How to Cloak Link for Affiliate Marketing Success?

Hello Everyone,

I know you’ve heard the term “Link Cloaking” many times and it’s the story behind a successful affiliate marketing campaign.

Why? Let me introduce:

What is link cloaking?

Link cloaking means masking a link with another link. In affiliate marketing, Link cloaking means to hide the original link (Affiliate URL) with another another link.

Why you should cloak your affiliate link?

You should cloak your affiliate link for couple of reasons:

• The Typical affiliate link looks crazy like this one:

People don’t want to click through this crazy link. So, you’re going to loss your affiliate commission.

• Affiliate Link comes with your affiliate ID and product ID, like this one:

So, there is a risk of being hijacked your affiliate commissions.

• Have you noticed how long your affiliate link is! So, it is not easy to remember your affiliate link (unless your memory is as sharp as computer!)

So, if you can’t remember your affiliate link, how will you use it further?

Every time log in your affiliate account and check the link.

How time killing it is!

Ohh………. STOP STOP….. Don’t tell me anymore about the problem, Please show me the solution.

OK…….. Let’s Start:

How to cloak affiliate link?

Fortunately, there are couple of ways to cloak a link.

• URL Shortener: You can shorten your affiliate link with URL shortener tools like TinyURL, Bit.ly. If you’re a Twitter user, you should know how to shorten link with these tool. Thanks Twitter!

The Pros: It makes your link short and easy to memorize. So, you can it further when you need it and it also keeps your link secure, nobody will know about your affiliate ID or product ID.

The Cons: People don’t want to click through this link, because most of the spammer’s use this method. You know URL shortener service’s are free to use and all of your shortened link’s are hosted on it’s server. So, if their server go down or they stop their service, what will happen? All of your efforts will be useless and the links will be appear as broken link. So, it will hurt in your SEO ranking.

• Cloaking Link with PHP: I’ve no knowledge about PHP, so don’t offer me it!

Nope, it is not so complex as you think, if you can just copy-paste and upload files on your server, you can do it.

Really! How?

Just copy the following code and paste it on Notepad:

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK" );
?>

Replace “YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK” with your affiliate link.

Then Save it with something.php (you can replace “something” with your desired name).

Now, log in your hosting account and create a new directory called “go”, “partner” or “affiliate”, whatever you like. Most of the people use “go” as the directory name.

Then upload the PHP file into the directory. Now the PHP file will be your targeted URL.

It should be like: http://eunusat.com/go/hostgator.php

The Pros: It keeps your affiliate link secure and ensure about your commission and also easy to remember (the URL). As it is hosted in your hosting account, so don’t have to think about broken link.

The Cons:

Every time you want to create a new link, you’ve to create and upload a new PHP file.

• Cloak Link with server redirection: If you’re using Hostgator Hosting (use coupon code: ‘eunushosen’ for $9.94 less), you can make a url redirection from your Cpanel. Login to your Cpanel and follow the image bellow.

I’m wordpress Blogger, any plugin?

O yeah, Happy to see in wordpress!

I’m also a wordpress user and there are a couple of plugin’s to cloak link. Among these plugin’s I love Pretty Link wordpress plugin, because It is hassle free and free of cost. With this plugin you can cloak link directly from your admin dashboard. Like the image bellow:

There is a option galore and you can track each and every hit’s:

After using this plugin, I’ve gotten really a better result:

Have your Say?

Leave a comment bellow. If you have any question on your mind, don’t hesitate to ask me.

To your Success 2010

Eunus Hosen

Tagged as: affiliate link cloaking, affiliate marketing success, cloak link, HTML link cloaking, PHP link cloaking