I hope that you’ll get a kick out of this. I do now (but I didn’t on Friday 8=)
The Setup
Last Friday I decided that I wanted to promote a new product as an affiliate (you can probably guess which one if you try hard enough). I went and built a cloaked link using Pretty Link [I’ll be writing more about Pretty Link down the road].
It is pretty easy and I had a link running in no time.
First thing to do — Tweet it! Then set up a couple blog posts and an email to the list. By the time I get back to check the stats PL is telling me I’ve had 25 hits! Fantastic!
The Screwup
But then, I notice the link I’ve created. I’ve made a dumb, newbie mistake. The uncloaked version has this big, huge “CLICKBANKID” in the middle. The humanity!
I can’t believe I forgot to put my id in the url before sending it out. D’oh! There’s 25 hits I’ll never get credit for.
The Fixup
But the nice thing is that with Pretty Link I can correct the link so that any future hits will end up with the correct url. Not that I expect too many from Twitter posts that are more than an hour old.
And I didn’t have to go back to my posts or emails to change the link.
Cloaking Links is Important
My little mistake could have been more costly. But because I’m cloaking my links for affiliate programs I am able to fix the backend of a link without affecting the places where I’ve submitted it already.
I don’t have to mess with articles submitted to an article directory. I don’t need to re-email the “fixed link” (although it wouldn’t hurt if the original was out there for a long time).
Anywhere that the cloaked url is in use will automatically redirect to the proper place from now on.
And it can be great if you want to change the place where a link ends up down the road. Use them in articles in case you want to have a different landing page without having to change them (an affiliate program closes or you create a new landing page that you want to test).
Are You Cloaking Links?
Tell me, are you cloaking your links? It doesn’t need to be hard. You can get some decent software to do it for you and install it on a domain that people associate with you (I use lonewolfmuskoka.ca). If you’ve got WordPress installed there, it is as simple as getting a plugin to do the job.
I’m very pleased with Pretty Link (you’ll notice the link is actually cloaked using Pretty Link). There is a basic version which I recommend that you try first. Then, once you’ve seen what it can do you can choose to upgrade to Pretty Link Pro.
So, before you jump down to the comment section to tell me your linking horror story, make sure you check out Pretty Link or some other link cloaking software. You’ll be glad you did.
Oh yeah, don’t forget to share your story below!