Art Of Money

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Highly observant Art of Money readers will have realized that I will sometimes use a domain name as an affiliate redirect link.

A couple of examples:

http://www.blogmasterminds.com/ is my domain which cloaks Yaro’s http://www.blogmastermind.com/

http://www.buildingprofitablewebsites.com/ is my domain which redirects to The University 20/20 Course that I’m taking.

I started using this technique as a result of being “tricked.” I was surfing on a forum and followed someone’s signature link because it was a straight link (and therefore less suspicious) like the ones above. I ended up purchasing from the website being linked to because I liked the product.

Later, after my purchase I wondered about the forum signature link and went back to investigate further.

I realized that the forum poster had actually registered a domain name and redirected it to the merchant’s site. Brilliant.

Removed prejudice!

Do you feel tricked by these types of links?

So did I, and that was a good thing. I have, just like most other people, a huge radar system to prevent me from getting ripped off, and whenever I see an obvious affiliate link, I think…”oh ya, that person is trying to make a buck off of me.”

I’m preconditioned. It is a form of prejudice against being sold something, and it is a big barrier in most people.

I love it that the person was able to remove the prejudice by using a domain for his affiliate link. I may not have discovered (or even clicked through to) a cool new product.

It is difficult to test definitively but from looking at my exit clicks, my estimate is that these domain links get 4 or 5 times as many clicks as affiliate links that have an obvious tracking code in them.

What are your thoughts on affiliate link cloaking using domains? I know some people get pretty excited about this topic.

In my next post, I’ll give you my, infinitely Stumble-able :), 7 Reasons to Use Domains for Affiliate Links.

Note: there is some concern about disclosure of affiliate promotion being legislated by a recent ruling in the U.S. I have pretty much ignored this, because I agree with Brian that the little (aff) is just plain ugly (and also I am Canadian). If I did have to disclose affiliate links I think I would just handle it by telling everyone to just assume that I’m being paid in some way for every link on this site…take it or leave it, en masse.