One Huge Reason to Obfuscate Affiliate Links

Some people, perhaps many, take exception to other people's affiliate links.

Loss of potential sales is a huge reason to obfuscate affiliate links.

See the news in the next paragraph. You may be using affiliate links sooner than you think. Or more than you currently do.

With the ad-block enabling that's incorporated into iOS 9 (iPhone, iPad), currently in beta, income from ad delivery services — including AdSense — may plummet. The iOS 9 update suddenly makes ad blockers accessible to all Apple devices with their Safari browser.

Site owners will need to deliver ads from their own sites, which are less likely to be blocked, or suffer along with less income. They're likely to be affiliate ads.

But some people won't click on affiliate links. Or, if they are curious enough to click on an affiliate link, they arrive at the destination predisposed to be critical of the product or service being sold. All because there is a financial incentive for the provider of the link.

My impression from various related articles and email exchanges over the years is that some people won't buy from affiliate links at all. Even if they want the product.

Imagine someone carefully removing the affiliate code from links, then pasting the converted URL into their browser.

Probably the person is well aware their price will be the same as if they had arrived from the affiliate link.

So why do it? I'm guessing it's to remove a feeling of unease related to being influenced or taken advantage of. I doubt many would drive themselves to jump through those hoops simply and only to prevent remuneration for whoever provided them with the link in the first place.

Successfully obfuscating affiliate links can prevent feelings of unease and predisposition to dislike the product or service that would otherwise occur.

An Obfuscated Affiliate Link Example

Instead of this URL:

http://merchant-domain.com/product.php?123abc

The person sees this URL:

http://your-domain/time-saving-tool.html

There's nothing in the URL the person sees to suggest it's an affiliate URL. (Unless you use http://your-domain/ad.html or http://your-domain/affiliatelink.html or other URL that suggests it might be a redirect link to an affiliate URL.)

The functionality is enabled with one line in the .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 ^/time-saving-tool.html$ http://merchant-domain.com/product.php?123abc

Publish the Redirect… line in your .htaccess file and you're good to go.

Now, wherever you publish a link with the URL http://your-domain/time-saving-tool.html (on a web page, in an email, in a PDF), the browser will be redirected to http://merchant-domain.com/product.php?123abc

Replace your-domain.com with your own domain, of course, and specify the correct affiliate link in the .htaccess file.

The "/time-saving-tool.html" part of http://your-domain.com/time-saving-tool.html can be any valid web page directory path and file name, so long as it's repeated in the Redirect… line exactly, between the "^" and "$" characters.

You'll need one Redirect… line for each affiliate code. And that's it.

Publish your obfuscated links anywhere.

If you're a merchant who offers an affiliate program, talk to us about providing your affiliates with obfuscated affiliate links. So your affiliates don't have to go to the bother. Because few will do it.

With obfuscated affiliate links, you're likely to get more ad views and more click-throughs and, perhaps most important, the people are less likely to arrive with a predisposition for disliking your product or service.

(This article first appeared in Possibilities ezine.)

Will Bontrager