Tag:

!

I am sure you have heard of this before and you have done it yourself. If you use for example affiliate programs on Clickbank you use a special affiliate link to make sure you get linked to the sale. But obviously a lot of people know what the links look like and can either just bypass your link or even put their own ID in before the buy the product. So what can you do?

Well, you can actually hide the link and depending on how much work you are willing to put in, you can use different approaches that have their individual advantages. You can

• use a service like tiny.com that provides free links that cover up the details. The links look ugly but they basically do the trick
• use a few lines of HTML or PHP code to re-route. That way, you can have an address that is pointing to a page on your web-site and that page will directly forward the user to the actual affiliate page. The advantage is that you can pick the exact wording for the link
• have a little tool help you manage all your affiliate links. This might come in handy if you have a lot of links to manage

So there are a lot of ways to make sure you get the commissions you deserve. To be fair you have to put some additional time in, if you manage a lot of links but this is really a minor investment and if you are willing to invest just a few dollars, one of the available tools will take most of the pain away from you. I personally recommend to use the re-routing from your own web-site. The links look nicer and make it way more attractive to click on them.

Some sources say that you are losing 30 to 50% of commissions to "thieves" and "link snoopers". I don't know if that number is true, but it is way too easy to prevent it to run the risk.