The Importance of Using an Affiliate Link Cloaking Software
Commission theft is the biggest fear for most affiliate marketers. Link cloaking software has emerged as a great solution to protect your affiliate links and the subsequent commissions. Think of a situation where the user gets convinced to buy your product, but the moment they recognize that it is actually an affiliate product and purchasing the same will help you earn some commission, they will simply sign up for that affiliate program themselves and use their own affiliate URL to make the purchase. This way, all your efforts go in vain. The amount of commission that you deserve to get goes into someone else's pocket. The use of an affiliate link cloaking software program will protect your link form hijacking and bypassing.
Protection From Affiliate Link Bypassing
Bypassing is the term that is used when a person directly uses the website address instead of your affiliate URL to make the purchase. Affiliate links are very easy to recognize. It is a common tendency for people to hate clicking on suspicious links. They do not want the products to be sold out to them. Even if they are convinced with the benefits of buying the product, the moment they recognize that it is an affiliate link, they consider it as a sales pitch. In that case, they go directly to the product's main selling site instead of following your affiliate link. This way, you are deprived of the commission you deserve to get. But, you can secure your commission by using a good affiliate link cloaking software program. The program will hide the link's actual identity and the user will not be able to recognize that it is actually an affiliate link.
Convert The Uninviting Links Into A Click-Able Link
Most affiliate links are usually very long and look quite ugly. With the help of a cloaker, you can easily change the look of your link by making it simple and highly inviting. For example, an affiliate link may look like this - www.productsite.com/affiliatepage.asp?affid=prodaffid4653. On the other hand, once you cloak the link, it will look something like this - www.yoursite.com/productsite.
Hijacking of affiliate link is also very common where the person uses his/her own affiliate id instead of yours to make a purchase. This way, they get the commission that you were supposed to get. The majority of the Internet community does not want to lose any opportunity to make some easy money online. Therefore, if you have not properly cloaked your affiliate links, you are actually creating a threat for your own commissions and providing the users an easy opportunity to hijack that commission. So, make sure you use a good affiliate link cloaking software program. Also, do not go for the free programs. Most of them are spam and those that work do not provide sufficient protection to your affiliate links.