I hope you’ve had a great holiday weekend. I had a fantastic time with the family, we went climbing in the Peaks here in the Midlands, UK. I’m all walked out but feeling refreshed. Well, the point of this blog post is to share something with you that was shared with me. I returned home last-night to find an email from a good friend telling me all about a link cloaking software he had been using. If you’ve been a reader of my blog for a while you will know that I’ve written a few posts about affiliate link cloaking (links at bottom of this post).
I can’t stress enough how important it is to cloak your affiliate link to protect your hard earned commissions from being hijacked by the unscrupulous-minded.
I highly recommend Mike Filsaime’s PowerLink Generator for the shear features that it comes with. The trouble is, not everyone has a spare $97 laying around. Well, Easy Link Manager is certainly my second favorite on the market and, to be honest, it’s ridiculously priced at a measly $27. Don’t let the price fool you, it may be cheap but it packs one hell of a punch.
One of the best features is the recommended resources feature. Visit the site and watch through the short video to see what I’m talking about; I’m sure you’ll agree that this feature is worth the small price tag alone. Take a good look at the site and please watch the video if you want to learn about more about link cloaking using a simple one click-solution.
Head on over to the Easy Link Manager website to learn more and see if this the solution for you.
There is nothing more frustrating than having your affiliate commissions hijacked. Below you can read a quick report I put together that will walk you through the steps of cloaking your affiliate links using a small piece of PHP coding. How to Cloak an Affiliate Link Using Small Piece of PHP Coding
I have written in a previous post about how to cloak your affiliate links to protect your affiliate commissions and I have received a lot of positive feedback. However, one of the areas I didn’t cover is cloaking a link within an affiliate banner, and because my readers have requested it I am only happy to please, here it is.
How to cloak your affiliate link within an affiliate banner
For this post I am going to use a banner from Daves-Online-Videos.com shown above to show you how I would cloak the link. Below is the raw code for the above banner.
Grab the code for the affiliate banner you wish to use and paste it into notepad. As you can see highlighted below, this is the affiliate link that you will want to cloak. Highlight the link in between the quotes as shown by the pink text in this example: “http://www.daves-online-videos.com“
Now delete this text and replace it with your cloaked affiliate link. Below you will see my examples of the banner with a TinyUrl cloaked affiliate link and a domain name cloaked affiliate link. Hover your mouse over to see the links:
The above banner has a TinyURL cloaked link. To see how to do this click here.
The above banner has a domain name cloaked affiliate link. To see how to do this click here. If you hover your mouse pointer over each banner you will see a preview of the URL in the bottom left corner of the screen. Now all you have to do is highlight all the code for the banner and paste it where you would like it to display on your website or blog.
I hope this has given an extra dimension to cloaking your affiliate links within your affiliate banners.
To your success,
Karl
P.s. Make sure you check out Mike Filsaime’s PowerLink Generator for the best solution on the net for link cloaking, link tracking and protecting your affiliate commissions.
Anyone who has been at affiliate marketing for some time will be aware of affiliate commission hijacking. Commission hijacking is basically anything that results in the affiliate not making commission from making a referral. Some people just don’t like to click on a link if it looks like an affiliate link. As I stated in my previous post http://karlmfoxley.com/link-cloaking/cloak-your-affiliate-links. I think this is crazy. One of the solutions for affiliates is to use free link cloaking software or websites. I have three major concerns about such services and here are my reasons why!
1. Your online credibility becomes tied in with your links
If you are intending on building a reputable online business then you should stare clear of any URL cloaking service that you are not sure about. If the service you use ever gets blacklisted for spamming then your reputation will be tied in to this. If you have 100s of affiliate links that you’ve cloaked using such a service then every link will become useless if the site goes down. If you do use a free link cloaking service then use one
that has been around for a while or has been recommended by someone you trust; I recommend TinyURL and BudURL (not strickly URL cloaking services but they have good reputations as URL shortening services that can be used to cloak your affiliate links).
I also want to point out that you may send a customer a link that is cloaked using a free service that a spammer uses to send a similar looking link that takes your customer to a porn site. Your reputation will be closely linked to the URL cloaking service and to the spammer. It just isn’t worth the risk!
2. You do not own the links
That’s right, you do not own your links. Any link that you use and promote may be rendered useless at anytime if the service goes offline for any reason. You may build up a whole catalog of links that are wiped out in a single day. Do you think you can visit every single place that your links reside amd change them to back to your actual affiliate link? If you are like me then you will have hundreds of links all over the web, you just cannot possibly go through and change all those links, saving your reputation if the worst case scenario happens to you.
3. You cannot be sure your affilite links will stay yours
Yes, some unscrupulous people that run URL cloaking services may decide that they are not making enough revenue from their efforts and run a process that will change all the affiliate links to point to their affiliate accounts. You may end up unknowingly promoting someone else’s affiliate links instead of your own and lose any commission that you deserve in the process.
So what can you do?
If you need to cloak your affiliate links then your best bet is to cloak them on your own server with a specially designed tool, PowerlinkGenerator. Mike Filsaime owns this product and his reputation stands on it’s effectiveness. If you know anything about Mike Filsaime then you’ll know that his products work. Additional benefits of PowerlinkGenerator is the ability to track clickthroughs and store
information such as how often the affiliate program pays-out etc.
Please be sure to take responsibility for your online business and stay away from fly-by-night URL / link cloaking programs that seem too good-to-be-true and take control of your online branding. Remember, a link like this
In today’s post I want to show you 3 ways to protect your affiliate commissions. Keep reading to learn how to cloak your affiliate URL by using a URL shortening service, by forwarding a domain name and by using dedicated software.
If you are not sure what an affiliate URL looks like then head on over to Clickbank or PayDotCom and register for your own affiliate account (it’s free) and you will be able to take a look at the different URLs they provide.
Having your affiliate commission hijacked can be seriously frustrating, especially when you think of all the time that can go into finding a product to promote, joining the affiliate program, confirming your registration, selecting affiliate links and / or banners to promote, and then writing a lengthy blog post or email about the product.
Some people just don’t seem to like the idea of the referrer (the affiliate) making a percentage of the sale. This seems ludicrous to me, especially if the blog post or email was informative and I would not have come across the product myself. As a purchaser, the product will be the same price whether you go through an affiliate link or not so why not show your appreciation to the affiliate for letting you know about the product.
Luckily there are a few ways you can protect your affiliate URL.
1. Use a URL shortening service.
This is by far the quickest way and literally takes a minute to do. All you need to do is visit a free URL shortening service such as TinyURL.
Now copy your affiliate link by selecting the text (holding the left mouse button and dragging it over the text you wish to copy).
Example of highlighting a link!
Now click the right mouse button and select copy.
Ctrl + C to copy or right click (mouse) and select copy
Click inside the URL shortening box at TinyURL and now right click again and select paste.
Right click (mouse) and select paste or press Ctrl + V
All you need to do now is click the Make TinyURL! button.
Click the 'Make TinyURL' button
Now you will have a new TinyURL that, when clicked, will go to your affiliate site.
You now have your new TinyURL and cloaked affiliate link
Select your new URL and use this in your promotions.
This method is not the prettiest method out there but it is very affective. Additionally, sites such as Twitter will shorten most URLs into TinyURLs for you, saving you the trouble of going through the steps above.
Other services that allow to shorten your URL are:
BudURL is one of the best URL shortening services on the web as it also gives you tracking stats (clickthroughs).
2. Domain name forwarding.
I like this method as it gives you a very nice looking URL to promote. Firstly you’ll need to register a domain name that you will use to cloak your affiliate URL.
For example, I went to GoDaddy and purchased a domain I will use to cloak my affiliate link. I purchased www.Daves-Online-Videos.com and I will forward this through my affiliate URL to point directly to www.DavesOnlineVideos.com, thus cloaking my affiliate link.
When purchasing a domain be sure to purchase one that closely resembles the product your are promoting (be sure to read the affiliate program terms and conditions).
You can find a wealth of instructions in the main area that will show you how to forward a domain and it really only takes five minutes to set up.
I was going to put together a complete illustration of how to do this but I found this video on YouTube that shows you exactly how to do it!
I think you’ll agree that this is much better than having a shortened URL.
3. Specialised software.
Lastly, if you have your very own hosting account you can purchase specialized software that will allow you to have your very own professional looking cloaked URLs. How nice is the URL below!
If you don’t have you very own hosting I highly recommend HostMonster.
The two sites I have found are PHPLinkCloaker and PowerlinkGenerator. Now I cannot vouch for the first one but it is ludicrously cheap at $9.95. You can find out more by visiting the site.
PHP Link Cloaker - Affiliate Link Cloaking Software
The second one is called PowerlinkGenerator and is by Mike Filsaime. I use this software myself and it is an invaluable tool in my marketing. PowerLinkGenerator allows you to track your URL clickthrough rates and keep track of all your affiliate information.
It can become a nightmare to remember every affiliate program you’ve joined and the method of payment that they use, PowerLinkGenerator allows you to store all this info. This one costs $97 but being a Mike Filsaime product you know that it is very powerful and of very high quality. Visit the site and compare the two and see which one will benefit your needs the most.
Both sites offer extensive tutorial information to help you set up the software so you can get started immediately.
I hope this post has been informative. If you have other methods of cloaking your affiliate URLs why not leave me a comment and share with me how you do it.
I will also cover in a future post how to cloak URLs by using a HTML or PHP redirect. This is a more advanced method and does require a hosting account. Until then, try the methods above and keep your commissions safe.
I hope you’ve had a great holiday weekend. I had a fantastic time with the family, we went climbing in the Peaks here in the Midlands, UK. I’m all walked out but feeling refreshed. Well, the point of this blog post is to share something with you that was shared with me. I returned home last-night to find an email from a good friend telling me all about a link cloaking software he had been using. If you’ve been a reader of my blog for a while you will know that I’ve written a few posts about affiliate link cloaking (links at bottom of this post).
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