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Two newbie questions about affiliate link cloaking

by bardmoor
9 replies
hi everyone, im a newbie affiliate marketer and i hope you can help me out with two questions about cloaking my affiliate links:

1. if i set up a cloaked link such as bardmoor-recommends.com/product that actually redirects to my true affiliate link such as product.com/?x=12345, can the person who clicks on my cloaked link ever see my true affiliate link appearing for a short time in their browser address bar right before the URL of the final landing page on product.com appears in their browser address bar?

or by virtue of the cloaked link, is my true affiliate link completely invisible to the person who clicks it?

2. can you recommend a good link cloaking script to achieve this? hopefully something free or inexpensive?

thanks in advance for any advice you can provide!

B
#affiliate #cloaking #link #newbie #questions
  • Profile picture of the author SterlingWebb
    1.) In my experience (someone correct me if I'm wrong) it depends on the type of redirect and the script used to do the redirection.

    2.) I use PrettyLink which is a Wordpress plugin and is free. If you're not using Wordpress I'd highly suggest it for ease of use among many other benefits.

    If you need any more help feel free to reach out!
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    • Profile picture of the author bardmoor
      hi sterlingwebb, thx for the advice.

      so are you saying that if i use prettylink, my true affiliate link will be completely invisible to the person who clicks it? and they will never see it appear even for a second or two in their browser address bar?

      also, if i dont use wordpress can i still use prettylink?
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      • Profile picture of the author Coby
        There are ways to cloak the link completely but it will depend on the script you are using. Also, there is still a slight chance they will notice the url in their "status bar" but only if they are very alert.

        But my experience is that when you start cloaking or masking URLs it can get a little weird... For example, sometimes the buy buttons won't work because the script won't let them...

        So, I think it's best just to use something simple that will make the affiliate link look "normal" but not necess.

        I like Mike Cowles' redirect software (it can cloak like you want) but a good free one that you can self host is YOURLS: Your Own URL Shortener (I don't remember if you can fully cloak with this one, but I used it in the past)

        Good luck!

        Cheers,
        Coby
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      • Profile picture of the author andrej
        Originally Posted by bardmoor View Post

        also, if i dont use wordpress can i still use prettylink?
        Pretty Link is a Wordpress plugin, so you cannot use it without Wordpress. However, if your website is not powered by Wordpress, you could do a .httaccess redirect. Or you could also use an HTML redirect.

        And as for your question if the person who clicks on your affiliate link will see your referral code - I think this depends on the affiliate product that you are promoting. Some companies have faster redirects, some have slower. I would suggest you to just test it and you will see. However, even if the affiliate link appeared for 1 second, I would not worry about this, as then the final URL shall be www.affiliatewebsite.com, so there is no reason why the referred person would go away from that website. And even if they refreshed the website, you would not lose your commission, as the cookie is set when your affiliate link loads.
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  • Profile picture of the author bardmoor
    thanks coby
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    • Profile picture of the author tanbanners
      I use a wordpress plugin called Affiliate Link Cloaking it can be found here clionpid dot com
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  • Profile picture of the author bardmoor
    thanks andrej and tanbannners.
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  • Profile picture of the author webbie
    There's some php code that is free that'll do what you want. PM me and I'll send it to you. Using html meta redirect tags will not completely cloak your aff link and andrej is correct - whether your link shows up for a second in the browser will depend on how fast the vendor is redirecting your aff link.
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  • Profile picture of the author bardmoor
    thanks, webbie! i just PM'd you for the script.
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