First, what does “cloaking” mean ?
Cloaking an affiliate link means changing the “look” of a link so the visitor CANNOT have any clue if it belongs to an affiliate or not.

If you promote Clickbank products, their affiliate links have been looking like this for a long time :

http://xxxxxx.yyyyyy.hop.clickbank.net

I.e. : http://AFFILIATE.kickbutt.hop.clickbank.net

But these links can easily be noticed into the status bar.. and it can result into loss in sales.

There are two main reasons why you should cloak your affiliate links.

Reason #1 :
..is because people don’t like to know they are being sold to.
When someone smells a salesman coming around, we are all taking a step back.. right ?

Because we know that the main purpose of this all.. if for them to make money !

now if I do have a domain named
www.ThisIsMyWebsite.com

I could easily cloak this link :

http://AFFILIATE.kickbutt.hop.clickbank.net

so it looks like this :
www.ThisIsMyWebsite.com/WHATeverIwant

It looks way less like someone selling something.. isn’t ?

(I’ll show you how to cloak your links at the end of this page)

Reason #2 :
..is because of the other affiliates who wants to buy your product.
Let’s pretend I am an affiliate on Clickbank, and I find a website talking about this great product. If I see a link, I click on it, and it looks just normal:
..chances are that I might purchase that product right away.

If I like this same product, and when I click on a link, I see that it’s actually a product from clickbank.. I could change YOUR link for MINE.. Copy this link in my address bar, and go back on the sales page.

What does this do ?
Instead of you making $50 when I buy the 97$ product, I get $50 in my affiliate account when I purchase it.
This means I got a HUGE discount, and you lost one nice sale.
Just because I am an affiliate who noticed a link that had not been cloaked.

So in other words, you can only benefit from cloaking your links.

Now, how to actually cloak those links ?
For the method I am about to show you, you will need your own domain name and hosting account.

(if you don’t have a domain/hosting, I suggest you use something like tinyurl.com)

Let’s use my website for this example.. And I will use the Micro Niche Finder keyword tool as my product. (by the way; nothing compares to this tool!)

My affiliate link, which is this :
http://loginfo.kickbutt.hop.clickbank.net
has been transformed into this :
http://JeffreyMireault.com/keyword-tool/

but they are both sending my visitors to the same page.

How did I do that ?

1. Create a new folder in your domain. Mine was “keyword-tool”. (I suggest you name your folder according to a keyword you want to rank for)
2. Create a file into that folder : index.php
3. Add this text into the php file :

<#?php
header( 'Location: http://loginfo.kickbutt.hop.clickbank.net' ) ;
?>

4. Save your file.
5. Enjoy !

(IMPORTANT : in the coding I have given you, you can see a # at the beginning. For the code to work, you want to DELETE this #, and replace the address with your affiliate link.)

and that’s it ! Since the file is named index.php you can use

http://JeffreyMireault.com/keyword-tool/

instead of

http://JeffreyMireault.com/keyword-tool/index.php

Si if you have any questions or comment, don’t hesitate to let me know !

Until next time,
Keep Smiling

Jeffrey

Here’s a question I found on Yahoo Answers and I wanted to share it with you.

I know the title’s long, but I wanted to keep it intact. This is the way that this person formulated his question.. and I am glad you can see it.

We can learn a lot from this; especially about the state of mind that this person was in at that moment.

“Is affiliate marketing another smoke screen..”
Maybe this person got caught into some other hypey product promising a wealthy future full of benefits.. ? But what we know is that this person has already been “played” and they’re on their toes..

“..to sell useless guides to desperate people ?”
Do I have to say more.. ?

This man wanted an honest opinion regarding affiliate marketing, because he could see the opportunity, but was afraid he would get caught into another scam.

But the most “powerful” word he used was : Desperate !

..and we can, for our business, use the fact that this person is desperate..

BUT Hold On a Second !

We are going to make one thing clear: no matter what the situation is, if you want to jump into an opportunity like this one, you have THE OBLIGATION to actually help that “desperate” person.

You cannot just take advantage of him/her.

How are you going to help him while taking the benefits ?
- What about sending him an invitation to join your list, cause you teach this for free ?
- Why not sending him to a trusted place where he can really have something for his money and learn from successful people too; What about Wealthy Affiliate ?
- Why not simply send him to a free forum like Digital Points or WarriorForum for example ? He will thank you many times and surely follow you afterwards.
- Or even sending him to the Bum Marketing course; that’s a good way to get started !

Those are all ways you could HELP this person ! And not only would you give a hand to someone in need, but you would also grow your business by doing so !

Now you know what the nice part is…

There are THOUSANDS of people who are looking for help from honest and trustworthy people !

Simply make sure that you don’t just make money off their back; The impact that such moves have on people is much more than losing $50..
It’s more like if you were taking away an opportunity/dream/HOPE from them, and believe me, nobody deserves this.. (plus, Karma goes a long way!!) hehe

And I am sure that most of you can relate to someone in particular, who has helped/motivated you in some way.. And I bet you are still watching what this person does every once in a while right ?

Oh, and where to get started with helping people out ?

Yahoo Answers! (thanks to Justin Brooke & Chaunna)

Yup! I had heard about Yahoo answers many times.. but never really used it..up until today. This is a great tool to know more about the NEEDS of the people in your niche.

..And why did I share this with you ?

To make you notice that people are asking for your help all the time; you just don’t realize it.
Now that you know, take action !

and keep smiling,
Jeffrey