This may come as a surprise to you... but if you promote any affiliate program on ClickBank (and other affilate networks), more than likely you are losing money and being ripped off.

I recently ran a split test mailing. On half of my list I used a program to "cloak" the affiliate site I was promoting, and on the other half of the list I did not. I used my actual affilate link.

To my dismay... the results were as I expected.

On the affiliate links I did not cloak, I made a total of 8 sales. The number of subscribers is not really that important, as we are not calculating the percentage of people who purchased, or the conversion rate. We are calculating the "Rip Off" rate.

Are you ready for the number of sales I made using the "cloaked" affiliate link? It was almost three times as many as the none cloaked link... 23. You read it right... I made 15 more sales on my cloaked link than I did on my regular affiliate link!

Keep in mind, the list was divided up in half... so the same number of people received the exact same offer. The only difference was on half the list, I gave my actual affiliate link... and on the other half, I gave a link that I cloaked.

For those who do not know what I mean by "cloaked" link, here is an example; http://newtraffictools.com/latest/power

Notice how the sales page of the site stays on my site, newtraffictools.com (the link is also the same product I use to cloak the sites I promote). It does not disclose the actual sales page... it is hidden. While this method may not be 100% fool proof, the numbers above speak volumes on how effective it is.

Effective to the point of an extra $900.00... that I more than likely would not have made had I not cloaked the links.

So what does this tell us?

Does it tell us people are crooks... dishonest, no count and not to be trusted? Well, not actually. It tells us that if given the opportunity, they had rather use their own affiliate link (or spouses) to buy products at a deep discount and to save money. I can't blame them... can you?

Since this is a business (unless you do this as a hobby), then we must take the required steps to keep from being cheated.

There are a few different programs out there that allow you to cloak your affiliate links. Using the program I linked to above... you can cloak both affiliate links on your web site, and in your emails to your subscribers.

It does not matter which affilate link cloaking program you use... just begin using one today, and watch your conversions and sales go up with the same amount of effort.