How to cloak your affiliate links to increase your click conversion
As an affiliate marketer, I have to promote merchants and their services. One of the most effective and common form of promotion is through a simple text link (nowadays people will argue that video ads are better though) which will bring the readers to their respective sites.
The far majority of people will not like to click on a link that looks like this - http://xxx.com/snfnfERRER%^^&&$#@1@#$.
It looks way too ugly (some say shitty!) and seems like it is going to stretch all the way to the moon! You absolutely do not want a link to be looking like that. What we want is a nice functional link that will get the click.
Before I go on, let me address one issue first, which is that on ethics.
There are some who feel that cloaking is unethical, on the lack of transparency ground. To be very honest, I feel otherwise.
Marketing is all about optimizing your settings to achieve the maximum possible conversion. There is no obvious malicious intent to cheat or lie here when we cloak. The person that clicks the link will always be sent to the same destination, be it cloaked or not.
