Hiding Them Could Help

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I am talking about the affiliate links.

Let’s be realistic, when people realize that an Url is an affiliate link, chances are that they won’t click on it. Even worse, they might steal YOUR commission by shamelessly replacing your affiliate tracking id by theirs.

If you make money with affiliate programs, hiding your affiliate links could make a difference in your earnings. Hereafter are several methods to hide your money making links. None of these ways will prevent a motivated affiliate link hacker from stealing your cash but at least, after implementation, most regular visitors to your website or blog won’t play around your Urls before clicking on them.

Using Javascript
Let’s consider the following link: Blog Traffic Jump Start (the new book from Pat).
Just hovering on the text of the link will easily reveal to any internet marketers that this is an affiliate link.

A way to hide affiliate nature of the link can be to code it that way :

<a href=”http://fabdan1.blogtrafic.hop.clickbank.net/” onmouseout=”window.status=’ ‘;return true;” onmouseover=”window.status=’ ‘;return true;” target=”_new”>Blog Traffic Jump Start</a>

and now it looks the same but it displays no info when hovering on : Blog Traffic Jump Start.

Using .htaccess
.htaccess is a file that is possibly located at the root of your web server and which among others contain Url redirection rules. Make sure to not delete the current .htaccess file if it exists already, and make a backup before trying anything. If it does not exist, you can create a blank file.

Add the following to your .htaccess file :

redirect /test http://www.test.com?id=123456

Now if you create a link to http://www.mywebsite.com/test on your website will redirect to http://www.test.com?id=123456 !

Using Header location
For example, I would create a new file called out.php and containing
<? header(”Location: http://theaffiliatelink”); ?> .

Now a link to http://www.mywebsite.com/out.php would redirect to http://theaffiliatelink.
Kyle explains with more details this method on his blog.

Using Get-Shorty or TinyUrl
Get-shorty is a script installed on your server that allows you to manage redirections. In short, a typical commission junction ugly Url like http://www.jdoqocy.com/d2100hz74z6MOSAOWMONQURPOO could be replaced by a cute Url like http://yourweb.com/cuteurl.

TinyURL is kind of similar but the Url generated does not contain your domain name and contains a code at the end. A typical tinyURL generated link would be something like : http://tinyurl.com/2d94kl

Using A Plugin
For WordPress users, you could check out the hide your affiliate links plugin.

What I use
I usually use the .htaccess method for my regular websites. All affiliate links are gathered at the same location, and it makes it very easy and quick to manage.

For this blog, I haven’t use any method so far. I didn’t feel like playing with the .htaccess file since it contains already some stuff generated by WordPress. I will probably give a try to the plugin I mentioned above.

Do you know of others way to hide affiliate links ? What is your method to hide affiliate links ? I invite you to comment on that. Also, let me know if this article motivated you to start hiding your money links.

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Posted in How To, Monetization

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