Cloaking Affiliate Links

So much has been written about cloaking affiliate links and a lot of it is rubbish.

While researching the subject matter for this hub I came across all sorts of misleading or only partially complete or accurate information and it is easy to see why affiliates often end up tearing their hair out or wasting their time or money, or both.

My aim with this hub is to give a non technical straightforward summary of the "how to" aspects and cover as many options as possible, along with the resources to help you achieve the desired results.

I should start by saying that most of the opinions stated are my own and are based on my own personal experiences as an affiliate marketer. Not everyone agrees with me of course but hopefully this page will help you to make up your own mind on the issues being discussed.

Before going any further, is there really any point in cloaking affiliate links in the first place?

My opinion and answer on that question is an unequivocal "yes" but I know of some very successful marketers who claim to have run tests that proved to them that cloaked links performed no better than raw affiliate links. Without knowing the criteria of those tests it is impossible for me to draw much of a conclusion from them however. Let's just say that some affiliates will argue that it's all rather unnecessary.

This moves us on to the next oft debated point about cloaking an affiliate link; if you are proud of what you are promoting why do you need to attempt to disguise the fact that you are an affiliate and stand to earn a commission? Isn't that rather sneaky and dishonest?

In my opinion the people who make this argument are usually not that well informed. Cloaking an affiliate link is not all about trickery and/or deceit as these people seem to want to argue.

Cloaking has many benefits, not least of which is the ability to organize and maintain your affiliate marketing business and keep on top of maintaining hundreds or possibly thousands of links. It is not just about making links look pretty either, although again, that is another small benefit.

If you are marketing to a non internet marketing or technically savvy demographic, the issue of affiliate links is probably not something you need to care about too much because your customers are unlikely to even be aware that you are earning commissions on the products and services they buy through your link.

OK, enough opinion for the moment. Assuming you are here because you want to learn how to cloak your affiliate links, let's get to the meat of the issue and talk about how you can achieve it. There are plenty of options and hopefully one of these will be right for you.

I will deal with the free routes first because I maintained for a long time that I would never pay for a cloaking solution or software because most of them were worthless and could be had without paying a dime. I've since retracted that belief, but more of that later.

Third Party Web Based Services and Redirection

This category is mostly touted by newbies and people who have gleaned a little knowledge. They are also the only real option for anyone who does not have a domain or website of their own.

This is not to say that they should dismissed out of hand but if you are serious about marketing online, you should really have made the small investment in your own site as it will give you so many advantages and options.

With the advent of services likeTwitter, short redirect URL services have sprung up like weeds in a spring yard. The one to gain widespread fame initially was Tinyurl and many inexperienced marketers thought that this was the answer to their link cloaking prayers. The problem of course was that so many people began using the service for the purpose of redirecting affiliate links that it soon became as obvious as a raw affiliate link and thus was a self defeating and short lived solution. Revitalized by Twitter, this sort of service is still not the best way to go for affiliate marketing.

TinyURL was so badly affected by spammers abusing the service that it has been rendered useless for affiliate marketing - Google even built in a preview of TinyURL's into their Chrome browser that gives users a screen showing were the link redirects to and which looks awful to a visitor. That preview option came about after complaints from internet users who were often being redirected to malicious sites or sites containing things they really did not wish to view and as a result if you are using the service to shorten or disguise your links, a lot of users will never even visit the page you want them to. If you're still relying on it for any commercial purposes the best advice would be to find a better way, and quickly!!

(You should be aware that savvy Twittter users will probably be using tools like Power Twitter or Tweet Deck that will show them exactly what lies beneath short redirect URL's in any case).

There have been plenty of other services often pimped by users as the best thing since sliced bread, usually because they had become affiliates of said program themselves and would benefit from promoting it. The underlying problem with most of them is that their very names defeat one of the main purposes of cloaking by shouting to the rooftops that "this link cloaked by AcmeLinkCloaker....get yours here" and other stupid marketing fubars.

In all honesty, "cloaking" a link with a service that screams "cloaked link" is rather pointless and probably looks worse than sticking with the link the affiliate program doled out to you.

For those who have no option and want to use a third party service that costs nothing I have tried the offerings from both LeadsLeap and Offto both of which offer limited tracking facilities too. They are both services that offer more than link cloaking but of all the free services out there I think they are reasonable efforts and you might also like to consider ViralURL which has become very widely used in recent times.

However, ViralURL has been flagged by the SpybotS&D anti malware software and consequently, anyone using Spybot real time protection in conjunction with their browser will never see a ViralURL link unless they specifically elect to do so. As Spybot S&D has been downloaded literally millions of times, it's fair to say that a lot of machines out there are running it so it's a big problem for the redirection service. Why VirlURL has been flagged is hard to say, as it does nothing wrong and will not harm anyone's computer, but the folks at Spybot seem stubbornly blinkered and totally ignorant about affiliate marketing and link redirection and the reasons for it. Quite amazing really and I think ViralURL have good cause to sue them for their actions but it hasn't happened so I doubt it's going to. By keeping quiet about it though, ViralURL's users remain ignorant of the very real problem.

The Free Do It Yourself Link Cloaking Options (Hosting account required)

1) Manual PHP Redirects

Sounds scary but here's how easy it is. Firstly open a text editor such as Notepad or DocPad (far superior). Grab your affiliate URL and paste the following code into your text editor, replacing the link with your affiliate link of course.

<?php header('Location: http://www.whateveryouraffiliateurlis'); ?>

Save this file somewhere and name it "index.html"

Now go to your hosting account and create a new directory using a name relevant to the product or service you are promoting. For example: "widgetsales".

Then upload the index.html file you just created to your new directory. You can now use the link to this directory instead of your raw affiliate link i.e.

www.yourdomain.com/widgetsales/

NOTES. This method will still show the affiliate link in your visitor's browser address bar when they click through, so it's a basic/semi solution. It is also rather time consuming and even though it costs nothing there are better free solutions as you will see.

2) Redirecting Manually Using .htaccess

I've never personally favored or used this method because it's to much of a pain and I'm taking the easy way out by letting a couple of other people explain the details rather than typing them all out here.

It's free to do this yourself and for the required code and setup instructions you can find concise explanations at DotSauce and a slightly different variation at SEOZombie, or if you prefer video instructions you can visit Shawn Collins here on YouTube.

You will note that Shawn mentions a Wordpress plugin called Ninja Affiliate which comes from the MaxBlogPress stable of Wordpress plugins but before you decide to spend your money read on.

When it comes to Wordpress there are also free plugins available most of which can be found at the Wordpress Plugins Directory here.

NOTE: If you are using the .htaccess method or PHP I highly recommend that you do not use a directory or folder called "recommends" as part of your structure because it just screams "affiliate link here" and whichever marketer came up with the suggestion was, in my opinion, rather misguided.

3) Meta Refresh

Some people say this is the best method because unlike every other method your affiliate links will not drain page rank from your website or blog.

However, some SEO experts advocate the exact opposite and warn that using this method will result in pages being de-indexed due to it being a redirect method that was abused by spammers in the past.

I cannot say with any authority if this is a good method or not, I'm unsure which of the above claims is most accurate, and I've never employed it but here's how it is done:

b. Add the following line of code to the "head" of the document:

&ltmeta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http//www.youraffiliateURL?yourIDnumber">

c. Replace "http//www.youraffiliateURL?yourIDnumber" with your affiliate URL.

d. Name the page accordingly to reflect the affiliate program and upload the new page to your site and point that particular affiliate link to this page.

If you have joined a number of affiliate programs, you might like to create a new directory and add all these redirection pages to this new directory.

As far as the advantage of passing page rank goes, you can always add the rel=nofollow attribute to the links placed on your sites but it is suggested that every redirect that uses your own domain will leak juice to the site you are redirecting to. This is why some argue that this method is best because it does not pass any link juice or page rank. (If any SEO expert can clarify it would be appreciated).

4) Free Windows Link Cloaking Software

All those manual methods are well and good and will work fine but it sure is a lot of work, particularly if you have a lot of affiliate links. As I've already said, there are plenty of paid solutions but most of them do little more than you can achieve with Cloaker Buzz Elite which is free.

It also contains a lot more advanced features enabling you to set up both simple and advanced cloaking options, including setting cookies and offers full encryption of your links. If you are dead set against opting into another email list, you can get the software without optin through our Hosting and Marketing Toolbar too.

Cloaker Buzz Elite will do exactly what many $100 cloaking solutions will do so don't be fooled into buying something that you can have for free. There are few other Windows based software applications that can do a better job regardless of their price tags. If you are happy with a free solution this is the best you;ll find in my opinion.

I have used this software myself for a long time and never thought I would switch, and certainly not to a paid service but as time passed I continued to look for a better solution to my cloaking needs, which leads me, finally to our last options in the link cloaking arena.....

Paid Link Cloaking Solutions

If you are using Wordpress as a platform for your sites and blogs we have already mentioned Ninja Affiliate as a very useful plugin that comes highly recommended by many top affiliates but what if you are not using WP and still want an efficient and easy way to cloak and track your affiliate links? Are their really any paid services that deserve your attention?

As I said earlier on this page, I never used to think so until I came across the Samurai Stealth Cloaker and now wonder how I managed without it having used it for the past twelve months. SSC is a very user friendly and efficient way to cloak your affiliate links. It is not a Windows based software installed on your PC, it is a PHP script that resides on your server.

It is simplicity itself to install and once set up allows you to choose from three levels of cloaking from simple redirects to totally secure encrypted links. The real benefits are the speed and ease of use and the organization of all your affiliate links in one folder making for easy administration no matter how many links you have and portability between domains is a snap. Setting up new links takes seconds with no need to create directories and upload files.

I should also mention that if you are using article marketing to promote affiliate products you also get their article cloaker which enables you to circumvent even Ezine Articles strict affiliate linking policies, which, to most affiliates is worth its weight in gold.

It also offers rudimentary tracking stats and is one of the best link cloaking scripts on the market today, saving you time and hassle and allowing you to concentrate on your core activities.

You can order Samurai Stealth Cloaker here at a special limited time price and it's well worth the small investment.

If you are looking for something that can cloak and track your links and incorporate one time offers, you might also be interested in the Interstitial Links Manager script shown in the video at the foot of this article.

And finally.....this is very IMPORTANT - whatever system you use to cloak your links ALWAYS test them thoroughly before publishing them because some affiliate programs may not like the results and will fail to track your visitors and sales. Try your link and follow it right through to the payment stage to ensure that you are getting credit for the visit/action/sale etc. If you skip this step you have done nothing with your clever cloaking but shoot yourself in the foot!

More IMPORTANT news - some cloaking software uses masked frames to hide a URL in the address bar. If that is the only thing they do, you need to be careful as Internet Explorer, the crappy but unfortunately dominant browser at present, will possibly block your affiliate link/cookie if the domain in a link is different from that in the address bar, thus rendering your redirect useless and depriving you of your commission/credit/referral. (supposedly this only affects third party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy but in practice it seems to affect certain sites almost randomly, so, double check to make sure your cookie is being passed to your visitor). Microsoft blows and has probably deprived thousands of affiliates of untold amounts of money by doing this. Check your cookies in as many browsers as you can too.

You can check a cloaked link in any browser to ensure the affiliate cookie is being set by using a third party software such as this free cookie viewer. Clear your cache and cookies, visit your cloaked link and then run the software which will show you if the cookie was blocked or not. If it was, you need to change the link. (sometimes IE itself will indicate that a cookie has been blocked, when, in actual fact it hasn't, so checking with a tool like this can be a great help).

With IE, it is safest to use a straight PHP redirect, but, unfortunately this is the least secure of any redirection method for affiliates and leaves you far more open to link hijacking by parasite software. This is software installed on countless machines, often bundled with things like browser helpers and toolbars that innocent punters install without understanding what exactly they have put on their computers. When such software recognizes an affiliate link for a network it can place it's own cookie before your visitor even lands on the page you are sending them to, and you've lost another sale in the blink of an eye.

I know of only one product on the market that combats both the the IE and parasite problems and that is a new cloaker called Covert Links. It is a very cost effective piece of software and one I am moving over to myself for a lot of links.

I hope that this will help in your quest to find the best solution for your own affiliate marketing efforts and your comments are welcomed.