LinkCloak Review: How to Cloak Affiliate Links for Free

STOP! THIEF! Someone just stole my affiliate check!

I use LinkCloak, an online link cloaking service to mask (protect) my affiliate links. It's a professional quality encryption method that works flawlessly.

Read on to find out why you might want to start protecting your affiliate links.

Video: LinkCloak: How to Cloak Affiliate Links for Free
(Length – 9:14)

LinkCloak Website

Where are my affiliate marketing checks?

Internet marketers are complaining that their affiliate program commission checks are being stolen. Is the fear of affiliate link hijacking unnecessary paranoia or is it a genuine problem?

Affiliate marketers the world over hide or mask their affiliate link urls. Many use expensive link cloaking software programs to do the job. They believe they are safeguarding their commission checks. But do their checks need to be safeguarded?

Think about this…

Every transaction on the Internet needs to be safeguarded. It's common knowledge that online thieves use every means possible, including sophisticated software programs or fraud, to break into people's personal accounts and steal their money.

Why wouldn't unsophisticated thieves simply bypass or switch your unprotected affiliate id with theirs? If they can, they will.

How long would a twenty dollar bill, lying on the dashboard of a car in a major city with the window down last? Two minutes? Maybe.

An uncloaked affiliate link is the equivalent of a wallet lying unprotected on an automobile dashboard. It WILL get stolen.

So, what should you do about it?

The solution to the affiliate thief problem

The solution is to cloak or mask your affiliate links. Cloaking a link is changing it's appearance from an ugly, plain affiliate link to a hansome, cloaked affiliate link.

Here's an example:

• My Affiliate Link for Advanced System Care:

  https://secure.avangate.com/affiliate.php?ACCOUNT=LOBIT&AFFILIATE=4282&PATH=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iobit.com

• The Same Affilliate Link Using LinkCloak to Mask It:
  http://computertipsandtools.com/recommends/advanced-system-care.html

There are several url cloaking or shortening methods available.

• Hand coding. Some people hide their affiliate links with hand coding. That method is too complicated for the average person.
• Link Cloaking Software. You can buy affiliate link cloaking software programs or you can pick one up for free. Most of them don't do a very good job of hiding the url.
• Online Link Cloaking or URL Shortening Services. TinyURL is a free online link shortening service. LinkCloak is a free online link cloaking service.

Tiny URL

Another popular method of cloaking links is called TinyURL. I don't like it because it gives the link a funny looking name. I don't think Internet marketers who use TinyURL to mask their affiliate links are fooling anybody.

The cloaking method you choose must work!

If you are going to go to the effort of cloaking a link the link should look good and be bullet proof. By look good, I mean branded with your domain name, by bullet proof, I mean secure.

Here is a quote from Dustin Davis, the creator of LinkCloak:

Dustin Davis: LinkCloak Creator

"You may have seen similar products on the market. Some of them take all of FIVE SECONDS to change the affiliate link and hijack your commission! That is why I built in double-layered encryptions underneath the affiliate link cloak for extra protection.

While there may be a very small handful of programmers out there that could manage to find your html source code and decrypt both layers, the effort and time involved simply would not be worth it – making it virtually impossible to modify your affiliate link!"

Why I like LinkCloak

1. It's free.
2. It's online. No need to download a software program. Because LinkCloak is online you can cloak your links from other people's computers if necessary.
3. It's cross-platform. Because it's a web based application Macs and PCs can access it.
4. It's easy to use. Watch how easy it is to use by watching my video about it.
5. Professional protection. Double-encryption is applied to each affiliate link that is cloaked using the LinkCloak service. Fort Knox should be so secure.
6. It's personalized. Your affiliate links are branded with your domain name, not TinyURLs name or some other link shortening service's name, YOUR NAME.
7. Great value. LinkCloak provides high performance for free. What a deal!

Requirements to use LinkCloak

1. Provide an email address to use the online software. This is no big deal because Dustin doesn't bombard you with email marketing messages.
2. Webhosting. A small html document is created using his software that needs to be uploaded to the Internet. Not to worry, webhosting is cheap. You can get inexpensive hosting from Lunarpages for around $6 per month.
3. An FTP program to upload html documents. Not a problem. FileZilla is a free ftp program and I have a training video showing how to use it.

Read my FileZilla Review

My recommedation

Use LinkCloak to cloak your affiliate links. It's like locking up your affiliate links in a vault.

AS SEEN ON COMPUTER TIPS AND TOOLS VIDEO!

Here are the links that I demonstrated in my video for LinkCloak.

The first link is the image at left. I have the cloaked link applied to it. If you click on the image it will take you to the VideoWebWizard website.

You might use the following example of the cloaked link in an email message.

http://computertipsandtools.com/recommends/video-web-wizard.html

This last link is fairly typical. It's the "Click Here" for more info variety.

For more information about VideoWebWizard click here.

Best of luck with your affiliate link cloaking campaigns.

Mark Hanson

LinkCloak Website

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