Do you hide your affiliate links?

I have heard that hiding your link will increase click through rates for affiliate campaigns, for example if you have a link like www.website.com/offer/ that is obviously an affiliate link people will be less inclined to click on it that if you disguised it using a service that can hide affiliate links like Small1.com

I was wondering if anyone was using this method or have noticed increased click through rates when they hid their affiliate links. Any feedback or opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

I use re-directs and it seems to work well...

 

there was a post with the same exact topic a few weeks back...you should search for that thread...you'll get all the answers you need.

 

You can use tinyurl.com to cloak links for free.

 

Thanks for your input, I am currently using Small1.com - It does the same thing and is also free to use.

 

I think that @jordanb27 just try to promote his site small1. Good luck. I usualy use javascript to hide affiliate links. That is if I decide to hide them.

 

Thanks for your reply, I have heard of some people using java script to hide links. Can you explain more about this? Thanks

 

On one hand, readers might be hesitant to click on a coded affiliate link (it looks funny). However, I think it's best to just keep it as is because there's a sort of ethical obligation to let your readers know that they're reading reviews that are based on an affiliate relationship. I prefer to just keep them as is : )

 

For me it depends on what im doing. If i am doing a campaign with a video on youtube for example, i will buy a domain and redirect it so i can i add a short url in the video like FuckYeahBuyIT.com flashing on the screen as opposed to tinyurl.com/23098039412 flashing. If you're adding a text link on websites and forums, its nice to buy one broad sounding domain name and set up subdomains on it for all your campaigns.

Like BlueApple.com a really generic name. Then you can advertise:

makemoney.blueapple.com
freexbox.blueapple.com
sellyoursoul.blueapple.com

 

Yes! I use special software to mainly prevent toolbars and such from changing my affiliate codes to theirs.

Re's
Rob Whisonant

 

I am just using an HTML code but all it does is hide the links. I want to change the status name into something I want the readers to see. Could you help me?

 

http://www.addme.com/linkcloaker.htm <there is one way.
Alternatively, you could make a folder on your domain and make the index.html a redirect script to the link.
So http://domain.com/folder/ would go to your affiliate link.
A redirect script in html would look like

 <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0; URL=http://affiliate.com/offer.php?12483">

Code (markup):

Hope that's what you were looking for,
Drew

 

Yup, making a folder on your site for your affiliate sales is probably the best way to hide it.

Shoemoney also made a blog post about it: http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/02/12/guide-to-link-cloaking-masking-and-url-redirection/

 

Give a try to www.cloakreferer.com

 

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=763083

Just stated you were hiding links and needed advice with visible text on another thread from today. Why then start a duplicate thread with almost the same title...

 

I just use a simple redirect on a subdirectory of my website, so far I only have them set up on affiliate marketer guides (from my sig) but I plan to change all my sites to do this later this month. The code for it is a really simple, just a make a page like the following and save the name of the page to be what you want it to display as. For instance my links look like affiliatemarketerguides.com/richjerk etc.