The advantages of link cloaking go far beyond just protecting affiliate commissions or hiding ugly affiliate links.
Most marketers use link cloaking to hide their ugly affiliate links and protect their commissions from thieves, who substitute their own affiliate ID’s into the links and steal the commissions.
Both are strong reasons to use link cloaking or redirection scripts or utilities.
If you use the right kind of script, or software, URL redirects and link cloaking methods can also serve as an excellent way to brand your links, using your own domain name(s) and product description(s). Beyond that, if you use a script or software that resides on your own domain, you can also control the destination URL. This is critical when promoting products through an affiliate network that decides to change link structures.
Think about this.
You promote a product through Commission Junction, Share-A-Sale, Digital River or LinkShare, for example, and they upgrade their system, changing all of the link structures, or perhaps they drop one or more merchants from their program. Suddenly, all of your links don’t work. You’ll have to track down each site where you’ve put your links, and either change or delete them. That could be an impossible task if you have hundreds, or thousands, of those links out there. Do you remember every site you’ve placed links?
Another example might be if you found a better product than the one you’re promoting. Now you have a new link, and you have to replace all the old links with the new one. Same problem as above.
URL Shorteners?
A popular solution that many marketers have taken to is the third-party URL shorteners, such as bit.ly, tinyurl, goo.gl and many others. I’ve used some of them myself in the past. My opinion of these services is summed up in four words: Just Don’t Do It! There are some good reasons why that’s good advice.
For one thing, the shortened URL is not your domain. There goes your branding. Which do you think would do you the most good, tinyurl.com/37u09uf, or yourdomain.com/bestproduct? The second, of course. Then think about the benefits of someone clicking on someone else’s domain name. While you might get the click as far as the affiliate product is concerned, tinyurl, not yourdomain, gets the click as far as the search engines are concerned. Not cool!
While some URL shorteners allow you to log in and change your destination URL’s when called for, many don’t. So once your shortened link, and destination URL are out there, they’re permanent. If the destination URL changes, you’re out of luck.
To add to the problem, many of the best advertising resources on the internet have taken to simply blocking URLs from shortening services. They have too many viruses, dead links, porn and other illegal destination URLs. The major sites for promoting and marketing simply block them entirely. Your links never show up. Period. Even Twitter, which pretty much made bit.ly famous is changing bit.ly links to their own internal shortener, which reveals the destination URL in the browser status bar, so everyone will know where they’re going right off the bat.
All this and I haven’t even mentioned that shortened links from such services LOOK like affiliate links these days. They’ve become so commonly used, they’re a dead giveaway now. You might as well post that long, ugly affiliate link in the first place and save yourself the trouble of using a shortener.
If you’ve guessed that this is all leading up to something, you’re right. You know me by now, and you know that when I find something I believe in, I’ll tell you about it. What I’ve found is a software called Easy Redirect Script. It’s only been available for a few days, and I already think it is the answer to a lot of prayers out there.
Just look at this:
- Installs in seconds on your website. Upload one simple folder.
- Uses yourdomain.com for all redirects. Instant branding and SEO friendliness.
- Several types of redirects and cloaks: Simple, Standard, SEO, Stealth, Prommotion and more.
- Set up categories to save and quickly find links.
- Creates QRCodes for each link – Essential to capture mobile and other non-computer markets.
- Counts clicks so you can compare your clicks with affiliate programs’ stats.
- Keeps affiliate programs honest.
- Control all your links centrally at your own domain.
- Avoid blocking common to other link cloaking services.
- No monthly fees or forced continuity.
- Use on as many domains as you need – further enhances branding.
- Requisite phrase: And much, much more!
You don’t have to buy this software. I’m telling you that because there are other ways to achieve SOME of the above. The link I’m giving you here actually sends you to a replay of a webinar I attended a few days ago, in which these other methods were revealed. I have to tell you, though, that I’ve used those methods too and, while they work, they can end up cluttering your webhosting files with subdomains, subdirectories and dedicated link pages. Yes, they work, but are far less efficient and ultimately unwieldy. I’ve got so many subdirectories and subdomains in my public_html folder, it’s atrocious. I don’t believe that’s the right way to do it anymore.
If you watch the webinar (73 minutes) you’ll learn a few methods and some things I’ve talked about here. The marketer, Jason Fladlien, is crazy, but he knows what he’s talking about. You’ll be entertained and informed, I promise. The redirect codes you might want to use are on the page for you to copy & paste, if you want to use them. But I think you should stick around for the deal. There are no pop-ups, no “One Time Offers,” upsells, downsells or other annoyances. That’s the way I like it.
Here are a couple of link choices for you:
The Webinar Replay
The Sales Page
The link above to the webinar demonstrates some of the features of Easy Redirect that I haven’t had time to make videos about. I highly recommend that you watch it in its entirety. You will be amazed.
