Fact is, when you are an affiliate you are one of a tiny minority of internet users and you worry about every little thing. Instead focus on spreading the word everywhere about you and what you offer. I never focus on numbers apart from a tad of observance to the 80/20 rule in my marketing!

It was simply to dispel the myth that going to a sales page and changing the hop variable to another userID and refreshing the page would cause the original affiliate to lose commission, which it wouldn’t.

Most ‘successful’ malwares these days are created by sophisticated, talented, hackers from all over the world. Successful means your AV scanners haven’t detected it because there’s no definition for it yet in the AV definitions list, also called a 0day or zero day attack (Google it). You are only considering direct url editing in the browser for this article. Not good.

“IF” infected with the right malware (your customers), the browser clicks can be intercepted from within using the malware already running on their pc. As the code is sent to your browser to create a page for display on screen, the affid, pubid, click bank id or whatever code the hacker has defined, can be intercepted and replaced as the page is being downloaded.

If your affiliate ID is cloaked, then you have hidden that ID from being intercepted/processed in the browser. POST data can be manipulated BEFORE its sent to the server for processing. However, a cloaked link is processed by the web server and not your browser.

Believe what you like, but this article is wrong, and you MIGHT be losing more than you think.

Keep up the great information and thanks bunches.

Because people will feel elpassoblog.com/recs/newoffer is always going to look more credible than 123amazingaffiliatejunk.com/cgi.x?agentid=345TREW321wwkih6HHgvv56789andrefid=tyr654IKH76gTr59876pwqb

I mean come on! But for me the primary reasons are
1. it makes me feel good!
Does that sound silly? I feel organised, on top of the game and ready to go. I feel I have checked out a product that has much to offer my prospects. I feel I am proud to be associated with this affiliate product. And therefore I feel I want to go all-out to promote it!
2. if this affiliate product is so hot I think it will benefit a lot of people online then I actually go as far as to register a domain and redirect with URL forwarding. Because I feel A1 about this domain now: it really has something to offer!
3. my new domain pointing at the affiliate offer must be catchy and memorable – so now instead of an affiliate link, or even a cloaked URL, I have the ultimate: a specific domain which I can reel off the tongue easy as you like!

Here are three examples of domains I use – none uses my own hosting, yet with these redirected URLs I feel proud as a webmaster!
http://www.zowoco.com
http://www.zowocomarketing.com
http://www.passion8adsense.com

Now I really feel ready to promote actively, it’s like I have given my promotions a platform for success. What do you think? Perhaps this idea will help your affiliate promoting!

Always good to keep your commissions. nice post, keep up the good work.

Sally

It’s nice that I don’t have to agree with you 100% of the time…..

I know from seeing my CB stats that there are a good few people who do change the links BEFORE they click on them.

If it shows as http://elpasso.rsmithuk2.net (or whatever the link might be…)
Then people will copy the link and change the elpasso to their own id.

That said … Paula at her blog has shown how to set up a redirect link… http://paula-brett.com/blog/how-to-create-a-redirect-page/
and I have some software that does it all for people on my http://www.MonthlyBargains.co.uk site – which is a free download in exchange for an email addy naturally …lol

Personally – I would always recommend cloaking a link and changing it into a http://www.mysite.com/Recommends/product – not only does it reduce any chance of links being changed … But it also looks more professional.

I just wouldn’t go spending $97 on software when you can find it free – or great instructions like Paulas free …

So there you go
A different view to some marketers comments here whom I also have a great deal of respect for (as well as my fellow Yorky Dan) …. but I wouldn’t be true to myself if I agreed for the sake of it!

Warm Regards as ever
Randy
http://www.MonthlyBargains.co.uk

Great post, and one that needed to be stated!

Perhaps there are those out there with somewhat good intentions wanting to warn of the possiblity of commission theft, but on the other hand, could it be that some are just trying to get others to be worked up and worried over something that does not warrant our time to be wasted?

I think there are plenty of newcomers who “hear” about these horror stories, and they are overwhelmed already, that to have just one more thing to make them work more, keeps them forever spinning wheels rather than working quickly to build their business.

I do agree with you that the true reason behind the “cloaking” should be to make it look nicer, or to shorten some of the lengthy ones out there!

Enjoy!
Paul

Thanks for such a great post! I was just looking for such a link cloaking software and I was about to pay for one. I’ve just saved some money and I really appreciate it!

Have a great day!
Celine