Online Marketing Tips From My View From “Behind The Scenes” On Making Money On The Internet

Let’s face it.  Affiliate links are just plain ugly.  You’ve used them, you’ve seen others use them.  Big, ugly, nasty-looking affiliate links are unappealing for many reasons. In this article I am going to reveal three profit-pulling reasons why you should be cloaking your affiliate links and then I’ll arm you with the five commission-protecting tools that make up the “C.L.O.A.K.” formula so you can promote like the super affiliates.  

3 Profit-Pulling Reasons To Cloak Your Link

1.  Because People On Your List HATE Being Sold!   

Every visitor to your website and every person on your list loves to shop and buy stuff, but they hate to be sold. This is one very powerful reason why you should be “cloaking” your affiliate links. 

 If prospects realize there is a conscious effort being made to sell them something you can come across as a pushy vacuum cleaner salesman.  When the prospect looks at the link in your e-mail and sees this:   http://kbattis.mktingtech.hop.clickbank.net they know that you are trying to sell them something and many people won’t be happy about and will refuse to click through to take a look at the product even if they really are interested in what the product could do for them. 

2.  To Increase Click-Throughs And Make More Money!

Being a former fitness professional and still very active with health and fitness I have many health and fitness websites that I market online.  With that said, which of the two links below do you think someone on one of my fitness lists would rather click on: 

Link Example #1:  http://www.undergroundstrengthcoach.com/index.cfm?affID=kbattis

Link Example #2: www.UndergroundStrengthSecrets.com

With link example #1 it is very apparent that it is an affiliate link (it doesn’t get more obvious does it?).  With link example #2 however it is a nice clean-looking link that also conveys a benefit (discovering little-known, “underground” strength secrets).  To a fitness-fanatic looking to get super-hero strong the idea of discovering underground strength secrets is very enticing.  Think about your own niche and the possible domain names you can use to convey the benefits of the affiliate products you promote. 

3.  Be a Super Hero By Preventing Petty Thieves From Stealing Your Sales

Just like in the comic books there are Super Heroes and there are Super Villains.  The Super Villains of the Internet Marketing game are unscrupulous thieves that can steal your commissions by replacing your affiliate link with theirs.  

Suppose someone clicks through your affiliate link and discovers a product for the very first time as a result of your referral or recommendation. When they land on the product sales page and they like it and want to buy it, if they sign up for an affiliate account, clear their cookies, and replace your affiliate ID with their affiliate ID and then buy the product they effectively order through THEIR affiliate link and they get the commission for the sale instead of you (dastardly villains!).

If you’re a long time internet marketer then you might have heard of this before. If you consider yourself a “newbie” then you might be a little apprehensive thinking that people will be stealing your commissions.

This is a major reason why you should be cloaking your affiliate links.  If you take the time to cloak your links you can protect yourself from these thieves. 

Some niches have more theft in them then others according to one of my sources but why take the chance?  Set up your cloaked link and make sure to protect your profits! 

The 5 Tools In The “C.L.O.A.K.” Cloaking Toolbox

So now that you know my top three reasons to use link cloaking I am now going to arm you with 5 tools to C.L.O.A.K. your affiliate links and increase your affiliate income. 

Link Cloaking Tool #1:  Use HTML Code To Disguise Webpage Links By Using A Different Display And Destination Link

Let’s start off simple shall we?  The most basic way to cloak your links is simply to use your unique affiliate link as the destination link and the actual URL you want the potential customer to see as the display link in your HTML. Let me explain.  This requires you that you know a little HTML of course and you realize that display and destination are not the same.

If you need help with HTML, go to the bookstore and buy “HTML for Dummies” or “HTML for the World Wide Web,” or you can find numerous free HTML primers online such as www.htmlprimer.com.  I also highly recommend checking out www.MyFirstWebPages.com to get all the basics of creating killer internet marketing pages.   

Let’s look at an example.  This is one of my affiliate links for a fitness site that I run with my partner and seasoned internet marketer Tom Venuto (www.BurnTheFat.com).   

http://www.burnthefatinnercircle.com/index.cfm?affID=expert

Your goal is to hide this obvious sales-promoting link (Did I mention these affiliate links are super long and super ugly too?).

When you are putting a link on a web page, always hide the affiliate link in your HTML and show the destination URL as the basic URL of the site (in this example I would simply have www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com (or your own custom redirect link).

Example HTML code:

This HTML will display www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com but send people through my affiliate link.  Once again, this is simple to do and if you are using affiliate links on HTML pages or in HTML e-mails then you should at the very least be doing this.   

Link Cloaking Tool #2:  Invest In Some Link Cloaking Software

One option that you have for cloaking your affiliate links is to invest in some link cloaking software.  There are lots of options available and if do a search for things like “link cloaking,” “link cloaker,” “link cloaking software,” and so on and you will find many to choose from.

One of my sources recommends a software called “COVERT AFFILIATE” http://www.novasoft-inc.com/products/covertaffiliate/affiliate-profits.asp

I have not used covert affiliate myself but I’m mentioning this one first because I know it is being used currently by internet marketing gurus like Mark Joyner.

This is software that sets an affiliate cookie for you then re-directs the visitor to any page you specify. This is a powerful tool because if you have a website and you are publishing my articles, you can actually drop your cookie on the visitor’s machine before they even hit the sales page of the affiliate product you are promoting. 

Here are some others to look into, but I cannot vouch for all of them-there were either sent to me by affiliates who are using them or I found them in recommended product lists from respected internet marketers.

Link Cloaking Tool #3:  Obtain A Domain Name From “Go Daddy (www.GoDaddy.com) To Cloak Your Links

There are more domain name registrars out there than you can count, I have used www.NameCheap.com a lot in the past but if you register your domains with a company that offers free forwarding service with URL masking, then by all means do so.

I use www.GoDaddy.com for many of my domains because it’s only about 9 bucks per domain to register and that includes free forwarding and link masking (same as cloaking). 

All you need to do is register a domain and keep in mind how important the name you choose is to your click throughs. Your choice of domain name alone can give you an unfair “Super Affiliate” advantage over the other affiliates vying for sales

I have created a quick video that shows you how to do set up link Cloaking with GoDaddy.

Here are the steps just in case you aren’t in front of your computer: 

Step1.  Buy a GoDaddy domain name with selling power

Step 2.  Log into your account and click on Manage Domains and then select the domain you just purchased.  Then click on “domain forwarding.”  Type in or paste your affiliate link as the domain to forward to.  

Step 3.  Then click on “mask domain” and enter the display URL to match your new chosen domain name.

The example I use in the video is taking my Simpleology affiliate link which is

http://kbattis.simpleology.com/

and using the domain forwarding and masking with GoDaddy I can now give out this link to my prospects instead:  www.Productivity-System.com.  With a little bit of text to pre-sell the click throughs on this link should be much better than if I just placed my affiliate link there. 

Link Cloaking Tool #4:  Abbreviate Your Affiliate Link With A Third-Party “Link Snipper”

This method of cloaking a link should be a last resort or if you are in a hurry to get someone a link.  Did you ever see a URL that looked like this http://tinyurl.com/38npmy What you see above is an example of what I call link snipping programs. 

There are numerous 3rd party services you can use to hide your affiliate link and shorten it at the same time. I have used this service in the past with success and it is especially useful in e-mail marketing because it is fast and easy. Click on that link above to see it in action - it will take you to My First Web Pages.

Just a warning about using third party link snipping services. I would recommend these for e-mail marketing as a last resort, but getting your own domain then forwarding and masking using GoDaddy.com is the ideal solution.

The trouble with any free 3rd party service is these sites come and go and if the site shuts down so do your snipped links so be aware that you have no control over the snipped link in the long term. I would not recommend using these for any permanent links such as embedding them in PDF’s or placing them on web pages (always use redirects in these cases).  

Link Cloaking Tool #5:  Hire A Knowledgeable Programmer Who Knows How To Cloak Your Links

If you have a good webmaster with programming skills, then you can simply have him or her create a custom script that performs some of the functions listed above, now that you know what to do and look for.

Another option is to learn some geeky programmer tricks yourself so you can create own redirects.  Here is a quick audio and video that will show you how to be your own web-geek in a few easy steps and create what is called a PHP-Redirect. 

There you have it my friend.  You are now a stealthy link-cloaking affiliate marketer and you know all the tricks to increase your clicks and protect your commissions as much as possible.

You are now armed with the five commission-protecting tools that make up the “C.L.O.A.K.” formula so you can promote like the super affiliates. 

To your success,

Kyle Battis
Marketing and Affiliate Manager 
Overcome Everything, Inc.

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