Lets say you need to promote AffiliateCompany.com and your referral link is AffiliateCompany.com/aff?=15458565
– if you publish this in forums or on web sites that don’t necessarily allow for “affiliate links” you cannot only eliminate your account with the web site but additionally your credibility with the online community.
Lets admit it; its 2010 and most folks who actively search on the internet are tired of people attempting to “sell” these guys something. It has become to the point where people dont even recognize if the review they see about a childrens toy is valid or when it is authored by someone who receives a comission by marketing the toy. (Side note; this is the reason the FTC went in and built a Bloggers Disclosure Rules).
The blogger/ author nonetheless has the purpose of marketing the item, but they are constantly getting ran out by “NO AFFILIATE LINKS ALLOWED!” and “I won’t trust you! This seems to be like an affilite link!” – so a remedy was identified; Link Masking.
Link Masking (Frequently called “Link Cloaking”) is a software employed by bloggers (and spammers alike) to hide affiliate urls from the prospect (visitor, AKA: Potential Buyer).
So proceeding back to the primary affiliate link for AffiliateCompany.com which looks such as this:
AffiliateCompany.com/aff?=15458565
(if I type it out or trim and paste it in full) OR it will appear this way:
AffiliateCompany.com
If I utilize one of the free links presented by the merchant by means of my affiliate account.
Yet either way, when the user clicks the link and looks at the Status Bar, they may still observe that it is an affiliate link – an additional strikeout.
The very best Link Masking not only covers the affiliate link that an individual is viewing but furthermore masks the Status Bar to say something other than the link which the user is being directed to.
So check this out;
There are some different methods to mask links:
The FREE Method:
You can manually generate cloaked links.
Make use of BitLy. BitLy will “shorten” your link and provide you with a different link that is linked to your link (if that tends to make any sense). So lets say I place my affiliate link AffiliateCompany.com/aff?=15458565 into BitLy; I then buy this link: bit.ly/1df5sd
When clicked, the groundbreaking new BitLy will get the user directly to the affiliate page not having exposing my affiliate link. The downside is that this isn’t the most effective way to mask links because you haven’t any control over the status bar.