people are talking a lot about ways of hiding your affiliate ID from the links. However, I don't really see what's the compelling reason to do that. Some say to prevent comission theft, but how can that be? thanks
1 reason is that some people dont like to click aff links, when i was newb to internet i thought aff links are suspicious thing
Sometimes people can steal your commission...ya know jsut going to the site without using your link or substituting their own link on it...that's the whole reason.
excuse me, but I don't get it. I understand that a surfer can just copy the url without your affiliaye id so that you don't get credit fr the sale, but how often does that usualy happen?
I've heard on the net of people getting there commision stolen (ie somehow someone sets it up so they recieve all commissions and you none) and that's why some use cloaking techniques. I don't really understand how your commission can get stolen if your links on your site are the proper ones from your affiliate. The only way I see it is if they hack your site and replace your affiliate id with theirs.
The bottom line is: There many are grimey people out there that will take out your .aff ID and go straight to the URL, they do it out of spite. It's reality, that along with thieves gives an affiliate marketer all the reason in the world to either, redirect or cloak. It most cases it makes for a very clean URL. Which would you click on? http://abcdefg.com/qweiourqweiuwqy=34784ui3h4un4j3bd3eru34y or http://abcdefg.com/xxxxxx Which would you feel safer clicking? There is a point.
The links you present as an example may not be fully acurate. A cloaked URL would point to your site and then be redirected to another site as an example if you are selling widgets : http://www.yoursite.com/widget/ where as an affiliate link that is run by the widget company could look like this: http://www.widget.com/index.asp?affid=1234 If I came across a cloaked url, I may wonder why the link is not going directly to the site (ie is it going to a site with spam, a virus, etc...). Plus most affiliate agreements (that I have come across) don't allow modifing a link which in most cases is what you have to do to cloak a url. But the bottom line is most people who are going to screw you out of a commision (if it is cloaked or not) can easily find the link to the site by just using google or common sense so in the end why worry about them.
instead of hinding your affiliate link, User your subdomains to redirect to the affiliate page. By doing like this, When the company closes its affiliate program, you can easily change the redirection to another affiliate url. This will save you from providing unneccessary clicks, links to the old affiliate url.
OK, I think I understod. so 'comission theft' doesn't mean somebody getting the comissions from your sales, but it means a sale being made through your affiliate link with no aff. ID on it. thanks