AssociatePrograms.com

sir_serge · **Joined**: 06 Mar 2009 **Posts**: 50

Hey all,

How do I make a cloaked link to hide my affiliate link? I know of the tinyurl, but is there another way without having "tinyurl" in my url?

Thanks,
-Serge

AllanGardyne · Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 8:05 am Post subject:

Hi Serge, For years, I've been using .htaccess redirects. They produce nice neat URLs. You can see examples in my newsletter. One huge advantage is that if an affiliate program changes its tracking system, you can change dozens or even hundreds of links on a website simply by changing one line in a plain text file. And they're free. Smile

Another very good option is to use paid ad tracking software. As well as providing a redirect, it gives you useful stats.

A third option - NOT recommended - is to use third party sites which provide free redirect services. Imagine if you had dozens or hundreds of them in place on websites and perhaps in PDF reports you've written, and in published newsletters and then the company providing the free redirect service went out of business, or if the company's web host died. Don't take this totally unnecessary risk.
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InternetMarketing_IQ · **Joined**: 13 Aug 2006 **Posts**: 1138

This question is asked over and over. And the reality is it can actually hurt you if you do it wrong.

I don't mask/cloak many of my links... and when I do I use a commercial product that "Claims" to get around the pitfalls.

The primary reason I do it is link management. Like the htaccess (which is a great way but doesn't work properly with all software - FrontPage for example rewrites the .htaccess file each time you publish. Iknow it's an old product, but some people still use it.

Back to the reason. I can make a link like this

"http://www.mysite.com/shoes.html"

And when I want to switch out the link to another vendor I do not have to go back and fix all my links, I just upload a new shoes.html file. Done!

One last thing to consider is this (I actually just posted this on another forum about this topic):

"http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=digial+camera&x=0&y=0"

That is the link to Amazon's Digital Camera section. Do you think the average guy pays any attention to this? NO! They know they are on Amazon. So what if the above were an affiliate link? Would the average guy know it? Probably not.

The people who "steal" your commissions are not really stealing they are simply removing your code because they know how to do this. Happens a lot with products from clickbank. Kind of hard to steal an encoded CJ link.

Anyway there is some reason to be concerned with malware/spyware/adware... toolbars, cookie planters, and a whole host of other cheat methods. But honestly there isn't much you can do about those. The people planting those types of viral programs are bad guys, and you probably won't be able to beat them... even with products that claim they can.

So I'd give Alan's recommended method your most priority if you choose to cloak/mask.
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sir_serge · **Joined**: 06 Mar 2009 **Posts**: 50

Thanks for your help guys.

I guess the main reason I want to cloak my link is for cosmetic reasons (not too worried about people stealing my links).

So, if my links looks something like:

http://affiliate.vender.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=coolstuff

I prefer that is looks like:

http://coolstuff.com

I guess more people would click on the link if it looks like this, rather than a long link which might scare some people off.

Now, I am using http://tinyurl.com/coolstuff

Basically, I want to know how to make my clickbank hoplink look like my official site url.

Is .htaccess an easy way to accomplish this?

-Serge

AllanGardyne · Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 4:35 am Post subject:

If your website is called Example.com, you can use .htaccess redirects to create affiliate links that look like this...

sir_serge · **Joined**: 06 Mar 2009 **Posts**: 50

Thanks again for the reply.

What happens if I don't have a related website?

For example, let's imagine I want to create a google adwords campaign that directly links to the vendor's page (no pre-sell page). Let's say the vendor's site is www.coolstuff.com

I want to use my clickbank affiliate link, but I can't use www.coolstuff.com since google will only allow one URL at the same time and the vendor already has his google ad.

So, what I want to do is display www.VERYcoolstuff.com on my google ad which makes it look like I am the official site (bypassing the need to create a pre-sell page, and increasing my conversion rate on my adwords campaign).

Allan, based on your reply, I'm guessing the only way to do this is to buy a new domain name (www.VERYcoolstuff.com) and set up a redirect.

Is there any other way around this? Or will I need to buy a domain name for each affilate product I want to promote on google using direct linking?

-Serge

AllanGardyne · Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 10:23 pm Post subject:

Reena-SpeedPPC · **Joined**: 02 Jul 2008 **Posts**: 21

Hmmm, I think you'll run into Google's rule of having matching domains in both your display and destination URLs - basically to avoid misleading searchers, you should send them to a page with the same domain as what you advertised.

If you advertised VeryCoolStuff.com, you'd need to be sending visitors through to a page with that actual domain so you could certainly do that with a pre-sell page, but you couldn't do it legitimately with direct linking. Some affiliates may use iframing towards this end, but I wouldn't recommend it as it goes against the spirit of Google's guidelines.

sir_serge · **Joined**: 06 Mar 2009 **Posts**: 50

Reena, always a pleasure to hear from you Smile

Yes, I remember you mentioned to me about iframing in another post.

I found this example online:

http://www.JamesSHuggins.com/h/web1/cloak1.htm

If you click on this above link, it actually takes you to the amazon.com website, yet the display shows http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/web1/cloak1.htm

So, basically the merchant's site (amazon.com) url was changed to display his URL (http://www.JamesSHuggins.com/h/web1/cloak1.htm)

I'm guessing Google wouldn't have a problem with this since the display URL and destination are the same. Is this an example of iframing?

Seems to me that this would save a lot of time and would bypass the need for a pre-sell page. I'm guessing I could setup about 20 of these direct linking google adwords campaigns in about the same time it would take me to create 1 pre-sell page.

Surely, people must do this on google all the time?

(Note: I found the above link at http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/web1/affiliate_link_cloaker.htm)

Reena-SpeedPPC · **Joined**: 02 Jul 2008 **Posts**: 21

Hi Serge, yes this is an example of framing and yes, as mentioned some affiliates do use it at their own risk. Personally, I don't recommend it and I don't believe it's worth the risk (but that's just me). Following Google's quality guidelines is a much better long-term strategy Smile

The reason Google implemented the domain matching rule is so that searchers wouldn't be misled by clicking on an ad with a particular website address displayed, and then taken to a different site. Although in the example you've given the domains do match, it's not in the spirit of Google's guidelines (still misleading to Google's users) and it's using a method that is outside of Google's terms of service.

You can read Google's policy on Framing in the first section of their Affiliate Policy here:
https://adwords.google.com.au/support/bin/static.py?page=guidelines.cs&topic=9271&subtopic=9280

niche · **Joined**: 24 Jul 2008 **Posts**: 231

anthony2313 · **Joined**: 23 Jun 2009 **Posts**: 10 **Location**: NYC

you can take alook at software like adtrackz,

hypertracker they can cloak your links for you.

also you can go to godaddy and buy a .info for 99 cents

then you can forward and mask the link
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fanzia · **Joined**: 01 Jul 2009 **Posts**: 5

i am very thank full to you to informing me about that. it is so use full for me and for every one here.
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bobt12 · **Joined**: 03 Jul 2009 **Posts**: 3

Watch a lot of these Online url shorteners. Tinyurl in particular, they like to hijack links, and redirect YOUR traffic to their offers.

It's best to run your own script on your own host for this purpose.

Hope that helps.
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