Christopher Stigson

Link Cloaking And Link Tracking - Are They The Same?

The link cloaking and link tracking myths dispelled... how to use them right and make more money because of it!

Link cloaking and link tracking are often confused with each other. Though both are useful tools to maximize your profits from affiliate marketing, yet they are two entirely different things.

Link Tracking

Link tracking, as the name suggests, is mainly about tracking the activity of the user who clicks on the link. That is the reason why it is sometimes also referred to as ad tracking. The link tracking script or software program allows you to track whether the user clicking on the link is making the purchase or not. The advanced programs will also let you know complete detail about that user, such as the IP address, the geographical location, and other such things. This type of information will assist you in improving your strategies to increase your profits.

Link Cloaking

Affiliate link cloaking also helps to maximize your earning, but in a different way. It is in fact more about protecting your earning than increasing the same. As the term suggests, it is a process to cloak the link so that the users do not realize that they are actually clicking on an affiliate link. If the link is not cloaked, a user can easily recognize that it is an affiliate link. When they click on the link, they can see in the address bar that they have been redirected to a different website. What is more, if the user has a little of technical know-how, he/she can also go to the source code and see your affiliate links.

Nobody can ever resist the temptation to earn easy money online, especially when the opportunity is right there. For example, if you are a Clickbank affiliate and the user is also an affiliate from the same network, he/she will simply replace your affiliate ID with his/her own ID. When they make the purchase this way, the commission goes into their account rather than yours. This is more technically and commonly referred to as link hijacking.

You can protect your income by choosing to clock your affiliate links. When a link is cloaked thoroughly, it can never be hijacked. However, it entirely depends upon which type of link cloaking technique you are using. If you are trying to save some bucks by using the free scripts, you are probably still at risk. If you are serious about your affiliate marketing venture, you should always use a paid link cloaking software program from a reputed company.

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