A simple way to cloak your links

Affiliate 101

It’s always a good idea to hide, redirect, cloak, mask (whatever you want to call it) your affiliate links on your landing pages. There are tons of ways to do this, but here is one of the quickest and easiest methods.

1. Download this sample file, which uses a php redirect header. In this example it is called link.php.

2. Change the sample link in the file to your own link, rename the file whatever you would like with a .php extension.

3. Upload this file to your web server. In this example say it’s a domain called www.money.com

4. Now you can use the link www.money.com/link.php to call the affilate link that you placed in the simple php file.

It doesn’t get any easier than that.

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Posted in Affiliate 101, Affiliate Marketing by Chad on 09|04|07
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18 Comments »

Comment by Tim
2007-09-04 23:07:46

Chad,

Thanks a lot for this! I have found this to be a major hassle at times. So, this method does not require .htaccess redirects?

Do you think this really saves you from Google slaps?

Thanks again,
Tim

 
Comment by Chad
2007-09-05 17:09:24

No .htaccess required. It’s straight php.

As far as Google slaps… It can’t hurt!

 
Comment by Webd360
2007-09-22 16:59:24

thanks, I’ve been looking for something like this.

 
2007-10-01 21:24:22

[...] Creating an Adwords-Ready Landing Page Landing Page Quality Score Cloaking Affiliate Links [...]

 
Comment by Grant
2007-11-05 16:18:41

Hi

How would you use this in Frontpage 2003?

Thanks
Grant

 
Comment by James
2007-12-23 09:05:14

Chad,

Thanks for this – it’s the simplest one I’ve seen. And KISS is my motto :-)

Cheers!

 
Comment by Long
2007-12-25 07:50:47

Chad,

You said “As far as Google slaps… It can’t hurt!”

Noob Question: Are you implying that this might keep you from getting google slapped?

Thanks,

Long

 
Comment by andrew
2007-12-31 17:56:41

What if you have more than one aff link on a page say 5-10 that goes to different sites how is that done?

 
Comment by RichBeaver
2008-01-08 04:58:07

I’ve wrote a small article dedicated to easy cloaking methods using JavaScript and PHP for others that are not so good with programming
http://richbeaver.com/webmasters/link-cloaking-step-by-step-guide/

 
Comment by Frank
2008-02-24 21:56:55

Does this cloaking method hurt your quality score in adwords?

 
Comment by Jeff
2008-03-17 22:20:20

Cool, I’ve seen other methods of doing this, but this is the easiest. It’s just what I was looking for.

Thanks

 
Comment by Scott
2008-05-29 22:03:26

thats beautiful! Thanks for sharing

 
2008-06-01 10:59:35

[...] up and get ahead of the crowd. Creating an Adwords-Ready Landing Page Landing Page Quality Score Cloaking Affiliate Links Landing Page Keys to [...]

 
Comment by Tinx Money
2008-08-28 05:09:16

Have you tried prosper202 ? It comes with tracking and cloaking.
And I heard that simple cloaking doesn’t work with IE ?

 
Comment by Fix Pc Error
2008-10-24 04:46:15

Thx for the script!

 
Comment by grant
2009-03-21 00:07:48

Hi, what am i doing wrong, i used the exact same script but now when you click on the link it displays the php script on a blank page?

Comment by Christian Rodriguez
2009-11-03 22:02:31

No, he probably is running it on a server that doesn’t have PHP installed.

 
 
Comment by Donna
2009-07-18 00:05:23

Thanks for this simple, yet effective method. I use it for my CB paylinks too, that way people can’t glean your CB Nick from your bare payment link, either.

I did find out the hard way that when you use this method, make SURE you don’t leave any spaces at the top, say if you use notepad or your favorite text editor, do not leave a blank above the php code or it will not work at all.

That may be how Grant got his blank page?

HTH & have a great weekend,

Donna

 
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