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Link Cloaking - why and how?

by Nick Lawless
9 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
Hi

I recently reviewed my first affiliate product (starts as a free product and there is an OTO). I refer to the free product.

I understand I should cloak the link because a) it means I can change the product it points to later if I want without having to change all the individual links on my site, b) it looks more professional C) it stops people stealing (but I dont understand how that works??) Can anyone explain benefits of cloaking?

But I tried to cloak my link but it didn't work. This is what I did.

1. Used program CLOAKURL. Entered the url and it created a HTML page.

2. I put that page under a folder named "likes" in my "public" folder on my webpage.

3. I made sure the page created by CLOAKURL didn't have any spaces. Eg unreported_marketing.html as I heard that will stop links working.

4. Then I typed the link in but it went to the 404 error page!

I dunno where I went wrong?? Any help?

Thanks Nick
#cloaking #link
  • Profile picture of the author johnnyN
    you using wordpress?
    there are simpler cloaking plugins.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnnyN
    oh to answer your question about benefits.
    for me the main one was to stop people taking affiliate commissions. If someone understands how affiliate links work... then someone sees that the link is an affiliate link, some people will remove your affiliate code and insert their own. So you lose the sale, even tho you should have got it.

    The problem with most cloaking methods is that people who know about affiliates, also know about cloaking, and they can see when a link is /likes/product.html , they know it is a cloaked affiliate link.
    (there are 2 that I know of that avoid this problem).
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    • Profile picture of the author Nick Lawless
      Originally Posted by johnnyN View Post

      oh to answer your question about benefits.
      for me the main one was to stop people taking affiliate commissions. If someone understands how affiliate links work... then someone sees that the link is an affiliate link, some people will remove your affiliate code and insert their own. So you lose the sale, even tho you should have got it.

      The problem with most cloaking methods is that people who know about affiliates, also know about cloaking, and they can see when a link is /likes/product.html , they know it is a cloaked affiliate link.
      (there are 2 that I know of that avoid this problem).

      Thanks Johnny,
      there are 2 of what that avoid the problem?

      and can you recommend the wordpress plugins? Yes I used wordpress.

      Thanks
      Nick
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  • Profile picture of the author jefftardif
    I use to do my URL cloaking myself... It's really simple.

    -Add a folder to yourwebsite to have something like www.mywebiste.com/productname/

    -In that folder, add an index.html page. This is a plain html page with a meta in the header:

    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://theproduct.com/">

    You can even add a Google Analytics code in this page.

    People clicking on a link to www.mywebiste.com/productname/ will be redirected to theproduct.com.
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    Jeff Tardif - [WSO] http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...of-inside.html

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    • Profile picture of the author Nick Lawless
      Originally Posted by jefftardif View Post

      I use to do my URL cloaking myself... It's really simple.

      -Add a folder to yourwebsite to have something like www.mywebiste.com/productname/

      -In that folder, add an index.html page. This is a plain html page with a meta in the header:

      <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://theproduct.com/">

      You can even add a Google Analytics code in this page.

      People clicking on a link to www.mywebiste.com/productname/ will be redirected to theproduct.com.
      Thanks Jeff...

      This may seem silly but how do I make this HTML page?? Anyone?:confused:
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  • Profile picture of the author ianwicks
    Nick, I will do it for you, then show you want I did ok
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    • Profile picture of the author Nick Lawless
      Originally Posted by ianwicks View Post

      Nick, I will do it for you, then show you want I did ok
      Thanks Ian ...

      For everyone elses benefit Ian ended up linking me to this guys video. I hope it lets me insert links now...

      Anyway I'll try it out and let you kow if it works for me!


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  • Profile picture of the author angelahodgins2011
    • First create a folder called likes. [you could choose to use recommends or goto or whatever else you want to appear after your domain name]
    • add this line in your meta tag: "url=youraffiliatelink"
    • Save it index.html file in a folder within the likes folder
    • Name the new folder the name you want to call the product. So if you are promoting a link cloaker you could call that folder linkcloaker.
    • Upload the likes folder with it's contained folder to your hosting account

    And you are done.

    What you have just done is set up a webpage on your website called mydomain/likes/productname which redirects to your affiliate URL.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nick Lawless
    Ok that video was great and shows you how to set it up easily.

    Only thing is when I put the link into a word doc it will open in internet explore but won't open in Chrome. Anyone know why?
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