DISQUS

Gabe Ortiz · 4 months ago

Should you really be cloaking your affiliate links in the first place? Isn't that pretty dishonest?

Daniel M. Clark · 4 months ago

That's a good question, Gabe, and one that I've considered from many different angles. I've read arguments for and against it, and the arguments against are almost always given from a moral perspective - that it's dishonest to cloak. Done a certain way, I'm inclined to agree.

When it comes to cloaking, the central issues seem to be: 1.) that visitors can't see their "true" destination and 2.) that it's not obvious that cloaked links are affiliate links, and there's a disclosure issue.

At the top of the site, in the main navigation, I've got a page called Linking Practices that basically says that I'm an affiliate and some links on the site may be affiliate links. I also periodically mention that some links may be affiliate links in an individual post or section, as in the Thesis promo box above. So, to me, that covers disclosure - well enough for my definition of fair disclosure, anyway. Others may say I haven't gone far enough, or that I don't need to disclose as much as I do. Opinions abound :)

That leaves the issue of the "true" destination. But what is the real, true destination? If I have a visible link to http://www.dpbolvw.net/4o101qgpmgo3799B7BA35498... - does that tell my visitor anything? It's a standard CJ link, but it doesn't tell the visitor that their final, true destination is a page at Better World Books. The very nature of affiliate linking is "cloaked", in a way. Whether I do it myself or I show the visitor the CJ link, they're not going to know the ultimate destination.

So, I think the inherent nature of affiliate links coupled with my disclosure makes my .htaccess redirects fair. Not everyone will agree with me, but I hope that I've expressed myself well enough that folks understand I'm not being underhanded about my linking practices. I cloak because it's far easier to manage links that way, not because I want to be dishonest with my visitors :)

Gabe Ortiz · 4 months ago

I think the biggest issue here is that blind linking is a bad user experience, regardless of intent. Why not use a title attribute in your anchor tags to inform your visitors where they're going when they click on a link?

Daniel M. Clark · 4 months ago

I think that's a fantastic idea. The only problem, and one that is probably easily overcome once I actually hammer it out, is that the title/alt attributes would have to be assigned dynamically, depending on what merchant I'm going to at any given time. Like I said, I cloak because it's easier to manage links - if a merchant goes offline or discontinues an item, I can just update the .htaccess file with a new destination, and I'm good to go. If I can come up with a way to update the title or alt attributes whenever I update that file... that would solve the problem very neatly. Maybe I can write a Wordpress plugin to handle it...

That said - and I'll definitely work on that this week because it's a great idea - would that solve the blind linking/UE aspect of cloaking in your mind? With that in place, would cloaking - in general, as it would then be implemented - be acceptable?

Gabe Ortiz · 4 months ago

A WP plugin could do the rewrites for title attributes pretty easily. I think it would be acceptable so long as you can manage linkrot and your .htaccess solution seems to do that pretty well.

Daniel M. Clark · 4 months ago

Thanks, Gabe! I'll post after I whip up a plugin, maybe I'll make it public if other people might have a use for it.

Gabe Ortiz · 4 months ago

Cool, look forward to seeing it in action.