Cloaking Affiliate Links Easily - Step By Step Instructions

by Marksv

Posted: 15 years ago 20 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Hey guys,

I just made this new post on my blog and I thought I'd share it here as well...

I like this method of cloaking as it's really easy and quick to implement...

Enjoy and press the thanks button if it helped..

Mark

--------------------------------------------

Cloaking your affiliate links is a common practice in affiliate marketing and is very useful in many different areas of your promotions.

A regular affiliate link looks unattractive and can lower your clickthrough rate.

Besides using a cloaked affiliate link on your own site, it’s also useful to use it in an email message to your list.

Here is how you can easily cloak your affiliate links for all of your promotions.

Just to make sure I give proper credit, I picked up this method from huzzer.com…

Cloacking affiliate links:

1) Open your notepad or plain text program.

2) Write the code below in the new document:
<?PHP

Header("Location: AFFILIATE LINK GOES HERE");
Exit;

?> 3) Save the file as index.php and make sure that for the ‘Save as type’ section, you choose ‘All Files’ instead of ‘Text Documents’.

4) Go to your cpanel and in your main site folder create a new folder - rename the new folder to ‘recommends’

5) In the new ‘recommends’ folder, create a subfolder and rename it to the product you are recommending. (IE. if I wanted to promote Traffic Loophole, I would name my sub-folder something like ‘trafficloophole’)

6) Finally, upload the index.php file you created to the subfolder you created (trafficloophole)

7) I like to use all lower-case letters when naming my file and folder names to keep it simple…

That’s it, you’re all done!

Now whenever someone goes to http://www.yoursitename.com/recommends/trafficloophole they will be redirected to your affiliate link and you will get your affiliate commission…

You can then direct people to this cloaked link in both your site’s content and in your email campaign…

As a sidenote, I used to use the pretty link wordpress plugin to cloak my links, but I ended up prefering this method instead…

jamesrich1 15 years ago

Great post I am going to save this in a notepad and use it. I am going to need this.
- Thanks
- 1 reply
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- MarketingTorch 15 years ago
  
  Mark, that is probably the best description I've ever read of the php redirect process! Props, man!
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  Steve Wells 15 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by MarketingTorch
  
  Mark, that is probably the best description I've ever read of the php redirect process! Props, man!
  
  Yep, for some reason people make it so complicated when it's really not at all....
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  themanflint 15 years ago
  
  Great information you have supplied, i also read your blog post on getting first page rankings. This is pure gold, i think you could make WSO out of this information(with a bit more content). Great Stuff
  
  Thanks
  
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Andrea Wilson 15 years ago

How awesome that I understand the process even though i am far from being a hands-on wordpress girl. There cant be any other process that will be simpler than this!

Andrea
- Thanks
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Joe J 15 years ago

Thanks Mark, this will get me one step closer to properly setting up my site !
- Thanks
- 1 reply
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- Marksv 15 years ago
  
  Happy to help!
  
  Thanks
  
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Todor Pr

15 years ago

Yes, really helpful...

My additional advice: instead of index.php, it's better if you name the file your-product.php

P.S. I also read somewhere that it's better if you make your affiliate link in the php file - nofollow... is it true?

Thanks
1 reply

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Marksv

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Todor Pr

Hey Todor,

I actually prefer to do it as index.php because the link then looks cleaner...

IE. www.yoursitename.com/recommends/trafficloophole

VS

http://www.yoursitename.com/recommen...icloophole.php

Just my personal preference...

As for nofollowing that link, I haven't thought about it, but I guess you would do it whenever you use that link on your site on a case by case basis...

Mark

Thanks
1 reply

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Todor Pr 15 years ago

Hei Mark,

You are right!

I haven't assumed that leaving the file index.php, it becomes invisible and you just have to point to the folder this file is located and should NOT to type it in the URL.

Great!
- Thanks
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ValentinJed 15 years ago

I like to use the Pretty Link WordPress plugin. Works cool. Just google for pretty link and you will find it.
- [ 1 ] Thanks
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groceryalerts 15 years ago

Forget extra plugins - this is an easy way to solve a problem.

I was overcomplicating it before.
- Thanks
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Fazal Mayar 15 years ago

thats amazing but you can also use an affiliate link cloaker plugin to cloak your links.I recommend Link Hopper but if you got some skills, you can do like the OP. Props to you for the tips.
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Carol_A 15 years ago

HEADS UP:

A glitch that I have found is that the php script interferes with AWeber tracking clicks.

I sent an email last week with an affiliate offer using the php in both the HTML and plain text emails.

The HTML emails were not tracked for clicks in AW, and their reason was:

"As our click tracking is only set to track the URL that the link directs to, we cannot guarantee the tracking of a re-direct or affiliate link that you use."

So, now I use the redirect php in the plain text, but the Clickbank encrypted full link in the HTML and allow AW to convert it.

Disappointed can't use the php in HTML, but it tracks the clicks perfectly this way.

Hope to help.
- Thanks
- 1 reply
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- Desh 15 years ago
  
  Thanks that was a very useful post,but I just ran into a problem using it on my wp blog, i keep getting 404 error, is it something to do with htaccess that wp writes? how can i solve it?
  any help will be much appreciated.
  
  Thanks
  
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RSingha 15 years ago

How do you track clicks to the redirect links?
- Thanks
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fanimal 15 years ago

Sounds like pretty good option. I always used cloaking where the redirect would be encoded in html file. But now Eset and few other too sensitive antiviruses detect in the encoded code trojan. This looks much safer.
- Thanks
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UMS 15 years ago

Originally Posted by Marksv

As a sidenote, I used to use the pretty link wordpress plugin to cloak my links, but I ended up prefering this method instead...

Why go through all that effort when you can use Pretty Link? It's much easier to use Pretty Link, plus you get the benefit of tracking which is incredibly useful to see which affiliate links are working the best.

Additionally you have various options for the redirects and nofollow settings.
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uleesgold Banned 15 years ago

As an alternative to a user getting redirected right away, you could put the affiliate link inside of an iFrame on your website or blog and set the width / height zero. (visual example provided and more.)

I used to wonder why most affiliate networks make us use funky looking links. I think this is to protect the company's reputation against spam -
If an affiliate decides to spam an affiliate link , he mostly just makes himself look bad because all the company needs to do is cancel the affiliate's account to protect their reputation.
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Bradley J Anderson 15 years ago

I use this method of redirect, as well. There is a Warrior Link Cloaker somewhere on the forum that I used to use, but this is a much simpler method, imo.
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Cloaking Affiliate Links Easily - Step By Step Instructions

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