Link Cloaking with Shorteners?

[markan]

Hi there

I'm well on my way, starting now with affiliate stuff after HubPages didn't turn out too well, and I'd like to know how I can cloak my affiliate links easily and for free? I thought about using tinyurl or similar url shorteners. Does that do the trick?

Oh yeah, I'd also like to know if using tinyurl actually could also spare me the work of putting "nofollow" in the affiliate links and links to other pages? Or is tinyurl still a valid backlink in google's eyes?

[Phillip]

If you have your own domains to use, I'd go with a 303 redirect. Also places like ezinearticles don't let you use direct affiliate links - don't know about shorteners.

If you have wordpress there is an easy to use 303 redirect plugin - just search for it with that name. You can do this from cPanel as well.

[Dave1]

Do you think link cloaking is needed?

Your average Joe is not going to know the difference and those already in the game will assume links are aff if you aren't just upfront and tell them anyway.

I have always wondered if it was worth the effort. Can't say not cloaking has stopped me progressing but would I have made more? Who knows?

[Billy Blue Hat]

EZA do allow you to cloak/shorten your links in the resource box, but I've found that affiliate links don't convert too well directly from the site. If you're cloaking to your own site, you will of course throw away the juice you get, as Google isn't going to pass it on via a cloak/shortner.

More importantly though, you don't own the cloaking or shortening service, so if they decide they don't like your link, or the company goes under/is bought/stops existing/dies, you are properly up the creek without a paddle.

I would have thought it would be better to use article marketing to promote your own landing site which then you can use to convert via affiliate links (allows you track who's coming and going much better, and run per-country affiliate offers).

[Phillip]

Something that I have been always interested in is creating your own landing/presell page, as everyone and their dog are saying that it will increase the conversion rates.

I don't care about conversion rates since they don't make me money - sales do! Do you have to be a copywriting genius to actually increase the raw sales or does the conversion rate just increase as people who aren't that intrested in buying won't click the affiliate link? To me it basically just sounds like artificially increasing the conversion to make the affiliate product/program seem better.

[Tel]

If you really must cloak aff links, you can easily set up some pages on your own domain to do that for you and negate using a third party shortener. Here's how:

Let's assume you want to promote a crapbank product called "easynoobscam" or whatever.

Get your affiliate link from crapbank first

Create a basic text file, call it index.php

Insert this text in there:

<?php
header("Location: http://youraffiliatelink.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=yourtrackingcode"); 
?>

Obviously put your own hoplink and tracking code in there

On your server, via ftp, create a folder in the root directory (public/html/) and call it something like:

easynoobscam

or if you want a short url, just call it something like:

a1

upload the index.php file into the new folder you just created via ftp. That's it.

Voila, you now have a cloaked aff link that looks like:

h**p://yoursite.com/easynoobscam

or

h**p://yoursite.com/a1

You can test it out by putting the link in a blog sidebar and then clicking the link to see where it takes you. The sales page for your chosen aff product should open and your aff link will be tracked.

You can use that kind of cloaked aff link at ezine if you must, but SirCaptain's suggestion that you send the ezine link to your own sales/landing page is infinitely preferable for lots of reasons.

[markan]

Thanks for the answers, however I think I found a solution that worked easily enough, I'm using Yourls, custom URL shortener service which can be installed in about 5 minutes on your own domain and hosting. I used an old domain of mine for the service, so now I have complete control over it, and I can use it to cloak my links easily via a bookmarklet.

I primarily now do cloaking because I don't need every noob finding all my sites by looking for my affiliate link usernames (which tend to be in the URL) on Google. And I don't want to give link juice to my competitors so I can still link to them with cloaked links for informational purposed without helping them rank.

[Phillip]

I primarily now do cloaking because I don't need every noob finding all my sites by looking for my affiliate link usernames (which tend to be in the URL) on Google. And I don't want to give link juice to my competitors so I can still link to them with cloaked links for informational purposed without helping them rank.

... You can also use the rel="nofollow" tag...

[markan]

Yes nofollow can also be used but just think about how easy it is in most Web-Design programs it is to insert a link without looking at HTML, and as soon as you need a nofollow, you've got to open up the text editor, find the link in the HTML code, apply nofollow and then make sure you didn't forget one. Using a cloaked url just seems a lot easier...

[JackBloodstone]

If you really must cloak aff links, you can easily set up some pages on your own domain to do that for you and negate using a third party shortener. Here's how:

Let's assume you want to promote a crapbank product called "easynoobscam" or whatever.

Get your affiliate link from crapbank first

Create a basic text file, call it index.php

Insert this text in there:

<?php
header("Location: http://youraffiliatelink.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=yourtrackingcode"); 
?>

Obviously put your own hoplink and tracking code in there

On your server, via ftp, create a folder in the root directory (public/html/) and call it something like:

easynoobscam

or if you want a short url, just call it something like:

a1

upload the index.php file into the new folder you just created via ftp. That's it.

Voila, you now have a cloaked aff link that looks like:

h**p://yoursite.com/easynoobscam

or

h**p://yoursite.com/a1

You can test it out by putting the link in a blog sidebar and then clicking the link to see where it takes you. The sales page for your chosen aff product should open and your aff link will be tracked.

You can use that kind of cloaked aff link at ezine if you must, but SirCaptain's suggestion that you send the ezine link to your own sales/landing page is infinitely preferable for lots of reasons.

I have problem with this
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/***/public_html/test/index.php:3) in /home/***/public_html/test/index.php on line 4

is there anyone can help me.. I am using wordpress