What do you think of masking affiliate links?

**Francis Simisim** · 03-23-2009 05:46 AM

Hi there, I'm wondering what do you guys think of masking affiliate links? Do you find it more effective or does your users get offended by it?

like instead of website.com/refer?=1234 the link becomes yourwebsite.com/go/website.com ?

**crackah** · 03-23-2009 07:38 AM

Its stupid, because you can still see through it.

**Francis Simisim** · 03-23-2009 12:45 PM

@crackah but do you think it's more effective than the regular affiliate link?

**itzpaul** · 03-23-2009 07:45 PM

I think it depends on your niche. I personally would use redirect pages so I can hide my referrer detail from the advertiser.

**benmaxime** · 03-23-2009 08:00 PM

Would be a bit strange. Try it though!

**Francis Simisim** · 03-23-2009 08:36 PM

@itzpaul yup I'm actually experimenting right now and wanted to know if people want transparency or just nice looking links. How's the redirect pages working for you?

**Francis Simisim** · 03-23-2009 08:37 PM

@ben I've been trying it out on my other blog, but since it just started, I couldn't really do much research on this topic

**buynick** · 04-11-2009 07:21 PM

I use it and think it's valuable for several reasons:
1) It makes the URL more clean
2) Other affiliates can't steal your commission
3) I think it makes your customers trust the company more if you go through the trouble to setup a file on your server for the company, you trust them

Here's an example:
eBay

**ishan** · 04-13-2009 10:52 AM

I use them because they provide reliable tracking(some programs do not track clicks). Also, they are better than a huge mess of ?-adgsd=-sdfasdf and random looking characters!

**Wayne Liew** · 04-21-2009 10:45 PM

I do mask my affiliate links and the CTR is higher.

Another big reason that I use a redirect is because merchants and affiliate networks change their links and switch offers all the time. If I place the original link all around the web, I will have a huge trouble trying to dig all these links up and modify them. If I have a redirect in place, all I need to do is to change the link that the redirect points to.