I hear a lot of debate in the internet marketing community about whether or not to cloak links. Usually, the discussion about cloaking links is motivated by discussions of commission theft and other issues. Often, the people that are talking to you about commission theft are also trying to sell you some link cloaking solution, and increased revenue by decreased commission theft is one selling point they use to separate you from your $47 (a $997 value, of course).
In my next post, I am going to tell you how to cloak links for free. In this post, will cover the basics of how and why to cloak your links.
What is Link Cloaking?
If you are new to internet marketing, you might not even know what link cloaking is. For the purpose of this article, link cloaking is any technique you use to link to something that obscures the real destination link. For example, I can link to my favorite search engine. As you can see, the link is to “http://www.latenightim.com/recommends/search” and lands you at “http://www.google.com.” The link to Google is “cloaked.” You don't know where you are headed until you click on it.
Why Cloak Links — The Wrong Reasons
There are several reason that people use to cloak links that I think are just plain wrong. Here is my personal standard for stuff like this: If you don't want to see it on the front page of the New York Times, don't do it. What I mean by that, is that if you are not comfortable with lots of people knowing about what you are doing, you should listen to that little voice and walk away. Internet marketing is already full of slimy scam artists — no need to add to that.
Here are a few wrong reasons to cloak links:
- To hide the fact that you are getting paid for the referral. Look folks, if you recommend a product and get paid for that recommendation, you need to tell people. Failing to tell people that you get paid if they buy something is dishonest.
- To stuff cookies. Cookie stuffing is a trick beyond the scope of this article. If someone tries to sell you cookie stuffing software, run the other way.
- To mislead people about the destination link. If you are cloaking links to trick people into clicking, you are doing the wrong thing. Stop doing that.
Good Reasons To Cloak Links — The Right Reasons
Because so many people cloak links for the wrong reasons, link cloaking gets a bad wrap. I think link cloaking is very important and ethical (I use it on my blog) if done in the right way and for the right reasons. These are the reasons that I cloak links:
- To count clicks. This is critical to any business. If you don't know what people are clicking on your site, you cannot grow your business effectively. Marketing is about running experiments, testing and making adjustments. (For example, see also my post on the impact of StumbleUpon on my stats). If you cannot count your clicks, you cannot determine what is working (and what is not working).
- To manage affiliate programs. Some times, affiliate programs die, change links or change sites. If you have 30 direct links to an affiliate program out there and the program makes a change, you suddenly need to edit 30 links. However, if you are cloaking that link, you only need to change the destination link in one place!
- To make clear that you are getting paid for something. I use the word “recommends” in all my affiliate link URLs. In my disclosure page, I explain (in case it is not already obvious) that the word “recommends” in the URL usually means I get paid if people buy.
- If link cloaking has any impact on theft, I'll get that advantage too from cloaking. I don't think it does have much impact, but people argue that it does.
In most successful businesses, transparency is a critical key to success.
So, cloak your links — but do it for the right reasons
Later this week, I will discuss how to do the cloaking ABSOLUTELY FREE.
Best regards,
Mark
What an excellent article!!
I have been thinking about cloaking a ittle and didn’t see a need to do it. However the tracking could be very important.
My stats tracking is awful and I have not yet sat down and seriously worked out how to grow any of my sites based on this. I will be looking forward to your next article.
Excellent post, Mark.
It’s always humorous to hear people say they cloak links to hide the fact that it’s an affiliate link. If someone wants to get rid of your aff. i.d., so they can order through their own link or just to spite you, they’re going to do it whether it’s “cloaked” or not. In most cases cloaked links are easier to point out than aff links.
I don’t believe I would argue with any aspect of this article. Great job!
Good Article! – besides tracking another reason to cloak or relay affiliate links is that sometimes the original affiliate link changes and then if you have posted that link here or there in forums or whatnot all those links are no longer valid – if you cloak or relay the link in some way then you just go to your cloaked link and change the distination (original affiliate link) to the new one and all your previous linking stays current.
hth ~megan
Ahhh cool, looking forward to the Guest appearance. I still have not gotten around to reading your Ebook but am looking forward to that too!
So much to do, so little time :)…. need to make money too 🙁
@Forest — thanks, man. I had planned that post for Wed, but may push it to Friday. I need to make room for a guest appearance from the Cow Slayer on Wed.
@Josh. Thank you very much sir. I agree with you completely, but I keep seeing link cloaking products based completely on “theft deterrence.” Guess we just don’t get it. LOL
@Megan. Thank you. Completely agree with you. This has happened to me more than once already – usually because an affiliate changes domain names or software. Some people take this even further, and make the link completely generic — “To see my current recommendation for autoresponders, click here…” I don’t really do that, but it can make sense in things like eBooks where you completely lose control of the link.
I think the thing that you helped me with the most, Mark, is me recognizing that I need to update my disclosure policy to reflect that I use links of this nature. I’ve recently started cloaking my affiliate links. The thing is is that if you have them out in the open or cloak them, it still raises an eyebrow for the user with the keen eye. So I guess in my mind, the best way to think of using them is: 1) update once, populate many; and, 2) emphasize that this is a recommended link by including the “recommends” directory in the url.
Oh cool, so we’re having a cook out on Wednesday. Wonderful!!! Tell you what, I’ll bring the steak and you bring the drinks… only thing I need to know is how you like your COW cooked. 🙂
I would add one more positive to your list of why one should consider cloaking their links and that is professionalism. By having a cloaked link that reads well creates a much better image in the visitor’s mind than having a long, ugly affiliate link.
Another BIG reason is to keep the source of the traffic a secret. Which I suppose could be the other half of the theft deterrent argument. If you have stumbled upon some great traffic source, you can bet that whoever runs that affiliate program at the top, is going to want to get in on it, and share it with the rest of the affiliates out there. You want the referring URL reported to their stats program to be your cloak script, not your secret traffic source.
@Forest — glad you are planing to read the eBook. Very interested in your impression of it.
@Mark — I am big into “full disclosure” and transparency. Glad to hear you agree with that.
@Garry — Eat more beef!
@Christian — I completely agree with that, but must admit that I had never considered it. That’s really another reason that I like this method — I think “recommends” in the URL gives a clean look. Thanks!
@linuxhat — excellent point that I did not mention here. Thanks for adding that. This is absolutely critical in many case – especially PPC.
Hey Mark.
Great post. I personally dont cloak links. I probably should just so I can track them and see whats happening with them. I agree with christian and he/she makes a good point about how the link itself looks and how it affects branding.
My personal feeling is that cloaking and hiding is probably only neccesary in the IM market, other than what christian mentioned.
Defiante good resource here, I’ll be linking to it soon
Oh you missed Aarons meeting dude, tisk tisk, or were you BBQ’ing with Garry. Hey give me an invite next you two BBQ, I make a killer cedar smoked steak
Hi Mark,
I create a subdomain for each affilliate link that I have. Do you think this is a good way to go?
cheers
Tony
Tony;
It is a great way to go because it looks clean and professional. It also allows you to change where the link points to if you need to.
The only possible issue would be tracking. It is good to be able to track the number of clicks and where they are coming from. If you can do that (using GA or something), then I would says that your solution is just as good as mine.
cool, thanks for the prompt response as well
I’ll keep an eye or two on your blog 🙂
Hey Mark,
Apologies if you don’t like people “reopening” old posts, but I’ve always wondered if Google spots php redirects and the like, and lowers your PPC quality scores…
What do you think? I haven’t tested this yet, but will do so soon. Would be interesting if it gave a point of QS… but if it did I would have thought it would be common knowledge by now!
Cheers,
Jonathon
No problem, Jonathon.
My belief is that quality score is not impacted by redirects as long as they are not cloaking the final URL (fooling the user), cookie stuffing (stealing commissions), or mismatched with the add. That last one means that your final url has to match the display URL. The intermediate url (the cloaking URL) does not need to match.
HOWEVER — I am not a PPC guy. All of my experiences with PPC have been painful .