Is Domain Based Forwarding a Good Way to Cloak Affiliate Links?
Out of the many possible options out there as far as cloaking affiliate links is concerned, one of the 'seemingly' most popular would definitely have to be domain based forwarding. If you're scratching your head right now and wondering what on earth that is, or even if you're just unsure of exactly what it entails - don't worry. Soon enough, you're going to know everything that you need to know about it, and then some.
Essentially, domain based forwarding is really pretty self explanatory. It consists of a domain name (such as www.website.com) that automatically forwards anyone and everyone to another URL. So, for example, the domain www.website.com could forward to www.merchant.com/?hop=43240. As you can see, because the domain name is being used to forward the link, you could simply link to www.website.com and people will never see the actual affiliate link until after they do click on your link.
By cloaking your links in this fashion, you're going to be gaining a lot of traffic simply because you're using an actual root domain name and not linking to a subdirectory or anything like that. At the same time, domain based forwarding does have several disadvantages that makes it a less than attractive option, so don't start popping open the champagne just yet!
One of the main disadvantages is the fact that although the link itself is cloaked, once it is clicked on it is going to simply forward visitors to the actual affiliate link - and that would not be cloaked. Sure, there are ways around this but they require some clever coding in order to continue to 'hide' the affiliate URL.
Furthermore, the fact of the matter is that domain names cost money. If you're going to be buying a .com domain name each and every time that you wish to cloak an affiliate link, you're going to be paying $10 per affiliate link. So if you're promoting 20 affiliate links, that's already going to come up to $200. As you should see, this cost can add up pretty quickly!
To avoid this, you could use free URLs or even cheaper URLs, but the effect is not going to be as great if you do so.
If we're to be entirely honest with you, it is worth noting that there are several services that can achieve a better and more effective level of link cloaking without actually needing you to continuously purchase new domain names. In the long run, these services are going to work out a whole lot cheaper too, which is why as advantageous as domain name forwarding might be - it really is not a good way to cloak affiliate links at all!
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