What Is Cloaking? Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is simply a method by which an online merchant offers services or products to users and gets a certain percentage of the total sale as commission. This method of earning money online is popular among other internet businesses. One of the most lucrative ways to make easily online is by means of affiliate marketing. All you have to do is to refer other people's products and you get a cut for each sale generated via your link from the referred customer. The higher the traffic to a particular site that receives this link, the higher the commission.

But there are downsides in affiliate marketing - you have to pay for these commissions, you have to pay for the advertising expenses, and in some cases, the product owner might not be entirely honest with the commission details. This is why it is very important to know how to cloak your affiliate links in order to protect yourself and your business. In addition, some affiliates go as far as using false information about commissions in order to deceive unsuspecting users. So when you are out searching for cloaking techniques, you should understand that what is cloak marketing all about.

One major problem of affiliate marketing is commission theft. This refers to the unauthorized transfer of commissions by a merchant to another party. Sometimes this happens as the result of failed sales pitches or other forms of payment disputes. Other times, affiliate marketing participants take the payments for the products anyway and never deliver the goods that were promised to the customers.

Thus, affiliate marketing is not just stealing commissions; it can also result in some serious dangers such as click fraud or malware. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted this danger of affiliate marketing. Click fraud occurs when a merchant uses affiliate links on his website and when clicking on these links, the user enters the merchant's website without clicking on any of his own affiliate links. This action results in an unauthorized transfer of affiliate commissions.

There are two methods that can be used to combat this form of malware. One method is to build in special web pages that cloak the affiliate links. The web page has a JavaScript code that is enabled only if the page is displayed using Google Chrome. Thus whenever a user clicks on an affiliate link, he is taken to the merchant's website but when he finishes up leaving the page, the JavaScript code will automatically cloak the affiliate links and he won't see them.

The second method of affiliate marketing cloaking is through the use of specialized web browsers. Several web browsers have been developed in recent years. Many of these browsers are designed to work like miniature computers. These web browsers can detect and cloak affiliate links. Thus whenever a user clicks on an affiliate link, the browser will take him to the merchant's site instead of his site.

These web browsers work similar to the JavaScript engines in the websites. Webmasters can also upload their own code that cloaks links. With the help of such codes, they can tell web browsers which affiliate links are to be displayed and which ones are not. The downside of this type of cloaking is that it can also result in browser crashes.

It is always better to take some time out to get familiar with the tools available online for researching and testing different methods of cloaking. This will enable the affiliate marketer to get rid of unwanted affiliate links. Only by practicing will one become adept at utilizing the tools of cloaking. A good place to start the search is the Internet. Spend some time on search engines and you will get acquainted with what is cloaking.