Cloaking-RookieWebmaster.com How to Make Your Fortune Online

An Examination into Cloaking

Affiliate links are something we all have to live with in internet marketing, but unfortunately we sometimes find that unscrupulous people hijack them. Even if they don't hijack them, some people will just strip the affiliate part in order to deprive you of a commission. They don’t even save themselves any money or gain anything out of this other than some perverse pleasure in ripping someone off.

Whilst there are programs out there that will cloak your links and also track the click through, here's an easy way that you can employ on your own web site to both cloak your links and also improve the presentation of them.

There are other methods such as using Tiny URL. This method is not only effective, but also provides great presentation and a recommendation from you as the web site owner as well.

Let's assume that we are going to cloak the following link:-

http://www.the-greatest-product-ever.com/affiliate-area/start.php?offer=youraffiliate-id&pid=1

The first thing to note about this is that it is very long and ugly. Another danger with this link is that it could "wrap" in a text based email and lose its click through ability.

Open Notepad or a similar text editor or you can use Dreamweaver if it's configured to run php files because we are going to write a very simple and straightforward php file.

In your editor type the following on a blank page. That's very important. If you are using a HTML editor, make sure there is nothing on the page.

Insert Less Than Sign Here?php

header("Location:http://www.the-greatest-product-ever.com/affiliate-area/start.php?offer=youraffiliate-id&pid=1");

exit();

?Insert Greater Than Sign Here

That's it. Yes, it's as simple as that.

Now, save the file into a directory on your web site. You can use a sub-directory name "recommends" and upload the directory and file to your server.

The first thing to do now is to test the file to make sure it works as it should. Whatever you do, never send out an email or put a link on a page that hasn’t been tested.

In your url address bar type:- http://www.yourdomain.com/recommends/filename.php and it should take you direct to the page of the affiliate product that you are selling. It bypasses your site entirely so people don't see all the affiliate code in the php file.

Once you have tested the page and you are sure it works, you are ready to incorporate the page in an email to your list or even onto your web pages directly if you have done a product review or similar, but the link of course will be:-

http://www.yourdomain.com/recommends/filename.php

This looks so much nicer than a terribly long and convoluted filename and certainly much less secretive than a Tiny URL. It is also stating in the url that you "recommend" the site.

Let's look at another example.

For this to work, these are the requirements:

1) You must have your own domain name, eg. http://www.YourDomainName.com

2) You are able to create a HTML file eg. recommends.html

3) You are able to upload your file to your website with your domain name.

Here are the steps:

1) Use Notepad or your favorite HTML Editor (such as FrontPage or Nvu) and create a new HTML file.

For example, create a new file called “recommends.html”

2) Insert the following lines just before the /head HTML tag in your new file.

<!--

window.location="Your Affiliate Link URL";

// -->

</script>

3) Upload your file to your website with your domain name.

For example, your domain name is YourDomainName.com

Now, all you have to do is to promote this link in your marketing, such as website, emails, etc:

www.YourDomainName.com/recommends.html

Thus, when someone clicks the above link, it will redirect him or her to the company that markets this product. And now, the link looks much more presentable and professional.

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