There is different opinions on subject. Some people believes that affiliate links has to be visible, to be honest that this link is actually makes some financial income to site owner. Some even states (aff.) after an affiliate link (aff. means affiliate link). Others are sure that showing affiliate links equal to loosing money. Yes, marketing work should be rewarded, but is it right to hide affiliate links? Here’s few points I have to share:
Advantages of hiding affiliate links:
- Bypassing th link. I have been writing about this in my "The value of affiliate links " article. The idea is that some of us, specially those involved in internet marketing would remove affiliate ID from the link and go directly to merchant’s website. So only merchant makes money, and this is really bad thing.
- Links Hijacking. There is opinion that some savvy guys may hijack your link. Then they would change your ID to their to get affiliate commissions.
- Dedication or branding. You don’t show any merchant info until visitor really clicks a link. This way your content looks more professional and not involved in simple making money.
- Visual look. Hidden link is much shorter (ex. http://site.com/url2go) then affiliate
link (ex. http://www.somemerchant.com/product45/?affiliateID=john_doe). So it’s look is much less complicated, which means less scary for some of your visitors.
Disadvantages of hiding affiliate links:
- Some, or even most of hiding links techniques may be considered as “cloaking”.
- From some point of view, you’re not telling the true to your visitor. Your site visitor clicks a link, expecting to see another page of your site (by look of the link), and actually gets to another site. Or link says http://someniceurl.com/asdsdad/ and actually gets at some adult.com?your-refferal-id. Some believe that this is very unethical way of advertising and even fooling own visitors.
My personal opinion. There is those who bypasses affiliate links making you to loose money. There is nothing wrong with hiding actual link, as long as visitor acknowledged that this link is bringing him to affiliate website. So I rather see more advantages in hiding links. This at least some how protects affiliates and their marketing work. Not all merchants are truthful in front of their affiliates in amount of sales/leads affiliates generate. And Affiliates hardly may do anything about this. But this is another subject to discuss.
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