Comments on: How to Protect Your Affiliate Links

By: Internet Marketing Company

Internet Marketing Company — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:47:18 +0000

1. it is not a policy but rather a mailing list building technique to collect opt-in e-mail addresses so that you are able to market whatever products/services through e-mails later. You also need to ensure your e-mail marketing list have to be compliant with the Can Spam Act.

2. sometimes the landing/sales page of the merchant doesn’t convert that well due to poor design or poor layout. With you having your own landing pages, you are able to do split testings and tweak your designs to achieve better conversions.

By: John Morgan

John Morgan — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:04:12 +0000

Aha! Now everything makes sense! I have been asking for months in forums why people use redirects and cloaking for affiliate links, but most answers I received were “so the surfer doesn’t see the affiliate link and skip clicking”. I never bought that reason, since I don’t think many people know what a “referral” url looks like.

I bet affiliate programs regularly change their url’s, leaving the ordder pages up but cutting out the affiliate marketer. By cloaking the url and using s redirect, you can always change it if needed. Makes sense now! I was curious because I will be looking at affiliate programs later this summer.

By: robert@affiliate programs directory

robert@affiliate programs directory — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:07:42 +0000

I think is very important to put robots line in the cloaking page to prevent search engines such as Google trying to index the page. Google hates meta refresh pages as it perceives them as a spamming technique. It’s safer to keep search engine robots out of the page, and since the page will have no content, there’s no point in it being indexed anyway.

By: autopro

autopro — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:14:31 +0000

1. Is it a good policy to ask the prospect’s email as a requirement to access the product’s page?
2. Having control over sales page, admit you know how to write one, is the perfect thing to do.

By: Web Design

Web Design — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:50:14 +0000

One of the way is that if you redirect your affiliate link through META tags or through any other method than you need to add a parameter to your link. So that various applications will know not to pop up your link.

By: Joe@Learn About Credit Cards

Joe@Learn About Credit Cards — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:57:53 +0000

Oh wow, that is a really smart idea! I never thought of that, but was aware of the problem. I hate to think of how much commission I may have missed out on. From now on I'm going to implement your methods onto some of my affiliate sites that require information such as the name and email. I'm really finding your website helpful and interesting!Joes last blog post.. 0 APR Credit Card Applications

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:20:19 +0000

@Riggie,

G-Lock Affiliate Link Cloaker is a free script. You don’t need to buy it. You can just use it at no cost.

By: Riggie@website marketing strategies

Riggie@website marketing strategies — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:14:11 +0000

G-Lock Affiliate Link Cloaker seems to be a sensible script, but with the problems described above, it’s a good question whether it’s worth buying.

Maybe someone who has use it extensively can comment here…

By: Anet@namiba reisen

Anet@namiba reisen — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:35:53 +0000

By-passing the Merchants opt-in page seems to be a great strategy.

Will try it soon with your Link Cloacker.

Thanks for these useful tips! Was never aware of them…

By: Francis@150CC scooter

Francis@150CC scooter — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:32:22 +0000

Always use a redirect url for your affiliate links – one that you can control.

I created a free .pdf to be freely distributed. In this special report I used direct linking to the vendor (I used my affiliate link pointing directly to the vendor). About one month went by, and the vendor changed their affiliate program from Linkshare to being managed in house. Now my links in the special report cannot be altered, because they point directly to the vendor’s site from within the .pdf. Of course I don’t recieve any commissions since they are no longer using Linkshare, but they are still getting traffic from my free report.

So I learned this lesson the hard way…

Always use a redirect that you have the ability to modify. This way you can update your links if/when something like this happens to you.