Clickbank article marketing still work with direct links?

About 5 years ago I wrote articles for CB products, uploaded them to the top article sites with direct links (cloaked) in them and had pretty good results back then, but I know how things can change.

I will be trying this again regardless of what the answer is because I know one should always test out methods for themselves. I just want to get an idea of how much things have changed and if there's anything specifically/big I should look out for?