Cloaking: Do You Cloak Your Links?
© kikir4802
In case you're unfamiliar with it, Daniel Scocco has a good discussion available on the practice of link cloaking.
First things first, what is link cloaking? It is the practice of using redirects or Javascript to hide affiliate links, thus increasing the conversion rates.
Blogging often makes at least some money by developing affiliate relationships with business partners. You read my blog, you see a link to my affiliate, you click on it and go to their site, they pay me for the click thru to their site.
Link cloaking lets me hide the commercial nature of that relationship. You mouse over a link and you can't really see where the link will take you, so you're more likely to click.
The ethics are cloudy. You can think of it as a blink taste test. If I can just get you to my affiliate's site, you might like it there. But you won't go as long as you know that that's where you're going. So I cloak the link. You can also think about it as simple deception. I'm trying to trick you into going there, mostly so I can make money.
Scocco's got a good discussion of the issue.
Affiliates | admin | 16 March 2010 |
