Today I had to go because I was mailing a Christmas package to my brother who lives in Beijing. I checked online, and the priority-air flat-rate service for a small box to China was $12.95. Awesome deal.

So I drove to the post office. I arrived and began searching for a small box. They only had one small priority box. I grabbed it. I packed, taped, and addressed the box and filled out the customs paperwork. Then I got in line. After 15 minutes I got to the counter.

“Hi! I need to send this box flat-rate to Beijing.”
“Okay.”
He punched a bunch of keys, scanned some codes, weighed the package, and announced, “That’ll be $28.95.”
“$28.95? I checked online, and it said it would be $12.95. Why is this so much higher?”
“I don’t know. But this is the price.”
“I’m sure it was $12.95.”
“Well it’s not.”
“Maybe I was looking at the non-priority price… would it be $12.95 if I paid the non-priority price?”
“We only offer priority to China.”
“So are there any other ways to send a box to China? I’m just trying to figure out why it was $12.95 online and it’s now $28.95.”
“Well you could always send it flat-rate. That’s $12.95.”
“Oh, that’s what I want to do!”
“You’ll have to use a flat-rate priority box. This priority box won’t work.”
“Okay. No big deal. Where do I get a flat-rate box?”
“Over there” and he points to the area where I packed my box.
“Oh, I was just over there and this was the only kind of small box you had over there.”
“They’re over there. NEXT!!”

So off I went back to the packaging area. I checked and double-checked. No small flat-rate priority boxes anywhere. Back in line. 18 minutes later I’m back at the counter. Same guy.

“There are no small flat-rate boxes over there.”
“That’s because we are out.”
“What?!? You just told me they were over there.”
“I forgot. We’ve been out of those for a couple days now.”
“You don’t have any in the back?”
“Nope. And we’ve called all the Post Offices all over town. Nobody has them.”
“So when will you get some in?”
“Two weeks.”
“That won’t work. This is a Christmas present for my brother. I need to mail it this week.”
“I’m not sure what to tell you.”
“Can we just use this priority box since it’s the same size?”
“No. It’s the wrong box.”
“But it’s the same size, the weight of the items is within the limits, and it goes with the same air-service that the flat-rate box would.”
“But it doesn’t say ‘Flat-Rate Box’ on it.”
“Can we just write that on the box?”
“No.”
“Okay, what would you suggest I do? What are my options?”
“I guess you’ll just have to pay $28.95. It’s the only way.”
“Well, I guess if that’s my only option…”
“Oh, wait!! Here’s a small flat-rate box right here behind the counter!”
He bends down and pulls out a small flat-rate box and innocently hands it to me.
“Wow. Great. Thanks!”
“NEXT!!”

I go back to the packaging area, cut open my small priority box and move the contents into the small flat-rate priority box. I re-tape and re-address the box. Back in line. 20 minutes later I’m at the counter. Same guy.

“I think we’ve got it right this time.”
“Good.”
He punched a bunch of keys, scanned some codes, weighed the package, and announced, “That’ll be $12.95.”
“Excellent! Do you take credit cards?”
“Yes, just swipe your card there.” He pointed to the credit card reader in front of me.
I swiped my card.
“Don’t swipe your card yet!! You need to tell me if it’s debit or credit first.”
“It’s credit.”
“Okay. NOW you can swipe your card.”
“Thanks.”
“Here’s your receipt. Next time you come in, make sure you know what you’re doing and this won’t happen again.”

It’s impossible to have a reasonable transaction with the US government.

Dallas, TX – ServiceBrook Ltd. Co. announced the launch of their first publically available software-as-a-service today: Affiliate Link Vault (www.affiliatelinkvault.com). Philip Miller, co-founder of ServiceBrook, explained, “The launching of Affiliate Link Vault marks our first step into the freemium software world. This revolutionary link cloaker provides the best protection for affiliate links… we’ve already protected hundreds of links, and it’s  day one!”

At its core, Affiliate Link Vault is a link cloaker. It allows affiliate marketers to hide their links from prying eyes and unfriendly spyware programs. Affiliate marketers use link cloakers to keep their income stream secure. SearchEnginePro.net praised the new software, “Affiliate Link Vault is my favorite tool for cloaking and protecting my affiliate links. If you are an Internet marketer and you’re not cloaking, protecting, and tracking your affiliate links you’re leaving money on the table. Whether you’re an experience affiliate marketer or a novice just getting started, ALV has pricing for every level of your growth.”

Daniel Ice, co-founder of ServiceBrook, commented, “It is difficult to cloak affiliate links effectively using scrambled javascript, frames, purely server-side, or other third-party hosted cloaker software. What Affiliate Link Vault offers is a simple, professional link cloaker. Anyone can use it.”

When asked what advice they would give their customers, Miller and Ice took a shot at a competitor, “Watch out for ninjas.”

Affiliate Link Vault launched September 15th, 2009. They offer a free link cloaker plan as well as paying plans ranging $17-$97/month.

But working people hard leads to dissatisfaction. People want to be underutilized. They want room to breathe. They don’t want the stress of working hard each and every day.

Or do they? I’ve found that people really do want to work hard, to be challenged, to grow. They just want to be compensated for their effort. If you expect people to give their all and then get stingy when you write their paycheck, you’re crazy. It won’t work. Top-level people deserve top-level pay.

So here’s the ServiceBrook philosophy: underhire and overcompensate.

We work hard. We put in late hours. We enjoy what we do. We get paid well.

We’ve found that having a few, high-octane people that are compensated extremely well is the way to go. We could probably save money by hiring several less qualified individuals, but in the end, the cost to the culture is too high.

We love the high-energy, high-octane, high-bandwidth atmosphere at work. We’re here to make money. No chatting. No discussing the news. No web-surfing or online shopping. No forwarding of stupid emails. Just good, old-fashioned, give-it-your-all, hard work. We’re all here for the same reasons. We’re committed. We’re a team. We’re all owners.

There’s not enough of us… but we all have more than enough. Everything gets done.

- Albert Einstein

Web business has it’s own lingo. Where else do you regularly hear about cloud computing, transparency, going viral, social media, search engine optimization or web 2.0? But there are some terms that are carry-overs from the world of brick-and-mortar businesses of the “old” economy.

I want to talk about one of those “old” business terms today: “Customer Obsession.” While the term “obsession” is currently in vogue, being popularized by Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos and others, the notion of being radically focused on your customer experience is really a old economy idea. Businesses have always found that focusing on the customer leads to market share growth.

“Customer Obsession” Defined: “The deliberate choice to focus upon the customer experience and make customer needs and wants the primary driver of your business.”

Look How Far We’ve Come!

Everyone knows the story of Henry Ford and the model-T. When asked what colors the car would come in, Ford answered that the customer could have it in whatever color they wanted, as long as it was black.

In our current economy, we can hardly imagine someone saying something like that!  We are used to hearing Howard Schultz of Starbucks Coffee talk about a “laser focus” on the “customer experience.”  We’ve learned that customers really do matter.  We’ve come a long way.

Why Customer Obsession Matters

Even though we’ve come a long way, it’s amazing how few companies really care about the customer experience.  Oh they might say they do, but at the end of the day, they really only care about the customer experience because it makes them money. But people can sniff that out a mile away.

To truly be obsessed with your customers, you need to put in hours and hours of hard work. You need to connect with your customers. They need to connect with you. And maybe, just maybe the most wonderful thing might happen… you might become friends.

When you transcend the customer-business relationship and become friends with your customers, it is the most rewarding business experience possible. No paycheck comes close.

When you are obsessed with your customers and they know it and trust you, there are a whole bunch of benefits. Here are a few:

1. Customer feedback comes in like crazy. When people know you’ll listen, they’ll share. Until then, you’re just some big company out there somewhere.
2. Customers solve your problems. When customers are your friends, they do what friends do – they help. Instead of problems being an area to complain about, your customers become friends who come alongside you to help make things work. They have excellent suggestions, and see things that you never could.
3. Customers tell their friends about you. Because your customers know and enjoy your friendship, they feel like introducing you to others. The business benefit is called referrals. The personal benefit is friendships.
4. Google likes you. Google rewards websites that are customer focused. Google is in the business of connecting people with the best solutions. If you build your site with customer obsession, Google will reward you.
5. You focus on what matters. Businesses tend to focus on all the wrong things. Some focus on beating the competition. How do you know the competition is doing it right? If you are connected to your customers, you’ll know what you need to change. Other businesses focus on getting their site search engine optimized (SEO) or getting the right kind of inbound links. But those are all by-products of building a site that meets customers’ needs. Focus on what really matters: customer obsession.

The customer isn’t always right…
but the customer is always most important.

1. Intuitive Design – No owner’s manual required.
   We want Affiliate Link Vault’s interface to be crystal clear. We hate help menus. We want the software to make sense on day one. So we’re working on making sure our user interface is usable, intuitive, and clear. So far the results are coming in really positive.
2. Onboard Help - Onboard help when and where you need it.
   We just said we hate help menus. We do. But if you need to provide help, the best way to do it is onboard. In Affiliate Link Vault, we’re working on providing the answers to the most common questions in context. Our goal is that you’ll never have to navigate away from the page you are on in order to get your question answered. We want help, right on the page, right where and when we need it. So we’re working on making sure we have that covered.
3. Flawless Functionality -  It works on day one. No corners cut.
   When we launch Affiliate Link Vault, we want the core functionality of the program to function flawlessly from day one. So we’ve eliminated the bugs we know of, and we’re testing to make sure that we caught them all. We’ve also already done a round of code reduction for efficiency. We want the program to run smoothly and quickly.
4. Optimized Link Cloaking – Our main feature is high octane.
   The #1 feature of Affiliate Link Vault is the innovative link cloaker. We’re alpha-testing to make sure that the link cloaker is 100% optimized. Anything less is unacceptable. We’re going to make sure that when Affiliate Link Vault launches, the link cloaker is the best url cloaking tool available. We’re fine-tuning for high-octane results.

Many of you have been emailing us, asking when you can have access to the software… we understand that you want to start using the software ASAP. But hang in there. These next few weeks will make all the difference in the world. It will be the difference that makes the difference.

We’ll keep you posted… just a few weeks to go!

-The Affiliate Link Vault Team

After all, why pay for something you can get for free? Sometimes going with free software or open source software is hands-down the way to go. But when it comes to link cloaker tools, that simply isn’t the case. In fact, free = frustration.

Here’s why…

SUMMARY: The free link cloaking software available today is unprofessional, complex, unsupported, half-assed and costly. You don’t want to cut corners on this one.

Free link cloaker software isn’t worth it.

The old saying “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” simply isn’t true. There are free lunches. The entire open source community is built upon the idea that people sharing their software leads to the collective good. At ServiceBrook, we love open source software and use it every day. But free is only good when you get quality software. And when it comes to link cloaker software, there is no quality software available for free.

If you go with free link cloaker software, here’s what you’ll get:

1. Unprofessional
   Free link cloaker software is notorious for clunky interfaces, inadiquate features, accidentally deleted or lost data, difficult user interfaces, unsecure computer systems, poorly designed menus and frustrating work-flow.
2. Too Complex
   Installation, upgrades, security patches, and maintainance of free link cloaker software usually requires programmers and IT experts. Plus it’s a pain to have to rework your HTML every time a new security patch comes out.
3. No Help
   When you get stuck, you’ll find that free link cloaker software does not have the support you need to fix your problems. Most people have to scrap their work and go subscribe to a decent link cloaker software. When you are shopping around, make sure your software has the support you need to suceed.
4. A Half-Assed Product
   Free link cloaking tools look free. They look and function like they were built in the garage over a weekend. And that’s exactly what most of them are. In our experience, you get what you pay for.

Free isn’t free.

Cutting corners is costly. When (not if) your free link cloaker software breaks, you’re links will go dead and you’re affiliate commissions will dry up for however long it takes to restore your link cloaking software to operation. Whether it’s hours or days, we’re talking serious work and missed opportunity. There is no substitute for a solid, dependable link cloaker software package.

Paying pays off.

You can get high-quality link cloaking solutions for as little as $17 per month. For most affiliate marketers, that’s just a drop in the bucket. And when you think of the quality and dependability that come with a full-service link cloaker software package, it really is a no-brainer.

We found out the hard way.

When we needed a affiliate link cloaker tool here at ServiceBrook, we tried a number of free link cloaker software options… and we were terribly frustrated. We spent hours and hours getting them to work, and once they were setup correctly, they still gave us problems.

So take it from us… free link cloaker software is just not worth it.

P.S. Affiliate Link Vault does offer a Free Account of our full link cloaker software.  In this case, free = fantastic. There are just limitations on how much you can use the software.

Sign up for your free account today!

So we built our own… and we did it right.

This post discusses 2 main questions:

“Why did we need a URL cloaking solution?” and
“What are the best link cloaking options?”

Post Summary: Affiliate Link Vault is the most effective solution for managing affiliate links and URL cloaking when compared with rival technologies. You can even test-drive it for free.

URL cloaking, or link cloaking, is used by many affiliate marketers to hide the destination of their links. But why?

Why did we need a link cloaker?

There are 4 main reasons:

1. Ugly URL’s
2. Trustworthy links are short and expected. People are hesitant to click on links that contain jumbled letters and numbers. Since affiliate marketers make money when people click their links, those links need to look trustworthy. So if you can “cloak” an ugly link with a pretty one, the click-through rate (CTR) generally goes up. For example, which link would you click
   
   Cloaked Link: http://www.mysite.com/go?coolbook
   
   Uncloaked Link: http://www.someothersite.com/affiliateid=1776856987?scid=366
3. Income Bypassing
   Income bypassing is when a user hovers over a link, sees where the link is pointed, and then types the website into the browser. This is frustrating for affiliate marketers, because they did all the work of getting that customer to go to the affiliate’s website, but they don’t get credit for sending the customer. So if you can cloak an affiliate URL, you keep income bypassing from taking place.
4. Income Hijacking
   Unlike income bypassing, income hijacking is when a customer decides to replace an affiliate marketer’s affiliate code with their own. This is basically stealing the commission away from the affiliate marketer and giving it to someone else. If you can effectively cloak an affiliate URL, you protect your affiliate links from income hijacking.
5. Spyware Rewriting
   Even more troublesome and prevalent than income hijacking is the reality of spyware rewriting. Some spyware programs that people accidentally download onto their computers will track the links that people are clicking. When the spyware recognizes an affiliate code embedded in a link, it will automatically rewrite that affiliate code so that the author of the spyware program gets the commission, not the referring marketer. The severity of this problem has been increasing in recent years, and a lot of affiliate marketers are looking for a link cloaking solution to beat spyware rewrites.

While some people have tried to estimate how widespread these four threats are, there is no reliable way of tracking them. Some estimate that between 10% and 40% of affiliate income is lost due to any combination of these four threats.

At Affiliate Link Vault, we think the numbers are toward the lower end of that range. But 10%-20% can really add up.

So what solutions are available for link cloaking?

There are 5 main ones:

1. JavaScript Scrambled URL’s
   A JavaScript scrambler takes your original links and scrambles them, making it impossible for a user to understand where the link is pointed.The benefits of JavaScript Scrambled URL’s are:
   • No income bypassing, since the user can’t tell where the link is pointed.
   • Makes income hijacking difficult, since the affiliate code is hidden.

   However, this method has several drawbacks:

   • Links are still vulnerable to spyware rewriting and income hijacking from tech-savvy users
   • JavaScript Scrambling software is complicated and needs to be upgraded ($$$)
   • Usually the software is licensed to only one computer
   • Usually not Mac or Linux compatible
   • No tracking or statistics of clicks
   • If you ever need to change a link or offer, it requires manual editing of each page
2. Frame URL Cloaking
   With frame URL cloaking, an affiliate marketer will show the affiliate offer in a frame on their own site. To the end user, it looks like they never left the marketer’s site, but in fact they have landed on another site.The benefits of frame URL cloaking are:
   • The end user thinks they are still on the same website even though they have left.
   • Can be combined with JavaScript scrambling for greater effectiveness.
   • Usable with Mac & Linux

   However, this method has several drawbacks as well:

   • Frame cloaking is in violation of most affiliate Terms of Service. For example, Amazon.com has banned affiliate marketers for using frame URL cloaking.
   • Sometimes frames keep cookies from setting correctly, which means loss of commission
   • Many sites have “frame busters” which removes all benefit of this method
   • Links are still vulnerable to spyware rewriting and income hijacking from tech-savvy users
   • Software is complicated and needs to be upgraded ($$$)
   • No tracking or statistics of clicks
   • If you ever need to change a link or offer, it requires manual editing of every page
3. Server-Side URL Cloaking
   Server-Side URL Cloaking is an effective way of cloaking URLs. However it is complicated to do well. The cloaking is performed on the server-side rather than on the client side, which means there are fewer errors. However, to set up server-side cloaking you need to understand advanced programming and server configuration. At Affiliate Link Vault, we have taken the core idea behind server-side cloaking and make it even better. But I’m getting ahead of myself.Benefits of Server-Side URL cloaking include:
   • Very effective at cloaking against spyware and all users
   • Fully compliant with cookies
   • Server based – which means fewer errors
   • Does not violate Affiliate Terms of Service
   • Creates short, pretty URLs

   However, this method has several drawbacks as well:

   • Requires knowledge of programming and advanced server configuration
   • Third-party software solutions require extensive maintenance
   • Requires security patches and updates across all domains
   • If improperly configured, can lead to loss of Search Engine Rankings (SERP Positioning)
4. Third-Party Hosted Cloaking
   Some companies will offer to cloak your URL, usually shortening it, by running your links through their service. This is called third-party hosted cloaking. It is a very ineffective solution to the four threats we discussed above.Benefits of called third-party hosted cloaking include:
   • Cryptic links
   • Prevents spyware
   • Possible link rotation
   • No software to maintain
   • A simple, basic cloaking for links

   However, this method has many drawbacks as well:

   • URLs are pointed to a third-party site, which lowers click through rates and site credibility
   • Links are usually ugly
   • Some third-parties show users competing offers
   • A very ineffective option, as it still leave your links open to link hijacking, spyware rewriting, and income bypassing

   Up until recently, the best option affiliate marketers had was server-side cloaking. But most marketers find the development and maintenance of this solution to be a burden.

   That’s why we developed Affiliate Link Vault: the simple and powerful link management solution.

5. Affiliate Link Vault
   With Affiliate Link Vault, you take control of your affiliate links. Affiliate Link Vault has the most advanced link cloaking software available. Basically, we offer a turn-key software solution that allows you to collect, protect, and direct all your affiliate links (even on multiple domains) in one crisp, professional, web-based interface.
   Benefits include:

   • Take full control of your links – change any link at any time without modifying a file on your server
   • The most advanced URL cloaking tool available – say goodbye to income bypassing, income hijacking, and spyware rewrites
   • Create custom URLs – you make them short and pretty
   • Built-in offer rotation to optimize and diversify your revenue
   • A crisp and professional product
   • Enhanced Security on all account data (128-bit SSL)
   • Detailed Reporting and Click Statistics
   • Designed with industry best-practices
   • The software is always up-to-date: no software or security updates to install
   • Free 30 day trial
   • It just works

Get access to Affiliate Link Vault today!
Free for 30 days. Get access in under 30 seconds.

Take control of your affiliate links today!