Hi guys, Whats up with Aff ID cloaking? I see some people talking about it. Tell me: is this a real bad move to let my aff id out there? I mean, i place it as it comes out of clickbank hoplink
Most of the people like me will not click the link if we see any affiliate code ;-) So its good to cloak it, even i do the same on my blog [check out my siggy]. However there are many techniques to cloak the links.
There is a few reasons cloaking is important. The first it prevents it from behind hijacked. Secondly, it makes the link look nice in the status bar. Instead of username.hop.publisher.clickbank.net (or whatever it is), it'll look like domain.com/productname/ Third, it's nice to set up a central directory on your site for all your affiliate links domain.com/go/product1/, domain.com/go/product2/, etc. No matter where you place your cloaked link, a year from now you can change a 1000 pages with the code on it, but just changing the redirection. I think it's irresponsible to do it any other way.
Also, people who have a CB account can see the link and sub out your id for theirs...then they get a 'discount' and you miss your commission.
you have to cloak your links if you're promoting to other IM'ers. if it's general public then nothing to worry about.
Well.. I don't think cloaking would help much. For instance, If I found a product I would buy and I was thinking of using my affiliate link for the purchase, no matter how you cloak it, I would still buy it using my own aff.id . Because, when I'll enter the sales page and press that buy button, I will see that the Clickban Buy Interface will be shown, so I will just go to the marketplace, find the product, create my own hoplink, and purchase the product via my aff link. Cloaking won't help you that much.
he's saying, if you see a link like: http://ghalt.hop.water4gas.clickbank.net , you could just change the link in your browser with your CB affiliate ide and enter http://scubita.hop.water4gas.clickbank.net , that way, you get the commission i.e get a discount
^^ ah OK, i see. That happen if someone's want to buy the product i'm promoting. OK, no worries, guess that ain't going to happen with IM guys. Thanks, green spread for all. Appreciate your feedback.
Yes, this is mostly the problem with Internet Marketers, I mean if someone is ought to buy a Make money with CB ebook, he is probably a CB affiliate, and he is likely to buy it using his own aff link. However for most products this is not a problem, the average soccer mom or dad, doesn't even know what an affiliate link is
I think that people who have CB accounts who see something they like will always use their own link to buy the product and get a commisssion and bypass the original link - it makes sense. I certainly wouldn't line someone elses pockets when I could line my own! Besides it's best to target people who really want to buy the product not future affiliates of it.
This kind of information can actually low down our sales badly. As I can see DP does come in lots and lots of search results in google, and anyone that is a frequent online shopper can also spread the word, and we loose our comissions. A clickbank account can be created in less than 5 minutes and it is available for most of the countries, but especially US where most of the sales are made.
Making a Clickbank account won't help at all, you need to have at least 5 sales from 3 different credit cards in order to get paid, so anyone making an account in CB just to get a discount is very unlikely to make 5 sales from different CCs
You know that and I know that, but many of the people trying it don't know that because they don't read the smallprint carefully enough. Although they won't manage to earn their own commission (i.e. discount) that way, for exactly the reason you give, they'll still deprive you and me of our commissions - which is kind of the point here, don't you think?
Yes correct.. but I think the problem is blown out of proportion, most average internet users don't even know about this, they don't even know what clickbank is and that they could sign up as an affiliate. Just go out, ask your friends, family, the average soccer mom or dad, if they know what clickbank or affiliate marketing is. More than 90% of the people will say they've never heard about it. A very, very small amount of the average internet users know about this. You should be concerned only if you're selling IM products, because those users are in this line of work and know that they can get a discount my purchasing via their own aff. link. With other niches, I don't think you have much to worry about, if you're in the IM niche, you do, but most of the time you cannot do anything to stop a fellow IMer of using his own aff.link to purchase the product.
Well if your aff id is something like SecureSales then i believe not cloaking is quite nice however if your link looks like this: IScamYourMoney.water4gas.hop.clickbank.net then yes, you might want to cloak it.