Product Review : Affiliate Link Cloaker

Before I found Affiliate Link Cloaker, I had bought and tried several other similar programs. Having tried several, I'd have to say that I liked ALC the best, partly because of ease of use, and partly because it leads you step-by-step through the process of creating a redirect page that is search engine friendly.

For the uninitiated, a "cloaker" allows you to hide those affiliate page URLs when you compose the links on your web site. Many "super affiliates" use server-side redirects, or URL redirection for this purpose, but both run the risk of being penalized by the search engine, if the spider finds it.

Why cloak your links? Well, according to cloaking advocates, as many as 40% of affiliate commissions are "hijacked", meaning that an unscrupulous buyer replaces your affiliate link with his or her own before buying a product, or a site visitor simply views the destination URL in the status bar and then "chops" it, removing the affiliate information and going to the vendor's site without your affiliate ID. Perhaps some people think they will get the product more cheaply this way, and others just don't want you to get the money you earned by interesting them in the product.

Regardless of why links get "hijacked", it makes sense to "cloak" them, if only to make them look neater both on your web pages and in any promotional e-mails you may send out. Advocates also claim that shorter links have higher "click-through" rates than those long, complicated affiliate URLs.

Affiliate Link Cloaker is an easy-to-use desktop utility that helps you create a page that contains a hidden redirect to your destination URL. It creates pages that the search engines at least won't penalize (since spiders don't read javascript), and hopefully will like (since ALC prompts you to fill in fields for page title, keywords, and description, as well as encouraging you to put some actual text on your page).

If somebody really wanted to "hack" your affiliate link, it wouldn't be that hard to do, though, as the URL is simply transformed into a piece of code that most programmers or hackers would instantly recognize. The point is, it would take them a while, and I consider affiliate link cloaking sort of like locking your doors. If a professional wants to steal it badly enough, they will ... amateurs will be deterred, and look for an easier target.

Of all the "cloakers" that I tried, I found ALC the easiest to use. Not only does it create the cloaked page, but it also allows you to upload it directly to your site, if you so desire. I also liked the fact you can designate your own page meta tags, and create a page that will apparently be "search engine friendly".

This is a simple, straightforward web master tool that I'd recommend to anyone who has the slightest concern about using unmasked affiliate URL links.

Learn more about Affiliate Link Cloaker here.