Do you have a preference for cloaking affiliate links? What is it, why and how do you do it?

by guruwill

Posted: 15 years ago 15 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

OK - so this is the second part of my newbie questions. I put up a long post a few days ago with loads of these but it got ignored - too much to take on at once for most I'm sure. Sorry!

I have been reading about IM for years and am finally about to release two products (not 'make money') and find my practical web / IT skills are horribly lacking.

Please therefore, help me out on this one as well......

How do I best cloak affiliate links within the eBooks. I know how to make a phrase - such as 'MySpace' - read on the page of a pdf as an html link to somewhere specific - e.g. mybookaboutmyspace/orderpage - but how do I do that for lengthy and worth protecting affiliate links? Do I just do it the way I know in Word before turning it into a pdf or do I do more in the way of protection.

If you have a preference, can you explain how and why?

Many thanks.

Will

#affiliate #cloak #cloaker #cloaking #links #preference

xanol 15 years ago

You make the href of the link in your PDF go to a page that you host. That page should have a non-spammy, generic sounding name and domain. Within that page, do a 301 redirect to your actual affiliate link using PHP. Hopefully your merchant will set a cookie so that your affiliate ID is not displayed on the browsers URL bar.

This should stop most casual users from seeing the affiliate link, but there's no way to ever truely hide it.

Let me know if that's not clear, and I'll see if I can explain better.
- Thanks
- 1 reply
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- Jared Alberghini 15 years ago
  
  Here's my favorite way:
  
  AffiliateNicheMonster.com - Free & Simple Link Cloaker
  
  1) Enter the title and web address (including the http:// prefix) of the target web page.
  
  2) Click on the Generate Cloak HTML button to generate the cloaked web page code.
  
  3) Click anywhere in the Cloaked HTML box to select all of the text.
  
  4) Right-click on the selected text and select "Copy" (or press CTRL-C) to copy the text to the Clipboard.
  
  5) Paste the code into a BLANK text file, save it as "mypage.html" (or whatever you want to call it).
  
  6) Upload the file to your web server. You're ready to go!
  
  - Jared
  
  [ 1 ] Thanks
  
  Signature
  
  P.S.
  
  Join The Future: Telekinetic Marketing
  
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baumann93

15 years ago

My preference is to do .htaccess redirects. Very simple to implement.

Thanks
1 reply

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tonyscott

15 years ago

Originally Posted by baumann93

My preference is to do .htaccess redirects. Very simple to implement.

Hi Baumann93,

Would it be very simple to explain?

Tony

Thanks
1 reply

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baumann93

15 years ago

Originally Posted by tonyscott

Hi Baumann93,

Would it be very simple to explain?

Tony

Sure, you need to have access to the .htaccess and then have something like this it it:

Options +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^ts/?$ http://www.somedomain.com/go.cgi?XXXXXX[NC,R=301,L]

this would allow you to use http://www.yourdomain.com/ts/ to send people to the link you are promoting. I usually do not send people directly to the aff links, I send them to the squeeze pages instead - grab their email address and then send them to the aff link.

Thanks
1 reply

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Neil Morgan

15 years ago

I just do simple PHP redirects.

Silly example:

http://www.autoresponseplus.com/google

I create a directory on my site called 'google' and create a file in it called index.php that contains the following PHP code:

<?php
Header("Location: http://www.google.com");
exit;
?>

Job done.

Cheers,

Neil

Thanks
1 reply

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baumann93

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Neil Morgan

I just do simple PHP redirects.

Silly example:

Follow Up Autoresponder and Mailing List Software - AutoResponse Plus

I create a directory on my site called 'google' and create a file in it called index.php that contains the following PHP code:

<?php
Header("Location: http://www.google.com");
exit;
?>

Job done.

Cheers,

Neil

Don't you also need an .htaccess file in that directory that would make your index.php file a directory index page?

Thanks
1 reply

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xanol 15 years ago

Originally Posted by baumann93

Don't you also need an .htaccess file in that directory that would make your index.php file a directory index page?

Not necessarily, most hosting packages will configure apache to do this by default. But if you need it, it's:

DirectoryIndex index.php

You can also just put this in .htaccess to do the redirect:

Redirect 301 /somepage.html somesite.com

Arggg, can't post urls yet.
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- 1 reply
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- baumann93 15 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by xanol
  
  Not necessarily, most hosting packages will configure apache to do this by default.
  
  You are right, I forgot to configure this on my dedicated server... off to do it now.
  
  Thanks
  
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thatgirlJ 15 years ago

I LOVE Copywriter's Toolkit - CloakMedic Affiliate Link Cloaker It's all I use
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- Neil Morgan 15 years ago
  
  Don't you also need an .htaccess file in that directory that would make your index.php file a directory index page?
  
  Xanol beat me to it but many servers have this as a default, notably the ubiquitous CPanel.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Neil
  
  Thanks
  
  Signature
  
  Easy email marketing automation without moving your lists.
  
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guruwill 15 years ago

Well - that's my two main issues sorted now - thanks to all the help from you guys.

Planning to have two products launched and running by the end of November. Can't wait!

Will
- Thanks
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ragnartm 15 years ago
Having a link that looks something like Your Page.com or Your Page.com is recommended simply because it looks lot more appealing than the standard clickbank and other affiliate urls.

You can achieve this by creating a folder called likes or recommends or something else on your website, and then create the folder with the name of the ebook, product, membership site or service, and lastly create a html page called index.html that has this code in between the "Having a link that looks something like Your Page.com or Your Page.com is recommended and you can achieve this by creating a folder called likes or recommends or something else on your website, and then create the folder with the name of the ebook, product, membership site or service.

Lastly create a html page called index.html that has this code in between the add < before meta and > after the last "
Code:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.reccomendedebookormembershipsite.com">
- Thanks
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AdamLCasey 14 years ago

Thanks Jared I've implemented yours and it's working a treat.
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- RonSolo 14 years ago
  
  Pardon my newbie question, but I want to run banner ads (on my site) that are provided by ad networks, like LinkShare. The banner ad has its own code including the offer ID and affiliate ID and the target URL goes to the advertiser's site.
  
  How exactly can I cloak the code for the link in the banner ad?
  
  Thank you,
  Ron
  
  Thanks
  
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Do you have a preference for cloaking affiliate links? What is it, why and how do you do it?

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