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Affiliate Link Cloaking

As you get more an more involved with Internet Marketing you will start to read quite a bit about affiliate link cloaking.

Link cloaking is basically a way for an Internet marketer to hide their affiliate links so instead of the link reading http://bestproductonthemarket.com/?id=10567 it would just read http://bestproductonthemarket.com. In essence you are not displaying the affiliate id number on the link itself.

Many marketers swear by it, while others say don’t worry about it. I suppose it’s really more just a matter of opinion.

The major concern for most Internet marketers is one of two things. Some are worried about other marketers replacing the affiliate link with their own link when they need to purchase a product. In other words somebody could be stealing your profits.

Others say that some people just don’t like the fact that somebody is making money every time they click on a link and purchase a product. The argument here is that many people will remove the affiliate link and copy and paste only the source address into the navigation bar.

I’m personally a little more opposed to link cloaking myself. It seems to me that the term cloak means to hide. To me when you are hiding something you are being deceptive. I don’t see a reason to hide anything from my readers or visitors. I would like to think that they know there is a chance I could earn a commission from their purchases and hopefully they would be happy for me.

I will say, however, that link cloaking has it’s own market. You can purchase and download all types of different link cloaking tools if that’s the way you want to run your online business.

However, just because the tools are out there does not mean you should use them. I also believe there is a good chance the FTC will jump on this sooner or later and ban the use of link cloaking tools.

Anyway…now you know a bit about link cloaking. Obviously in the end, it is your decision to decide to use them or not. I just wanted to give my two cents.

Best Wishes!

Do I Really Need My Own Website?

The short answer is that there are Internet Marketers who operate without having their own website. They purchase large lists of email addresses and they simply start sending advertisement out to the list.

I look at this from a different perspective. I feel you need to have a home base and domain. If you want to be able to truly brand your business it’s almost impossible to not have one. It’s important to have your own piece of Internet Property. How can the world take you seriously if you don’t appear to be serious?

If you have bigger goals and want to build a legitimate business you should already be marking your territory on the web so the 1.6 billion users out there can find you if they need to. You must have your own spot on the Internet in order to tell the world who you are and what you’re all about. You need your own site to display your future products. You want the freedom to design your site as you see fit.

Some would argue that you can do just fine with a nice blog. The problem with that theory is that you need to have static space for products and efficiency. Some visitors seem to have more privacy concerns with blogs as well.

Think along the lines of some of the best branded companies in the world such as Coca Cola, McDonald’s and Nike. They all have numerous websites as well as a company blog. I’m not saying you need to go out a buy up a bunch of websites and blogs. Those businesses are all very well established and have been for quite some time.

I do, however, believe it’s necessary to have one of each. Use your website for the home base to display your own products and use your blog to push out valuable content for your visitors. Generally speaking you can start out with a great site and blog for about $9.95 a month. There are thousands of web hosting companies on the Internet to choose from. I personally found this web hosting company worked the best for my needs.

They had all the tools I wanted and also offered the WordPress.org blogging platform for free. In my opinion WordPress.org is the best business blogging platform there is. WordPress.com is ok but you loose some of the freedoms that you sometimes need like editing code, uploading new plug-ins, creating a custom theme and so forth.

Best Wishes