Do you hide your affiliate links?
 

I know I should do it... but I never do.

How important do you think it is? Are surfers looking at the links and removing the affiliate ID or they don't care at all? I'm curious if any of you did a split test and what were the results :)

http://goo.gl ?

I keep all mine in a lockable wooden box, hidden behind the sofa...

Surfers aren't your problem, affiliate program owners are. They can start buying traffic where you do if they see you are profitable.

Im confused. Whether we're talking about members area, paid advertisement spots, tgps, anything. They see who youre advertising so youre not hiding where youre making your money from. And two, taking out a code doesn't change anything because an affiliate ID doesn't identify you.

I am so far from understanding peoples thinking when it comes to this, what are you actually hiding? LOL

I don't do it either. I doubt many surfers would take the time to remove it or even notice it.
One way not to worry about it would be to use whitelabels. Most (if not all) affiliate programs will credit a sale to your account if they see it's coming from your WL. (so no reseller info would be visible in the links)

Never thought of that. But I generally send traffic only from my sites, so.. :)

Well I always remove affi id's when I do it. :)

The referral URL.

If you mean cloaking links with a redirection script then yes.
It's nothing to do with surfers taking out the affiliate part (although some may do this), it's all to do with having an easier way to change thousands of links if a sponsor suddenly goes out of business.

not hiding per se, but I use a script so all a surfer sees when mousing over is a complicated URL. I also hide my referrers with double refresh

you should use php redirects so when the sponsor decides not to pay you can quickly change the links to another program

always do a nofollow internal redirect, why leak rank away from your site :2 cents::2 cents:

and as others stated, it gives you control in the future if you need to make changes

time = $$

no i don`t

Ok im still confused. The referral url is usually attached to an image no? Wouldn't the image show exactly what youre advertising.

Can you show me an example, I actually want to understand.

Why im confused is I signed up to a paysite, saw they were advertising other programs in there and hiding where it went as if the banner or models image didn't show exactly where it was going. lol

Ive seen it pointless so many places that I need to be shown an example of where it might make sense.

i don't do that...

Lol!!! and OP, whats's the need of hiding it? I never do it. :)

I understand now, seems a bit overkill unless that's what youre business is based on and you have some seriously profitable spots.

not really hiding, just shortening, to make it easier, like say for teensforcash i have domain.com/go/tfc

You should hide your links, a lot of people dont like the fact that some people get a commission if they buy something.

GoCodes is a wordpress-plugin that can help you with hidding the links btw. Haven't tested it yet but it should be good.

how do you do it?

I do it thru .htaccess

That's a bitch to set up.

What if you have multiple domains? Isn't there some kind of script that would take care of this for you?

what he said :thumbsup . couple programs have done that to me, there is no way i can prove it though.
they suddenly started to buy traffic from the same broker as me, on the same properties.

I don't know but it's possible.

:1orglaugh

I do sometimes, not always though :)

There is also the issue of knowing your traffic sources and types in order to be able to better setup a shave profile. IOW, if they see 90% of your traffic is from tubes or skimmed traffic they might think they can get away with setting a higher shave because traditionally these are perceived as converting poorly.

As a variation I've seen at least one accusation here of a sponsor reducing conversions so that the affiliate would drop the campaign so that they could pick it up. A very dirty trick.

How about a redirect... yourdomain.com/go/sponsor ?

PrettyLink is nice for wordpress

i use a plugin for wordpress. its called wp link engine, it can let me target visitors based on geo, etc.

http://i.imgur.com/n8fOB.png

http://i.imgur.com/nJuSC.png

http://i.imgur.com/zffat.png

http://i.imgur.com/9oxek.png

http://i.imgur.com/mfJwP.png

Hmm... what problems do you expect to solve by hiding referral codes that exposing them does not?

The only thing I can think of is, people remove it and then BAM, you don't get paid. That's enough reason for me to do it. Although, that doesn't mean referral codes can't be removed completely. It's just really for obscurity.

But wait, would there be other benefits aside from solving a problem that exposed referral codes bring? Maybe. Could it increase your relevance? I don't know, would using Yourls help your domain's presence?

If you put all hrefs into your own Yourls server that has your domain name on it, then every link you put on your site begins with http://mydomain.bla/xYzAbd. I've been thinking about this myself, but haven't yet made a decision whether the net results will be benefits or detriments.

egon

Once upon a time, I might have said, "go ahead and mask your affiliate code," but these days, that could get you into a lot of hot water.

If you are an affiliate and don't know about Legacy Learning Systems, then you need to talk to your attorney, because the affiliate market is in the midst of MAJOR changes...

See Larry Walters post http://xbiz.com/blogs/131914 and get ready to hear much more.

I don't hide them on my porn sites, but on my mainstream sites I do. I never thought about hiding my links till I got burned. One of my first lessons in mainstream biz.

Works also, yes.

program owners are assholes

Zorgman has a free one called TALS.

What happened?

I was pushing StubHub affiliate program, back when they had one. I guess a competitor or some asshole took my links with my affiliate ID and posted them on Craig's List ticket section, which was a direct violation of terms, StubHub emailed me telling me I was cut from the program and all money that I had earned ($1800) was gone. I pleaded with them that I was not the one posting the ads, but they didn't care. I heard others got the same treatment on forums. :(

I don't know if it's possible, but it sounds like the dudes from StubHub might post those ads on Craigslist themselves, lol.

i always use stubhub for ticks ;)

If you don't mind, what's the logic behind that?