newbie question

hi,
why should someone cloak his affiliate links. i thought i just put my affiliate link inside my blog post, wrap it inside an anchor text and that's it. am i missing something here??

There's really no value to cloak other than to receive or take a long aff link shorter. I use pretty link and make my links mysite.com/affproduct this makes it easy to use and remember if I link to an aff link multiple times on different pages of my site. You should always put your aff links as no follow for seo reasons. But cloaking in itself is just for convenience or tricking people. I've found I get better conversions if I'm honest and let people know there are aff links in an article, some will say differ.

Sometime is to shorten the links, sometime is to hide the aff IDs.

Sometimes people cloak their affiliate links to post them on places where is not allowed to post affiliate links. Some social networks don't allow do that.

So your real links don't get blacklisted. I'd suggest investing in a bunch of domains, hosting and open in iframe. Also, this will allow you to absorb the heat so you don't create a headache for your sponsors. .. especially if your mailing. If your sponsor doesn't allow mailing-- this may also be a way to get around that lol.