It's not something I personally do.. but I see more and more of gaming affiliate sites hiding their links.. I have read about link hijacking and other stuff as to why links should be hidden... but as a novice site builder working only in html .. have found that adding this feature means a lot of hard work on my part... I also feel that most net users these days are fully aware of how affiliate sites / banners work .. so trying to hide this fact seems a little futile to me. How do you guys feel about this issue and am I being too naieve about the need to hide links?
It can actually be a lot less work. If you have all your links in one php file, it's easy to change them on a site wide basis. Personally I think it looks a lot tidier than having loads of ugly affiliate links. This jump script is nice and easy to implement and will save you loads of hassle.
In my experience your average user hasn't got a clue about affiliate links, and if anything, seeing them could put them off clicking. For instance, mysite.co.uk/go.php?m=LadbrokesBingo.com looks a lot better than tradedoubler.com/gdg/fkfgwk/?mw!&aid=123456&sid=123456&tid=123456 etc (if you get my drift) to the untrained eyes. Also, if you use that Jump Script, don't forget you can also change the file name to mysite.co.uk/claim-bonus.php?m=LadbrokesBingo.com or mysite.co.uk/cart.php?m=LadbrokesBingo.com or whatever you fancy.
I "hide" my links, but it's not done for the sake of hiding them. When someone clicks on one of my links, it records data about the click and then redirects to the affiliate link. This gives much better stats, as you can see what products are getting clicks, even if they aren't being bought. You can then look at why they aren't selling for example.
It also makes things easier to manage, if I want to change merchant I can just change the link in my database, without having to dig into the code for the page. It can also be done through a web browser where ever I am, rather than having to download the page, make the change and then upload again.
Yes, I usually do mask the file, purely because I don't want false "clicks" registered by the search engine bots. Because they can hit the file so many times, it can skew the figures by a fair bit.
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