your cookie.

Would be a shame to try to protect your link from thieves
and then not get credit at all cuz the link doesn't track.

Also be careful - some types of redirect software does something called
cookie stuffing, which is unethical and against the TOS of many programs and networks.

GOtryThis BlackHat is one that I know has that option. I have the white hat version but it even has an option that does something a little black hat. I created a link redirect to one of my clients for ad tracking purposes without realizing what it did. The link to my client never tracked and it was due to the type of re-direct I used by accident.

[kevin7890]

Just be aware that by default, ZA Internet Security product blocks TinyURL links.

I surmise that most non-technical people will not know how to add TinyURL to ZA's exclusion list.

[Linda Buquet]

tinyurl links look so spammy that I think most people won't click them either.

I just had to go grab MY VERY 1ST tinyurl link 10 minutes ago and
it gave me the heebie jeebies to even do it. I just really have a bias against those links.

The only reason I used it was in Twitter it only allows really short links so everyone uses tiny to convert their links otherwise Twitter just chops them off and they don't work. (Wasn't an affiliate link BTW just a regular link that was too long.)

[kirbitz]

thanks for the opinion guys.

What cloaking tool do you suggest?

I googled up and saw AddMe.com they seem to be pretty neat.

What do you guys think?