How to hide your Affiliate links - Affiliate Link Cloaking
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Why and How to hide your Affiliate links - Affiliate Link Cloaking
Contents at a glance
- Affiliate Link Hijacking
- DONT MISS!!!
- Affiliate Link Cloaking - Third party affiliate link cloakers!
- Affiliate Link Cloaking using HTML
- Dont Miss!!!
- Affiliate Link Cloaking using PHP
- Affiliate Link Cloaking using PHP and URL REWRITE
- These are THE BEST Affiliate Marketing Guides and Ebooks i highly RECOMMEND to everyone!
- Great Affiliate Marketing books on Amazon
- Liked this lens? Please leave a comment!
Affiliate Link Hijacking
What affiliate link hijackers do to steal your commission.
I'll show you what happens when hijackers see your affiliate link to the product they want to buy. Lets assume you are promoting a ClickBank product. Your affiliate link will look like this when you mouse over it:
YourAffiliateID.ProductID.hop.clickbank.net
So, if a person is also a member of ClickBank he is very likely to copy your link instead of clicking it, then paste it to the address bar and change your AffiliateID to his. He is then getting your commission which means that he's basically buying a discounted product and you are getting nothing.
A very nasty thing to do, yes, but it happens and very often. Same with any other affiliate program, not just ClickBank. Even worse when a person simply removes your affiliate id, without being a ClickBank affiliate himself, just to leave you with no commission for the sale. There are people who do this just out of jealousy.
DONT MISS!!!
Affiliate Marketing Bestseller!!!
"Insider" Affiliate Strategy Manipulates Google To Generate $109,151 In 30 Days... From Just ONE Clickbank Product!!!"
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Affiliate Link Cloaking - Third party affiliate link cloakers!
Hiding your affiliate link using third party affiliate link cloaker websites
The easiest and most widely used method to hide and shorten your affiliate links is by using free cloaking services provided by third party websites. They will create a folder at their domain, which will be redirected to your original affiliate link. It takes a few minutes to create a link and your new link will usually look something like this:http://www.[something].com/yh349d
where [something] is the name of the service
and [yh349d] - randomly generated letters and numbers
There are many to chose from, so it's not a problem to google one with domain name that you will like.
However, there are certain disadvantages of this method.
# First, you don't have access or control over their hosting or internet provider, so if their website is down your links will also become broken, and in most cases you won't notice until you click the link yourself.
# Additionally, the links are also computer generated and will usually look like the example above and will have nothing to do with the provided product, so it will be hard to remember these for your visitors.
Here are some of the most famous third party affiliate link cloaker services for you:
Tiny Url
Klas Link
Move To
Affiliate Link Cloaking using HTML
Hiding your links using basic html redirects
This method is also used by marketers very often. However, you need a domain name and hosting to do this. You can still use some free hosting though. This is also a good option for those whos hosting doesn't support PHP scripts, but HTML only.The disadvantage of this method is that sometimes users disable "meta refresh" in their browsers, so instead of being redirected automatically they will have to click manually and will be able to see your affiliate id when they mouse over the link on your hub page. It's very very rare though.
To use this method you need to create a html document (with the following code) named REDIRECT (or whatever name you choose) in your websites' root folder (or any other folder). Then just use a link to this document as your affiliate link on your website or squidoo lens.
For example:
Http://www.yourdomain.com/redirect.html
or Http://www.yourdomain.com/otherfolder/redirect.html
The code:
<html>
<head>
<title>YOUR PAGE TITLE</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://YOUR AFFILIATE URL">
</head>
<body>
<p>
Redirecting, please wait. If you're not redirected within a couple of seconds,
click here:<br />
<a href="http://YOUR AFFILIATE URL">PRODUCT NAME</a>
</p>
</body>
</html>
Change "YOUR PAGE TITLE" to whatever you want it to be
Change "YOUR AFFILIATE URL" to your url to redirect to
Change "PRODUCT NAME" to your affiliate product
The line of interest is the fourth line that begins with "meta". The operation is "refresh" which means to "refresh" the current page with the information that follows. The content begins with a zero, which is the number of seconds to wait, and then the URL that you will be taken to.
Most of you will, but not all. Meta-refresh can be disabled by the user so the alternate, manual approach is still required. That's why it's important to include the text in the actual page instructing people to "click here if you're not automatically redirected".
Thanks to Ask Leo for this.
Dont Miss!!!
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"Shadow Affiliate Triad Reveals $247,000 a Month Portfolio of Cash Siphoning Tactics You were Never Meant to See..."
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Affiliate Link Cloaking using PHP
Hiding your affiliate links using simple php redirect
This method is similar to HTML one. But its much quicker and much less code. Use this if your server supports php scripts.Basically, follow same steps as with the HTML method, but instead of creating a html document create a txt file and rename it to redirect.php
Insert the following code in there:
<?php
header('Location:YOURLINK');
?>
Change "YOURLINK" to your original affiliate link, save and upload the redirect.php file to your server.
Then again just use the link to this file instead of your original affiliate link on your website or squidoo lens
Affiliate Link Cloaking using PHP and URL REWRITE
Hiding your multiple affiliate links using php and url rewrite
This is a more advanced method that allows to cloak multiple affiliate links to different products using one php file. However, it involves making changes to your .htaccess file. This file is usually situated in your websites root folder. If you don't have one, then i suggest you google it to know what it is and how to use it.Create a link.php file in your root folder with the following code:
<?php
$path = array(
'1LinkID' => 'http://YOUR AFFILIATE LINK 1',
'2LinkID' => 'http://YOUR AFFILIATE LINK 2'
);
if (array_key_exists($_GET['id'],$path))
header('Location: ' . $path[$_GET['id']]);
?>
Change "1LinkID" and "2LinkID" to any IDs you choose.
Insert your original affiliate links instead of "YOUR AFFILIATE LINK" 1 and 2.
Keep the single quotation marks!
Now add the following code to your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^link/([/_0-9a-zA-Z-]+)$ link.php?id=$1
Save both files and you're done!
Now if you need to cloak the links to your affiliate products 1 and 2 just use the following links:
http://www.yourdomain.com/link.php?id=1LinkID
http://www.yourdomain.com/link.php?id=2LinkID
The links to marketing Ebooks below are working examples of this method
These are THE BEST Affiliate Marketing Guides and Ebooks i highly RECOMMEND to everyone!
No matter if you are a newbie or experienced affiliate marketer i highly recommend these ebooks if you haven't read them yet! All the best current marketing secrets revealed!
- Commission Blueprint
- "Insider" Affiliate Strategy Manipulates Google To Generate $6,513 in 24 Hours... $109,151 In 30 Days... From Just ONE Clickbank Product!!
- Affiliate Payload
- "Shadow Affiliate Triad Reveals $247,000 a Month Portfolio of Cash Siphoning Tactics You were Never Meant to See..."
- Undercover Earner
- I Can Teach YOU How To Earn $100's Extra Everyday From Your Own Home, With Just 45 Mins Of Work A Day..Sale Now!
Great Affiliate Marketing books on Amazon
If you are into serious affiliate marketing here are some books you may find very useful
The book covers paid search advertising, affiliate marketing, public relations, web analytics and more, basically everything that is important for a successful online presents. That Kris has experience across the multiple channels of Internet marketing, from his business as fully integrated Internet marketing agency shines through in his book.
Unique about the book is also how it is designed. It is geared towards the visual folks like myself and uses a tremendous amount of pictures to show things instead of just using words to explain. Virtually every page has a screenshot or illustration and is an integrated part of the book, beyond the simple use as decoration or reinforcement of the written text. "
Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $19.79 (as of 07/13/2009) 
List Price: $29.99
Used Price: $13.99
Liked this lens? Please leave a comment!
I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions!
Shawn wrote
You can also use the htaccess file to redirect your customer's to your affiliate link.
Posted December 29, 2008
gduncan wrote...
This tutorial was exactly what I needed to solve my problem. Thanks!
Posted November 18, 2008
Joyce Christopher wrote
Thank you SOOO much!
I am a 70 yr old newbie and have
been trying to learn to cloak my
affiliate links with my website.
Thanks to your article, even I can
do it (I think).
Posted November 13, 2008
Dimitar wrote
Try to hide your affiliate link with http://shoxt.com free short url and url masking service
Posted November 13, 2008
kiwisoutback wrote...
Good to know, I'm glad you covered this issue. I've heard plenty about cloaking your links and stealing sales, etc, so I'll definitely be referring back to this for future reference on my affiliate efforts. Nice work! 5 Stars.
Posted October 15, 2008
WallerBlog wrote...
Great lens! I've never seen the "Affiliate Link Cloaking using PHP and URL REWRITE" method before. 5 stars for you!
Posted October 08, 2008
Topmarketerdj wrote...
Great lens, Thank you for the insight, it's good to see someone helping other affiliates out...
Here is another great site for affiliate tactics
lifetime-website-traffic.webs.com/
Posted September 30, 2008
MarcoG wrote...
Fantastic and very important info here...I'm somewhat concerned now though...I had no idea this happened!
Posted September 15, 2008
