How to Hide Affiliate Links?
A Simple and Free Way to Hide Your Affiliate Links
If you need a Professional link cloaker Click Here
I just received an email from Patrick - a member of my list - on how to cloak affiliate URLs.
There are scripts that you can buy to automate this process and make a great job of stopping buyers stealing your affiliate commissions.
Stealing affiliate commissions can be done by simply finding the affiliate url and substituting your own affiliate id in place of the affiliate who’s link you have clicked on.
My take on this is that you may not need to cloak your links unless the majority of your web traffic are people who would even think about stealing commissions or have the faintest clue how to do it.
For instance, if you get a lot of affiliate marketers coming to your site then chances are they would know how to change the affiliate link to their own. 
However, most other visitors in the majority of target markets would not even know where to start or even what an affiliate link was.
let me tell you, if someone is determined to do you out of an affiliate commission then they WILL find a way no matter how many precautions you have taken. No point worrying about it!
The main reason I cloak my links is because I think a cloaked link looks much better in an email than the usual affiliate link.
So getting to the point of this post - How to hide affiliate links?
Here is a free and simple way you can do this which basically redirects from a file on your web server to your affiliate sales page.
The URL below is a link to one of my affiliate links(If you click on it it will redirect to my affiliate link and I will get credit for any signups on this link).:
http://www.malkeenan.com/recommends/lab.html
The ‘recommends’ part is simply a folder on my server called ‘recommends’ into which I copy all my cloaked affiliate links.
I then create a file called lab.html and upload it to the ‘recommends’ folder.
Here is the code you need to create the file:
<html>
<body>
<script language="JavaScript">
<!–
window.location.replace(’http://61.leisureaudiosales.com/’);
//–>
</script>
</body>
</html>
You would obviously replace the link http://61.leisureaudiosales.com/ above with your own affiliate link for whichever program you are involved with.
Copy the above code to a notepad file - Save to your desktop as YOURCHOSENFILENAME.html (ie. lab.html) - Upload the file to your server in a folder of your choice or to the root folder. If you save the file to the root folder then the redirect would be located at www.YOURDOMAIN.com/YOURCHOSENFILENAME.html (ie. www.malkeenan.com/lab.html)
That’s it! Now when you send an affiliate link in your email or on another website then it will look like the page is on your server. This is much more professional than sending out affiliate links unaltered.
If you are still interested in stopping your commissions being stolen, and looking for a REALLY POWERFUL way to cloak your links - more than a simple redirect - then you could opt to buy a script or software to do the job for you. If that is the case I can recommend the one below:
Affiliate Link Cloaker
I hope this all makes sense. If you have any questions please use the comments form and I will try to clarify.
Tags: hide affiliate links, cloak affiliate links, stolen affiliate commissions, affiliate marketing, affiliate programs, link hijacking
