If you’ve read my previous two posts, Passive Income Here I Come and Those Little Things That Make You Happy, you probably noticed that I’ve started promoting this new cool free SEO eBook by using an affiliate link. You could also notice that the actual affiliate link is hidden.
Some of you must wonder why did I do that, so I’m dedicating this post to affiliate links and why it is a good idea to hide them. A how-to on hiding links will follow in my next article.
Two things happen that cause you to loose money:
I don’t know exactly what percentage of people do this, but I heared rumors that about 25%-35% of affiliate links get hijacked.
You want to promote your brand as much as possible, and a link with your domain will do its bit of help when you use it on forums, article directories, your own posts, etc.
Most affiliate links look awful. Consider the difference:
http://www.nothingtodowithyourbranddomainname.com/d/app/user_id=123456
and:
http://www.yoursite.com/product
So, we have there plenty of good reasons to hide your affiliate links. I don’t see any reasons not to do this so far, although, I think that despite hiding the link itself, sometimes it’s a good idea to give your reader a heads-up that it is an affiliate link. I’m currently doing it mainly to test the nuts and bolts of the way I’m hiding it.
Stick around for my next post to go through the how-to, and an overview of which other ways are there to do it. This is a good time to subscribe to my RSS, by the way…
- Alex
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hey man.. thanks for this post.i nv tot people would be so greedy as to change the affiliate id man….
in the past i tot it was better to show the link so that people know i’m not hiding anything…
now i know.. thanks alot!
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axileon,
Thanks for visiting!
Take a second to subscribe to my RSS to receive more useful content.
Cheers,
Alex.
It can be difficult to know what to do for the best. As you say there are good people and there are those that are less good, so there is a risk of them replacing your affiliate link with their own – it’s really a pain, but does keep the cloaking software vendors in business I suppose.
And yes the affiliate links do look terrible and some potential buyers simply wont click on “that” type of link. Not really sure why as it’s no skin off of their nose – so to speak.
And then there’s the seo aspect of those very horrible affiliate links. All in all cloaked links are better for all concerned I think.
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