So you've decided to join an Affiliate Program ?maybe three or four Affliate Programs. You've invested money on advertising and you send people to a link that looks like this: www.http://yoursite.com/5930294/cgi-bin/57308&8/gotit/htlm. UGH! This isn't pretty! But not only that, it can present a host of problems.

First of all, what do savvy customers do? They simply cut off everything after the dot com and go directly to the parent company. Why? Sometimes because they realize that you are promoting an affiliate product and figure that they can get the affiliate commission themselves! Other times, because the link isn't live and they have to type a long, complicated address into their browser window. This takes time and effort. So what's the result? You lose your commission even though you paid to advertise the product!

Picture an even worse scenario. An unscrupulous, Internet pirate spots your affiliate link and cleverly replaces it with his own affiliate link. Now HE gets your commission! Does this seem fair? Of course not! You've spent good money to advertise and lots of time has been invested as well.

There is another area worthy of consideration. If you market Affiliate Programs, then you most likely write articles to promote them. If you don't already, you should look into this wonderfully easy, inexpensive way to advertise your Affiliate Programs. But most article directories will not allow affiliate links in your article or in the author resource box. If you have your own website, you can simply send readers to a landing page on your site and redirect them from there. But if you don't, you've hit a roadblock.

But don't worry. There is a super-easy, very inexpensive way which is now available to hide your links and redirect them.

Here's how it works in a nutshell:

You choose a domain name related to your topic. You register to have your long, unattractive, affiliate link redirect to your new, catchy domain name. You now send customers to www.yourprettysite.com instead of www.http://yoursite.com/5930294/cgi-bin/57308&8/gotit/htlm. Your affiliate link is hidden (cloaked) from your visitor, as well as from Internet pirates, yet your sales and commissions are tracked correctly. More article sites and directories will accept your article because there is no obvious affiliate link. Could it be any easier?

And honestly, think about the aesthetics! Which looks better? Which is more professional looking? Which looks like a real website and which looks like an Internet marketer wanna-be?

When you advertise with your own, shortened domain name, your customers will be confident that they are dealing with a real company, not a fly-by-night newbie! Get the respect you deserve!

There are so many benefits to this program and so ways to make it work for you. Instead of paying for separate domain names for each of your different affiliate programs, which I did in the beginning, before I discovered this service, you can set up sub-domains. So for example, if you click http://domain.yourprettysite.com, you would be redirected to my affiliate program on domain names, but if you click http://newsletter.yourprettysite.com, you would be redirected to an offer for a free newsletter on Internet marketing. See how the domain name of ?yourprettysite.com? doesn't change, but the word before it does? Pretty clever, eh? So if you're promoting more than one affiliate program, you can code them differently, all for the same inexpensive price.

Until recently, this type of service would cost you an arm and a leg. But not any more! You will be very pleasantly surprised when you see what it costs to transform you from affiliate newbie to professional in no time at all!