I was in our forum today and this thread title stuck out: “Are You Cloaked?” Obviously, if you’re a Star Trek fan like I am, the first thing that comes to your mind is the Klingons and their cloaking devices they use on their ships to hide themselves from the Starship Federation and any other enemies. People also use a variety of “cloaking devices” to hide their affiliate links or mask them so they can use them on Facebook. A lot of people new to Internet marketing head right to URL shortener sites like bit.ly or tinyurl.com, to shorten affiliate links. Bit.ly is one of the more popular sites because they do provide pretty good tracking information. While it’s a good idea to cloak your links if they’ve gotten banned on Facebook and other social media sites as possible spam, you might actually be ruining your reputation as being a shady marketer if you do it wrong. Visit Working at Home with KSMusselman http://ksmusselman.com

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Are You Using Cloaking Devices for
Your Links?
I was in our forum today and this thread title stuck out: “Are You Cloaked?”
Obviously, if you’re a Star Trek fan like I am, the first thing that comes to your mind is the
Klingons and their cloaking devices they use on their ships to hide themselves from the
Starship Federation and any other enemies.
People also use a variety of “cloaking devices” to hide their affiliate links or mask them so
they can use them on Facebook.
A lot of people new to Internet marketing head right to URL shortener sites like bit.ly or

2. 3/16/2015 Are You Using Cloaking Devices for Your Links? ­ Working At Home With KSMussselman
data:text/html;charset=utf­8,%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22page­header­image­single%20grid­container%20grid­parent%22%20style%3D%22border%3A%200px… 2/3
tinyurl.com, to shorten affiliate links. Bit.ly is one of the more popular sites because they do
provide pretty good tracking information.
While it’s a good idea to cloak your links if they’ve gotten banned on Facebook and other
social media sites as possible spam, you might actually be ruining your reputation as being a
shady marketer if you do it wrong.
The Three Best Ways To Use Your Blog as a “Cloaking Device” for
Your Affiliate Links:
Whenever you want to cloak your affiliate links, it’s my opinion that you should always,
always do so in a way that maintains your own branding, and it doesn’t “look” like you’re
trying to hide anything.
I do this in one of three ways – two using my blog, and one using a subdomain with my
primary business blog’s domain:
1. I think the absolute best way is to actually write a blog post about the product you want
to promote. Then you don’t have to cloak anything. You simply share your blog post.
This accomplishes a couple of things.

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a. You continue to build your authority in your niche;
b. You maintain your brand and share content, so you build traffic to your blog and
share your link at the same time.
2. Use a free WordPress plugin called “Pretty Link.” If you use WordPress as your
blogging platform, you don’t need to spend any more money on buying a bunch of
domain names.
You simply install Pretty Link and you can “cloak” your links while at the same time
maintain Your Brand.
3. If you want to use subdomains, use your primary branded blog domain to build
subdomains for your product links. GoDaddy is the best place to register your domain
and use subdomains.
If you use any of these three methods, or a combination, you save money and time. You
don’t have to keep thinking up new domain names to register, and you’re not spending
money on a lot of different domain names.
I find any of these methods works best, although I primarily use methods #1 and #2 most of
the time. I rarely create subdomains because I prefer working right within my WordPress
dashboard; it’s easier and faster.