Affiliate link cloaking with Wordpress

[Richard Moog]

Hi,

What will be a good solution or plugin to cloak my affiliate links in my Wordpress posts?
Most of the time I use Clickbank products,but I'd like to cloak all the links I want.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Regards,
Richard

[Brad Gosse]

I do it with htaccess

How to make your affiliate links pretty | Brad Gosse

[braintjy]

If you have cPanel in your webhosting, there should be a redirect button that you can use to set redirects, instead of playing around with the .htaccess file. If you want to change the .htacccess file, make a backup of it so that you can restore it if you do something wrong.

[NetMan]

Originally Posted by Richard Moog

Hi,

What will be a good solution or plugin to cloak my affiliate links in my Wordpress posts?
Most of the time I use Clickbank products,but I'd like to cloak all the links I want.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Regards,
Richard

Richard

You should try it's free - WPMarketer | Performance Marketing with Wordpress

Best regards,

Andre Foisy

[SusanneUK]

I really like "Pretty Links" plugin for WP.

Cheers
Sue

[annihilator]

Originally Posted by Richard Moog

Hi,

What will be a good solution or plugin to cloak my affiliate links in my Wordpress posts?
Most of the time I use Clickbank products,but I'd like to cloak all the links I want.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Regards,
Richard

Hi Richard,

I think I have found the BEST way to cloak my links in Wordpress. It's a plugin called GoCodes. You can set it up so that you can cloak your affiliate links in the way you want. The link is www.yourdomain.com/go/wordofyourchoice. You can adjust that "wordofchoice" to anything you want.

It even keeps track of hits so it's a great alternate way to track your hops. Hope this helps.

[Stefan Vee]

I am using this one on a WP 2.7.1 install
ø Link Cloaking Plugin for WordPress | W-Shadow.com ø
Perfect and Free!

[Jason Keith]

Originally Posted by SusanneUK

I really like "Pretty Links" plugin for WP.

Cheers
Sue

I second Pretty Link Plugin - Pretty Link ? Blair Williams

[usualcliche]

Some very good information in this thread as I was looking for some sort of cloaking for my wordpress blogs. Cheers to all who contributed valuable information and bookmarked thread for future reference on this matter.

[bizgroup]

This is why I like this forum. I learn something every time I read through it. Thanks to all!

[DrewG]

Check it out - WordPress › GoCodes WordPress Plugins

[Richard Moog]

Thanks for the replies.
I will have a look at the solutions you mentioned.
Is it also possible to cloak links of my banners or only in my posts?

regards,
Richard

[Richard Moog]

Can I use GoCodes also in my widgets on my blog and banners,or just in my posts?

[Richard Moog]

Just installed GoCode plugin,works like a charm
This plugin is what I was looking for,great.

[annihilator]

You're welcome It's indeed great, and it keeps track of the clicks.

[Zanti]

I've been following this tread very closely. Of the plugins, 4 seem to stand out.

GoCode
WP Marketer
Pretty Links
W-Shadow Link Cloaking plugin

Those of you who use or have used any of these plugins, can you share more details of the pros and cons, tips and tools that you've uncovered.

Thanks,

Z

[SusanneUK]

Originally Posted by Zanti

I've been following this tread very closely. Of the plugins, 4 seem to stand out.

GoCode
WP Marketer
Pretty Links
W-Shadow Link Cloaking plugin

Those of you who use or have used any of these plugins, can you share more details of the pros and cons, tips and tools that you've uncovered.

Thanks,

Z

Well I have found pretty links very easy for the beginner to use, I like the fact that it shows traffic to the link in your dashboard and also that it has a "tweet" facility, so you can tweet the cloaked or "pretty link" straight to your twitter account.

Cheers
Sue

[Zanti]

Thanks Sue,

that's helpful information. I find it sometimes difficult to determine the right plugin to suit my needs when there are several that are so similar. That's why I like to pick the brain of uses to find out what they like and don't like and tips they can pass along.

Thanks again,

Z

[aaajane]

I'm off to try Go Codes and Pretty Link. Any incompatibility issues with other wp plugins anyone has experienced?

I use WP 2.7

[Paid Surveys]

Brad Gosse, that's a very helpful guide thanks for sharing it with us. HTACCESS is a very useful and effective method, I've used it in my wordpress websites.

[Anomaly1974]

I do not know enough about .htaccess to get everything right there but I found a small script for cloaking links, installed it on my server and it works fine. It is nothing fancy but certainly seems to work well enough. I can also set up different link campaigns and track exactly which ads are getting clicked so that I can optimize my campaigns but you could do that with any of these I suppose. I just give it a different name for a different ad and watch the results.

Free Link Cloaker

Just my two cents

[Zanti]

What are the most important features that you look for with a link cloaker? What extras have you found helpful.

Thanks,

Z

[Leanne King]

As well as the ones already mentioned there are some paid plugins:

WP Affiliate (by fellow warrior John Taylor)
Simple Link Manager
Ninja Affiliate Link Cloaking - expensive but good

Leanne

[nicholasb]

there is a plugin called gocodes that works really well

just search for gocodes in the plugin directory

[tknoppe]

Thanks for these links, some I'd not seen before.

[cjjohn]

Originally Posted by SusanneUK

I really like "Pretty Links" plugin for WP.

Cheers
Sue

Sue beat me to it! YES to Pretty Link. It's AWESOME!!!
Not only will it cloak your links, but you can see how many hits the link is getting. Also, you can tell it to ignore your own IP hits.

[Alan Mc Donald]

i use ninja affiliate plugin, fantastic, well worth the money

[Tyler Jonsson]

I also recommend the "Pretty Links" plugin.

Great resource, and FREE!
Ninja Affiliate is also good-- but many identical features to Pretty Link, and costs almost 100 dollars.

Pretty Link wins IMHO

[CashTactics]

Here are two affiliate scripts I use to hid urls in wordpress.

Wordpress Affiliate Pro
and
MBP (Max Blog Press) Ninja Affiliate

Google both of those. They work really well. MBP Ninja Affiliate is my favorite though because it allows for click tracking to your site as well from other sites. Very easy to use and set up!

Kris

[Solidflash]

Hi!
Pretty Links doesn´t seem to work on my affiliate links. The URL stays the same. Anyone has this problem too or knows a sollution? I´m trying to get this working for about 3 hours know!!

[AllanJames]

Originally Posted by Jason Keith

I second Pretty Link Plugin - Pretty Link ? Blair Williams

And I would also endorse Pretty Link

[AllanJames]

Originally Posted by Solidflash

Hi!
Pretty Links doesn´t seem to work on my affiliate links. The URL stays the same. Anyone has this problem too or knows a sollution? I´m trying to get this working for about 3 hours know!!

You need to be a bit more specific:

What are you doing, what's not working etc

[GainRealWealth]

Just tried Go-codes and it works like a charm. If anyone cares to elaborate more, I'd like to know just how is it another affiliate can steal your affiliate link?

[dollarware]

Get this free script that will work everywhere to shorten, cloak and count hits for your links.

Installs on your webserver. Easy if CPanel.

Installer is automated, you fill in a few details, but you get 23-page pdf with full instructions. Contains lots of screenshots showing the entire process, download, install and using it.

Uses .htacess.

Shortens URL's, Cloaks, & Counts Hits, All Within Your Domain

John

[Raphael1]

I also use the Pretty Links Plugin - very important to cloak your links. I experienced that some of my well ranked sites dropped in the serps when I was not cloaking

[tommen]

I use simple .htaccess forwarding.If an affiliate program changes your affiliate link it is easy to correct.

[Eric Reed]

Originally Posted by NetMan

Richard

You should try it's free - WPMarketer | Performance Marketing with Wordpress

Best regards,

Andre Foisy

Will this work on a mac?

Eric

[JNFerree]

Originally Posted by Richard Moog

Hi,

What will be a good solution or plugin to cloak my affiliate links in my Wordpress posts?
Most of the time I use Clickbank products,but I'd like to cloak all the links I want.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Regards,
Richard

Richard - this might help.

1. Install the Bit.Ly sidebar applet w/ Firefox (or)
2. Try Scrnch.Me (or)
3. Check-out a 1/2 dozen Cloaked Affiliate Links I made w/ Bit.Ly (or)
4. Watch this YT Video on How To cloak your Affiliate links using Bit.ly (and) how to post your links to Twitter & Facebook

[Michael Forey]

Originally Posted by Raphael1

I also use the Pretty Links Plugin - very important to cloak your links. I experienced that some of my well ranked sites dropped in the serps when I was not cloaking

Pretty links is the best. Then if you want to text link a given keyword regardless of where it shows up add the pretty link and the keyword to SEO Smart Links!

[MemberWing]

AFLinker has it all-in-one: affiliate link cloaker + URL shortener + pattern-based link creator around text as well as for images too.
It includes direct integration with Google Analytics for surgically precise tracking of clicks on outgoing links (via pseudo "/outgoing/..." page).

Plus it has something no other plugin has: ability to enable immunity against search engines affiliate sites slap. This is a big concern for todays affiliate marketers - so i decided to add this feature as well.

Check my signature - it's free fully featured download.

Gleb

[Mark Figura]

Memberwing - Your plugin is impressive. I'm just getting into the affiliate game and am aware of the Google slap issues. Your plugin even takes care of the image source link back to the CPA company! Wow.

By the way, in Firefox only I found the links generated by MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate plugin caused page 404 errors when I had the Google toolbar enabled

[MemberWing]

Thank you Mark.
Yes clickable images was big feature for me - just because they boost clicks and affiliate commissions so much.
So i decided to automate process to make images clickable as well.

And yet many people are missing this - thank you for mentioning it.

Gleb

[Colin Theriot]

I used to use GoCodes on my own stuff and Ninja Affiliate for work. Honestly, there wasn't a whole lot more done via Ninja that GoCodes wasn't doing for free.

I'll have to check out Pretty Links for that tweet feature, and AFLinker for that URL shortening. Those are both features I can integrate with my social automation. I want to use shortened URLs so I can microblog them, but I hate using 3rd party shorteners because you never know what will happen to them down the road.

So I came in to make suggestions, and ended up getting some for myself. This forum is pretty cool sometimes, right?

[MemberWing]

Hi Colin,
btw. feel free to make suggestions for AFLinker - what kind of "tweet" feature you used with other software?

Gleb

[andrew_writes]

Originally Posted by Richard Moog

Hi,

What will be a good solution or plugin to cloak my affiliate links in my Wordpress posts?
Most of the time I use Clickbank products,but I'd like to cloak all the links I want.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Regards,
Richard

wp shadow is good.

ø Link Cloaking Plugin for WordPress | W-Shadow.com ø

[Colin Theriot]

Originally Posted by MemberWing

Hi Colin,
btw. feel free to make suggestions for AFLinker - what kind of "tweet" feature you used with other software?

Gleb

Well currently I'm managing my tweeting and Facebook status updates by harnessing my blog to Ping.FM.

Ping.FM has its own built-in link shortener that you CAN turn off, but I've been relying on theirs, even though I'd rather be able to link through my own URL for control reasons.

What I would love is actually something that could be intelligent enough to make me a shortened URL on my own domain for ANY link I put into my blogs (With the option to turn it off per-post).

That way I wouldn't have to worry about it when I'm making a micro-blog post or status update. I could just put in the full link and when it posts and syndicates out, it would just be the magical short URL.

Anyway, hope I explained that well enough.

I actually just tweeted and posted a link to your plugin - I haven't installed it yet, but the feature list is very impressive, and I know through some experience with MemberWing that the plugin probably does exactly what you say it does.

Great work, and it's awesome that you're giving this away for free considering it's better than Ninja out of the box, and that one costs almost $100 as someone mentioned.

(If I were your marketing consultant, I would advise you to charge 20% less than they do, but make it free if they'll leave a checkbox marked that puts a link back to you on their site. But, you know, moving the freeline is good to. I just can't believe you don't require at least an opt-in.)

But taking off my "bidness" hat, and speaking as a consumer, free awesome plugins rule.

[Fox30]

There are some AWESOME WP link cloakers.

PM me for more info.