Increasing Affiliate Conversions & Commissions

Posted on October 12, 2007
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing |

If you’re an affiliate marketer, increasing conversion rates is a concern for you. After all, the more people that click on your link, the more commissions you stand to make.

Considering how much time and effort you’ve put into your affiliate marketing efforts, what have you done to protect your hard work?

For example, take into account the following URLs. Be honest, which one would you click on?

http://www.dog-trainers-guide.com/?affiliate_id=joeblow
or
http://www.dog-trainers-guide.com

Affiliate links are easily recognizable by many people, which may cause them to avoid clicking the link because they don’t want to be ’sold’ or ‘tricked’ into anything.

Another issue is link hijacking. Affiliate link hijacking is an unethical practice where someone replacing his your affiliate ID with theirs, stealing your commissions.

Cloaking your affiliate links will help prevent link hijacking, link bypassing, and encourages your visitors into clicking your affiliate links. Affiliate link cloaking has become an indispensable part of affiliate marketing and is one of the best ways to protect your affiliate sales, conversions, and commissions

If you don’t cloak your affiliate links, you are opening yourself to being robbed and losing your hard earned commissions.

There are many ways to cloak your affiliate links. Here are a few ideas:

1. URL Redirecting Services

Tiny URL and Short URL - Both of these services can shorten and hide an affiliate link. For example:

http://dog-trainer.com/?affiliate=joeblow
would look like this
http://tinyurl.com/2jgn6v

2. Using Subdomains
If you own your own domain and web hosting that allows you an ‘X’ amount of subdomains, you can redirect using a subdomains. So, instead of this:

http://dog-trainer.com/?affiliate=joeblow
would look like this
http://training-dogs.my-website-url.com

For more information on subdomains and how to redirect your subdomains, check with your web host provider.

3. Wordpress Plug-In
If you are using a Wordpress blog, there is a brand new Link Cloaking Plug-in that will automatically cloak all external links, including affiliate links. It is easy to install and configure. If you are using Wordpress, you should check it out.

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