Affiliate link cloaking – Protect or hide your affiliate links.

May 23 2009

Posted by Webmasters-central.com as Internet Marketing

Protect your affiliate links so others can’t steal your affiliate commision. Why should you hide your affiliate links?

* Somehow people are less inclined to click on the affiliate links.

And there will be more chances of copying and pasting the first part of URL in to their browser. This certainly affects your click throughs and your affiliate commission.

http://www.product.com/affiliateid?12345

http://www.product.com/product.html

Which will get more click throughs? Certainly the second one. It looks like the product link is so integrated in to your site. People think that is one of your products.

Here are four methods that you can use to cover your affiliate links and get big affiliate checks.

METHOD ONE: By creating simple redirecting pages:

This method is simple but not feasible if you are promoting many products.

1. Open your notepad or html editor.

2. Copy and paste this code in your notepad and save as ‘.html’ file with a catchy name. Change the url to your affiliate url.



<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html>

<head>

<title>Redirecting to youraffiliatesite.com ...</title>

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.youraffiliate-link-here">

</head>

<body>

<p>You will be redirected to youraffiliatesite.com ...

</p>

</body>

</html>

Tip: Fifth line of this code (”refresh” metatag) should be in a SINGLE line.

3. Upload this file to your server. Send this URL in your emails or keep on your website.

4. When your subscriber or visitor clicks on the link they will be redirected to your affiliate page.

METHOD TWO: A cool Html Trick that works on your webpages:

Usually you will keep your links in the following format -



<a href="http://www.youraffiliate-link.com">click here</a>

When your visitor keeps their cursor on the above link, he will see your long affiliate link in the Taskbar.

So instead of above simple direct href link, you can keep this code -



<a href="http://www.youraffiliate-link.com" onMouseOver= "window.status='your text here!'; return true" onMouseOut= "window.status=''; return true">Click here</a>

Tip: Whole of the above line should be in a SINGLE line.

When your visitor keeps cursor on the link, he will see the text in the status bar.

METHOD THREE: Producing Frame pages:



<html>

 <head>

<title>your title</title>

</head>

<frameset rows="20%,*" border=0>

<frame name="top" src="http://www.yoursite.com/yourlinks.htm" marginwidth="10" marginheight="10" scrolling="Auto" frameborder="no" noresize>

 <frame name="bottom" src="http://www.affiliatesite.com/youraffid?12345" marginwidth="10" marginheight="10" scrolling="Auto" frameborder="no" noresize> <noframes>

<body>

<p>This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.</p>

</body>

</noframes>

</frameset>

</html>

The address bar shows the url of the top page and if your visitor clicks on the link he will be shown your affiliate links in bottom frame.

You can also use cgi scripts to make this happen .

Basically these scripts retain a link for your site but your visitor goes to your affiliate site. He can come back to your site anytime by clicking on the links in the top frame.

But many search engine optimization experts think that frames are not adviced for better search engine indexing.

METHOD FOUR: Affiliate link cloaker:

* Cloaks, Conceals and Hides Your REAL Affiliate Links
* Looks Like The Affiliate Site Is On YOUR Site
* Securely Promote ANY ClickBank Merchant Product
* Adds Security To Your Affiliate Promotions