How to cloak your links
November 8, 2008 | Posted by Cassidy A common discussion on the net is “How do I hide my affiliate links to protect them from being hijacked or having my commission stolen?”
There are quite a few easy ways to do it.
Redirection
A very secure way to do it is via redirection. You need to dedicate a domain to do that. I’ll give an example for godaddy using “mythrowaway.info” as the spare domain (We are running a $1.99 first year special on .info domains at http://jiffyhosting.com)
- Go to the domain manager in your account a godaddy (or http://jiffyhosting.com where you pay less and I make a few cents).
- Select the domain you are using for the forward.
- Click on the Forward bar.
- Check off enable forwarding.
- In the forward to: box fill in your affiliate link e.g.: http://yourclickbankid.target.clickbank.net
- Focus the dot on 302 moved temporarily
- Click on masking.
- In the Masked title box fill in what you want displayed in the url title bar for the user who clicks on your link.
- Use the next method to further obfuscate what you are doing.
- Set up your outbound link to send your customer to mythrowaway.info
If you don’t want to use the extra domain an easy way that requires your host to allow php (which nearly all do)
Quick and Easy PHP
Works fine alone or use with redirection
1. Create a php file call it something meaningful, I’ll use “shiphimtospend.php” for this example.
2.
3. Upload that file to your website ( I keep all files like that and I have a few in its own subdirectory: /public_html/go )
4. insert the target for the link link on your webpage as <a href=”/go/shiphimtospend.php”>Go here for your deal
5. I have a file here for you if you prefer to cut and paste, use your browser back button to return.
There’s an example of how I use it on this page: http://incomemobility.com/2008/11/overnight-cash-released-by-adeel-chowdhry/
Tiny URL
Another choice would be to use http://tinyurl, howeverI have seen a comment or two about people being concerned about clicking on a tinytul link because you do not know where tinyurl is going to send you.
A Final Note And The Most Important
When you are all done setting up whatever your choice is, check it out and make sure it works. If it’s clickbank, follow it through to the payment page and make sure that at the bottom it says “affiliate=yourid”.
Categories: Affiliate Marketing, Website Tips | 
Tags: affiliate links, income, jiffyhosting.com, redirection | 
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