What I call a “nice” link is actually a form of a cloaked link that serves a twofold purpose - to hide your affiliate id and to make the link look less like a blatant advertisement.
You’ve probably seen links like these - mydomain.com/recommends/Product. Certainly looks better than an obvious affiliate link, doesn’t it? Numerous marketers claim that such cloaked links increase clickthroughs and are perceived as less ’salesy’ than standard links. Cloaked links also help reduce commission theft, as your actual URL isn’t in plain view.
Today I’m going to tell you about several ways to create “nice” cloaked links. To use them you’ll need a web host (preferably with your own domain name) that supports PHP and (for the more advanced kinds of links) mod_rewrite. Most hosting providers have these installed.
Creating a Simple Cloaked Link
The simplest kind of a cloaked link is a PHP file that redirects the visitor to your affiliate link. Start up your favorite text editor (Notepad will do) and copy & paste this code into it :
<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://AFFILIATE.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net/");
exit();
?>
Replace the link with your own and save the file as <someproduct>.php (use a descriptive name with no spaces and special symbols; example - CovertLinks.php).
Now create a new directory on your web server where you will store the cloaked links. Name this directory “recommends” (or use any name that looks good to you) . Put the file there, and your’re done! Now you can send people to your affiliate link by giving them the URL www.yourdomain.com/yourdirectory/yourfile.php
Creating Better Cloaked Links
The previous method requires that you create a new file for each link, which seems like unnecessary work. The link would probably look better without the “.php” extension, too. So, here’s another - slightly better - method.
You’ll need to create two files and put them in the “recommends” (or whatever name you used) directory. The first file should be named .htaccess and contain this :
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?site=$1 [L]
Next, create a file named index.php and put it in the same directory :
<?php
$links=array(
'SomeSite' => 'http://affiliate.vendor.hop.clickbank.net/',
'AnotherSite' => 'http://affiliate.avendor.hop.clickbank.net/',
'YetAnotherSite' => 'http://affiliate.productx.hop.clickbank.net/'
);
if(isset($_GET['site']) && isset($links[$_GET['site']])){
//site found - redirect
header(’Location: ‘.$links[$_GET['site']]);
} else {
//site not found - send to an error page (or use a different URL)
header(’Location: error.html’);
};
exit();
?>
There is a list of links in the code above, in the form name => ‘link’. What you need to do is place your links in this list. “Name” is what you’d want to write after “recommends”, and ‘link’ is, obviously, your affiliate link. Also note that after each entry there is a comma, except the last one.
After you’ve added your links and uploaded both files to your host, you will be able to use “nice” links in your e-mails and other promotions, like this -
me.com/recommends/xyz
You can later add new links just by editing the index.php file as explained above. You can also mix this method with the previous one.
Using CBTool “Nice Links”
CBTool has a “Nice links” feature that plugs into the keyword tracking script, meaning you will also know how many times your link was clicked. Unlike the previous methods, there is no need to edit any files - just download the script and place it on your server. New links are created as tracking campaigns in CBTool. Read the full description on CBTool site (you need to be logged in to access that page). At the moment this only works for ClickBank hoplinks. Oh yeah, I almost forgot - the CBTool service is free.
Using Commercial Redirectors and Link Cloakers
There’s a bunch of paid-for scripts and utilities on the market. Often all they have is a nice user interface built on top of the first two methods described above, possibly with database integration. One that caught my eye is the Covert Affiliate Links product, you might want to check it out.
In Conclusion
So, that’s one way of cloaking your affiliate links - using PHP scripts to redirect the user. These are often used to hide affiliate links in e-mails or redirect domains (just use the “simple” method, name the file “index.php” and put it in the root directory of your domain). Next week I’m going to discuss other cloaking methods - frames, encrypted JavaScript, and more - which are useful in different situations.
See you later 
White Shadow :: May.18.2007 ::
Tips & Tricks ::
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