Every successful affiliate marketer knows the importance of having short and to the point links. As a matter of fact, statistics show that you have a 300% better chance of making a sale with a cloaked link or a redirect page than what you have with the actual affiliate link itself. There is a number of reasons for that.

First off, by recommending an affiliate product or service to someone - not using a link cloaker or redirect page - you are making a HUGE mistake. Believe it or not, You are putting your reputation on the line, which will drastically hurt your short term as well as long term success on the internet.

To demonstrate what I just stated, let's assume I get an email from Armand Morin. Armand is one of my Internet Marketing Idols. He makes approximately 40 thousand dollars a day on the internet and I know that what he says, works. If he recommends something, I will be sure to check it out.

But for the sake of this article... lets assume that he sends me an email promoting someone elses newly launched product. Everything is very convincing - except for one thing... and that is the link within the email.

I look at it and it looks something like this: Armond-Mor.longurl.dude.fakeurl dot net First off, that is an incredibly messy clickbank URL. How could a multi million are, highly reputable internet marketer send me a poor email like that?

If nothing else, he could have gone to linkshrink and gotten a neater looking url. Heck, there is even programs out there that allow you to put in your own keyword to make it look super professional. TinyUrlz for example, allows you to completely customize your url. So instead of having that long affiliate URL, you could have a nicer one thats MUCH shorter. Do what it takes to present yourself as someone who knows what he/she is doing.

Secondly, it is pretty obvious to me that he is trying to make a quick commission off of me. Not that it is ever any different, but now - instead of my trusting his recommendation 100% - I can't help but think in the back of my mind that perhaps the only reason why he recommended this particular product to me is because he is wanting my money.

If on the other hand, he had sent the exact same email to me with a shorter, cleaner and more professional looking URL, those doubts would have never crossed my mind and chances would have been pretty good that I would have purchased that product. Simply because he recommended it.

Another big problem with using the original affiliate link is that people will copy paste the URL in to their browser, replace the affiliate ID with their own, and instead of the affiliate getting the commission, the customers give the commission to themselves.

You may think this is dirty business but hey... that is reality. You can fight that problem or you can avoid it all together. And let me tell you, avoiding having that problem is avoiding headaches. Not only that - but you will also increase your commission rate by up to 300%. Well worth it if you asked me.