Every serious internet entrepreneur should know the facts about link cloaking. It is a very important part of internet marketing that is often overlooked or even steered clear of because it sounds like it is a shady black hat technique.

After you are approved for an affiliate relationship, you are given the opportunity to embed widgets of code in your site. These are clickable links that direct customers to the site that sells the product you have affiliated with. In this way, the link is tracked back to you and you can be assured that if a sale is made, you will get your commission. It doesn’t always work out that way, though.

For one thing, many people have the mistaken idea that they will be overcharged for the product or service if they purchase it via your website. Thinking they are being clever, they remove your affiliate ID from the link before clicking through.When they do this, you lose the commission that is rightfully yours.

Even worse, your affiliate ID can be used by hackers who know how to use the information in order to steal your commissions by redirecting the link to their affiliation. This is usually not a problem for small sites, because they are looking for bigger payouts for their efforts, but it can happen.

What link cloaking does is replace your affiliate link with another one of your choice. When someone clicks on your link, they are still redirected to your affiliate link, but it is hidden from the view of the person who clicks the link. This does a number of things for you.

Firstly, those customers who would otherwise remove your affiliate link from the URL can no longer do so. Customers rarely do that, but you needn’t worry about it anymore. Many more customers, however, get suspicious when they see that affiliate ID and it puts doubts in their minds about you and your professionalism. Your cloaked link gives them the feeling that you are a professional reseller and not just an “affiliate marketer.”

More importantly, you have just made your affiliation hack-proof. Hackers need that affiliate ID before they can even begin to infiltrate your affiliate account.

Far from being an underhanded way to trick people into believing you’re something you’re not, cloaking your links is a way to prove to them that you are a legitimate business and not just an amateur trying to make a quick buck. There is absolutely nothing black hat about it.

Many internet marketers take it one step further and create an iframe page on their website. This is a page that looks exactly like the page that the customer will be directed to when they click on the link. In the eyes of the customer, this assures them that you have a direct and legitimate connection with the company.

If you are in doubt about cloaking links, contact the company you are affiliated with and ask them first. If it is against their policy, they will tell you and be grateful for your honesty. Usually, however, they will encourage it.

It is simple to learn more about ways you can multiply visits to your site and click-through traffic using link cloaking. When you use a conversion tracking system, you will be able to improve your marketing and advertising efforts and multiply your thriving business.

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