Need a new web host or having a problem with a script? Tips and advice on the best way to design, build and maintain your most valuable asset - your website!

Affiliate Link Cloaking & Protection

Support
greg
Posts: 9
Joined: 15 Jun 06
Trust:
11 Sep 06 9:47 pm

Affiliate Link Cloaking & Protection

Hi everyone. I've just been speaking with another member and he bought up a good question about different methods to protect your clickbank hoplinks from commission theft. We've got a few basic ideas such as ensuring you use the latest hoplink format, simple scripts etc.. I would be interested to hear other members methods for protecting hoplinks, have you tried any of the software programs available and if so what do they actually do? :o
  • 0
PremiumMember
revimp
Posts: 240
Joined: 29 Jun 06
Trust:
11 Sep 06 10:23 pm

 check out this tool.It turns your link into "tiny " one and it is good forever.


http://tinyurl.com/
  • 0
PremiumMember
papabear
Posts: 24
Joined: 25 Aug 06
Trust:
11 Sep 06 11:27 pm

 Hi Greg,

Do you happen to take a look at video lesson #17 regarding commission theft? Mark suggests some methods just for that. He make mention of affiliate link cloaker, I have had that saved in my favorites for quite sometime unitl I could research some more. After watching Mark's video, that's the route I am going to take.

Watch lesson 17, that should help.
  • 0
PremiumMember
sean06
Posts: 1004
Joined: 16 Jun 06
Trust:
13 Sep 06 1:50 pm

 I've never purchased any software, but what I do is pretty simple.

It's not perfect, but if my site is
    mysite.com
and I want to promote, say, Affilorama, I just use a simple redirect and make the link look like
    mysite.com/Affilorama

Something else I've seen done is to register domains that are similar to the merchants ones. If the product you're promoting is
    http://www.reallycoolproduct.com
maybe you could register
    http://www.supercoolproduct.com
or something like that.
  • 0
Last edited by ampie g on 16 Mar 10 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: delinked url
 

www.SixDayWeekend.com
Free Training Videos reveal how I make 6 figures while travelling the world
 
PremiumMember
wealthy
Posts: 17
Joined: 06 Jul 06
Trust:
18 Sep 06 8:24 am

 The only problem with this is it looks pretty ugly..

revimp wrote:check out this tool.It turns your link into "tiny " one and it is good forever.


http://tinyurl.com/
  • 0
PremiumMember
wealthy
Posts: 17
Joined: 06 Jul 06
Trust:
18 Sep 06 8:55 am

 Another way is to have a page on your own web site that when you advertise it will go to the affilliate website. (and if that website is worth anything), it will hide the affiliate code when it opens up. Affilorama is a great example of this.

So create a page that you advertise like this
    http://www.yourdomain.com/help/affilorama.html

so yourdomain.com is your domain name you own
help is a folder that stores all your affiliate pages on your site
and affilorama.html is the name of the page.

Unfortunately some web sites do not hide the url like affilorama does so when the final (or site you are sending people to) site is loaded, there is the affiliate url on the web address.

If you still dont understand, let me know and I will set up a dummy page for you to look at.

Once I get a reply from Mark about another small script I am testing then I will provise this script for anyone who wants it, Just PM me for it.
this small script doesnt even require you to make a page..

UPDATE. I was just reading another post https://www.affilorama.com/members/forum ... c.php?t=23 and Nick suggest something similar to what I have. So using his is simple.
My script, I can use as an html file so doesnt have to be php.
  • 0
tarraco
Posts: 13
Joined: 31 Aug 06
Trust:
18 Sep 06 3:06 pm

 Why people think it's a good idea masking in *all* cases, their affiliate URL's with URLs like my_amazing_sites.com/sites/affprogram.html. I don't understand why. People hate this. Maybe it's a good "there's-no-other-choice" for Clickbank Annoying Hoplinks, but why in Affilorama Affiliate Program?

In my opinion, affilorama.com/premium (accessed from our affiliate link of course) in URL address it's better idea and more safe than my_amazing_sites.com/sites/affilorama.html, unchanged in *every* site's page (frame based redirection masking... arg!!!). I don't think too much people feel comfortable in a website called "my_amazing_sites.com" or "youcanberich.com/programs/affilorama.html" or so, selling affilorama.com subscription. Specially in a recurring payment. I don't buy for sure from url's like this... and you?

Simple redirection, not framed with target in Affilorama URL I think is the best idea. A lot of people have better results with a simple taskbar masking script (with affilorama.com text) and no-right-click, I didn't check in Affilorama but I have nice conversions in other programs.

TinyURL, no way jose! Very unprofessional.

Just my opinion.
  • 0
alvintan
Posts: 16
Joined: 19 Sep 06
Trust:
19 Sep 06 8:33 am

 Papabear,

With regards to the Affiliate Link Cloaker software, you can get a similar one at the affiliateswithethics.com website for free. I tried the original Cloaker and this Masker one and both works just as well.

@lvin
  • 0
jandrew
Posts: 13
Joined: 05 Sep 06
Trust:
19 Sep 06 2:27 pm

 Hi Terraco,

You're not hiding the url from your customers, you're hiding it from thieves. Statistics show that affiliate marketers lose up to 30% of their commissions to fraudulant removal or replacement of affiliate codes.

As for the unprofessional look, personally I'm not worried about this. The number of people who look at the info bar before clicking is very small. If you are really worried about that you can always use javascript to show the link text there as well. The only way someone would see the url then would be to look at the source.

Cheers,
J Andrew Morrison
  • 0
tarraco
Posts: 13
Joined: 31 Aug 06
Trust:
19 Sep 06 7:15 pm

 In my personal experience in a lot of niches an unprofessional link has the worst conversion rates. Even worst than Clickbank Hoplinks "as is" too. You can redirect, of course, but not with tinyURL, if you want to mask totally the target url, come on, at least you must use a domain name related to gain some credibility.

I think in marketing specific niches, for example affiliate related or traffic generation products it's the same one thing or another, if you know a little about this business and don't want to pay a commission, you know how to do that (or not?). Check Affilorama, if you want to sell Affilorama, then... buy first the product. Why? Answer is obvious.

But in a lot of niches it's different. People buying a Dog Training product, maybe don't have an idea what affiliate program is, of course they don't have a Clickbank account, but for sure they don't want to buy from urls like mysupermarket.com/my_products/dogproducts.html in address bar if website title says in bold "dogtraining.com".

Anyways just my opinion.
  • 0
alvin
Posts: 68
Joined: 24 Oct 06
Trust:
09 Nov 06 12:15 pm

 If you prefer, you can register a generic domain and give it subdomains for each niche/product. E.g. 'dogtraining.bestadvice.com'

It would then be easy to have an index page in each subdomain folder redirecting to your hoplink.
  • 0
Topic locked