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

by guruwill
15 replies
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
  • Profile picture of the author xanol
    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.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
      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
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      P.S.

      Join The Future: Telekinetic Marketing

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  • Profile picture of the author baumann93
    My preference is to do .htaccess redirects. Very simple to implement.
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    • Profile picture of the author tonyscott
      Originally Posted by baumann93 View Post

      My preference is to do .htaccess redirects. Very simple to implement.
      Hi Baumann93,

      Would it be very simple to explain?

      Tony
      Signature
      Free Listbuilding Course
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      • Profile picture of the author baumann93
        Originally Posted by tonyscott View Post

        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.
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        • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
          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
          Signature

          Easy email marketing automation without moving your lists.

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          • Profile picture of the author baumann93
            Originally Posted by Neil Morgan View Post

            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?
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            • Profile picture of the author xanol
              Originally Posted by baumann93 View Post

              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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              • Profile picture of the author baumann93
                Originally Posted by xanol View Post

                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.
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  • Profile picture of the author thatgirlJ
    I LOVE Copywriter's Toolkit - CloakMedic Affiliate Link Cloaker It's all I use
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    • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
      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
      Signature

      Easy email marketing automation without moving your lists.

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  • Profile picture of the author guruwill
    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
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  • Profile picture of the author ragnartm
    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">
    Signature

    Ragnar.

    Quality over quantity. Hire me to write highly shareable, user focused blog posts or articles.

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  • Profile picture of the author AdamLCasey
    Thanks Jared I've implemented yours and it's working a treat.
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    Hello, are you offering SEO sevices? You need my awesome SEO company logo: WebRehab SEO Company Logo

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    • Profile picture of the author RonSolo
      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
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