This article has been guest blogged by David Wilkinson – 13-Year Old Affiliate Marketing Expert.
Link cloaking, or plain old affiliate link redirection. You might have heard the buzz about how you can ‘increase your sales by up to 400%’ or something equally ridiculous, but what can link cloaking actually do for you as an affiliate?
Imagine the situation. You’re a complete Internet newbie who’s been searching away for some time, trying to find a viable way to earn money online. All of a sudden, this fantastic opportunity pops along (courtesy of you, the affiliate). You’re about to click through to check out the product, when all of a sudden you see an affiliate link, something the stupid ‘Internet 4 Idiots’ book (or whatever they’re calling their silly little franchise now) earned you NEVER to click on. The end user, or Internet newbie, having seen a blatant affiliate link, and now in the knowledge that there’s a chance you’re only promoting a product for it’s excellent commissions is in serious doubt whether to buy or not.
Except the problem is bigger. If the newbies know, then chances are the more ‘advanced’ people up the Internet food chain will know too. Infact, everyone on the Internet who knows what an affiliate link is will immediately have second thoughts about your trustworthyness. The product could be world class, your presell could be so fantastically convincing, that Bill Gates would drop backwards off a Christmas tree on reading it. But at the end of the day? If they don’t buy… If they have second thoughts… If they doubt your opinion and your integrity… Then you will NEVER make a sale online.
Long 30-character affiliate URLs in themselves are quite naturally not the prettiest things in the world, either. If you can disguise your links by making them a simple short snippet such as…
http://www.affiliatedefined.com/recommends/djk.html
as opposed to…
http://zimedia.dayjobkill.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=shoe123
…then you’ll find yourself in a better position when dropping links around forums and such, as well as when targeting a general audience as your affiliate link will now be in the most part hidden. The real advantage of using cloaked links though? The bit that will actually save you money in the long run? All the nasty affiliate snipers out there (people who save money on purchases by switching your affiliate ID with their own) will be in the most part stumped. If they were desperate, even with a cloaked link, they could view your source code, but if you use fancy encryption techniques such as the ones at the heart of Ninja Link Cloaker (a product from Matt Haslem whom which I personally use), then you’ll be covered by all manner of fancy MD5 code encryption and super-fast execution script implementation. Complicated stuff, eh?
I’ve explained to you the ‘why’ and shown you the ‘where’ (when promoting products), but the real bit that stumps most people is the plain and simple ‘how’.
How can you create a cloaked affiliate link? How can you protect your earnings? How can you make a link redirect? There are hundreds of options out there, but I’ll narrow it down to my favourite, top-performing three.
The TinyURL re-direct. Free, though less effective than the options to come, it has no server demands and is externally hosted on TinyURL.com.
The PHP re-direct. Free and effective, though it requires your own server to upload said PHP file to.
The Ninja Cloaking method. Super-advanced, ninja-style, uber-sleek protection and cloaking.
TinyURL. It’s free. It’s quick. It perhaps doesn’t give the world’s best impression either, but all the same. It gets the job done nicely and there’s not much more to say. You simply go to the TinyURL website, pick a link to re-direct to and wham. Link is done and live on the TinyURL server. Just point your links that way and re-direction is instant. You can start cloaking right away at TinyURL.com>.
PHP Re-direction has obvious advantages over TinyURL. If you make a typo and have already published a TinyURL link on your blog, there’s no much you can do in the way of changing where the TinyURL points. With PHP on your own server, you have full control over where your links go and what they do. A PHP re-direct isn’t powerful, but it is effective and for a novice affiliate marketer I’d highly recommend it. You can learn how to create a PHP re-direct at the About.com website.
Ninja Link Cloaking. I’ve already mentioned how I prefer to use Ninja Link Cloaker for many reasons. The sheer power in the software is remarkable. It runs straight from your desktop and boots up at the click of a button. On startup, you’re presented with two options. Do you want a ‘normal link cloak’ (basically an affiliate link in a full-page iFrame as permitted by most major affiliate networks) or a Ninja Link Cloaker special ‘ninja’ link? The ninja link has all the fancy encryption methods in place, coupled with fancy (yet ‘usually’ permitted) cookie dropping tactics, goes in for the big double-whammy.
I use link-cloaking all the time when Affiliate Marketing. On my blog, in e-mail campaigns, on forums, everywhere… Without them I’d be losing a serious chunk of my online profits and you believe me – I wouldn’t be the happiest ‘little’ kid on earth. 
— Author’s Unrelated Random Sidenote —
On a sidenote, lots of you commented on my last article, ‘Upselling – The how, the where, the when’, by stating how you’d love to signup to some form of Affiliate Defined pre-notification list. You can do just that now I’ve added a few little boxes to the page, and if you’re interested in my little ‘Affiliate Marketing Revolution‘, I’d advise you to signup now. Thanks for all the encouragement everyone!
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2472 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 186 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article. As a newbie to affiliates, for the most part, I’m going to try some of your techniques. thanks for the tips.
Everything about link cloaking can be found at linkcloakingresource.com. Including information on ninja link cloaker and other cloaking products. There is even videos on the website about free cloaking advantages and disadvantages
Thanks David – I’ve recently suffered quite a bit of link theft, so I was looking for a product like the Ninja Link cloaker. I’ve checked it out, and the cost of just one stolen link will cover the purchase price. Brilliant – thanks again. We’re going to miss these tips when you go back to school in September!
This article seems like one big sales pitch for the ‘Ninja Link Cloaker.’ $67 to disguise a link? I’ll pass.
I agree with Manthem. Shoe, why are you letting guest bloggers proffit from your well established site? This is like a payperpost article.
Apparently this 13 year old kid has a lot to learn. Decieving people into buying a product is a plan for failure. sure you`ll have short term success but given time, everything will backfire.
Flashforward 7 years from now, when everything has failed … David Wilkinson will gather all your email adresses and become the new spam king.
I think most of the stealing comes from the fact that a buyer can easily sign up to become an affiliate themselves and then get the product for half price most of the time. The writer still gets paid, so does the buyer, but the affiliate doesn’t – Cloaking isn’t going to save any of that.
And I personally don’t like tinyurl too. people can easily understand there is something hidden behind that “tiny” url . I can guess that easily if not other.
Php redirect is the best way I think.
I wrote a script that does this on your own server (as it still kind of looks suspecious to be directed offsite)…a few other things as well. Long story short, .htaccss and php. If you want to know more I’m working on a short howto tutorial which I’ll be releasing on my blog this next month. I’ll probably couple it with a small download to make it easy for everyone. (assuming you meet server requirements)
So Shoe, are we allowed to send you sales pitches now, and you’ll post to your site and your 10,000 readers will read it? If so, I’ll soon submit an “article” on how I make over $160,000.00 online every single month without owning a website or a product, and all I do is advertise websites with Google. Interested?
so david, did you use this very technique in this very blog post??
http://www.affiliatedefined.com/recommends/bonus-access.html >>>> affiliate >>>> http://ninjalinkcloaker.com/
The easiest way not envolving php (hey some of us grew up on perl) is to create a 302 redirect in .htaccess
I agree… I’ll just code my own using asp. I’m dying to know how this little man gathered so much marketing know how by the age of 13. I have a feeling there’s a Gipedo pulling the strings somewhere behind the scenes.
Shoe whats the big deal?! I come here to read shoe’s thoughts, not to see a “post” that is 4x as long as it needs to be that avoids a lot of major points of interest and only focuses on promoting a stupid product that can be recreated for free in 5 minutes.
Yeah he should focus on quality content and anchor text
</snarkiness>
Nice article, but also comes across as a sales pitch.
+1
Is there any chance it will be ported to ASP as well? Maybe I could help you out with this project. Sounds interesting…
13? Jesus, If I knew this stuff back then who knows we’re I’d be now!
That’s what I was just thinking!! What an incredible kid!!
I came up with some pretty profitable (or what I thought to be) ideas at his age too but never had the ingenuity to carry them out!! Kudos to you!!
Me too shoe… I think this little man needs to be taken down a notch. It’s pretty balzy of him to spam your 10k+ readers. I was impressed by his drive when I saw his first guest post. Now i’m annoyed that he has the sack to push link ninja or whatever that product was called on your loyal readers.
I don’t believe that this author is 13. If whoever wrote this can come up with all of this stuff about link cloaking, then they could probably come up with the thought that others would think it was neat that a 13 year old kid knows it. It’s a good marketing strategy because you get an instant wow effect coupled with “it’s so easy a kid can do it”, plus it makes the rest of us feel dumb. I think it’s annoying.
Hey Corey – Yep, that’s an example of one of the types of links.
For ****s sake. I’m not linking out again with proof. Read my comments on the last post if you’re looking for that: http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/07/11/upselling-the-why-the-where-the-how/
Thanks Marc. Glad you enjoyed the post.
And for the record – I have ethics. I don’t spam (and I /WON’T/ spam). I wrote about link cloaking. I showed people 3 ways to do it. I included, as one of them methods, the one I use (what would be the point of practicing and not preaching?) – And you have a problem with me using an affiliate link? Sheesh… Since you obviously don’t have anything better to do than make hypothetical, unfounded, degoratory accusations – I’d appreciate it if you just kept yout trap closed.
Great article, for a 13 year old you seem to know what your talking about my friend
Andrew – you recreate me Ninja Link Cloaker in 5 minutes and I’ll pay you $1000… If you think freaking MD5 encryption comes this cheap usually and can be done with .htaccess – be my guest.
Good point. Kind of like when the 47 year old dude pretends to be the hot 18 year old female to get attention in a forum. I think this may be someone’s clever marketing technique.
Besides, link cloaking is free.
That’s right Eric! Skip over all the content! All the actual tips and FREE services I mentioned. Highlight the one thing about it you didn’t like and spam the comments.
Come on man “md5 encryption” is not all that. Its an open encryption scheme free to anyone. Its available via native libraries in C# and php just to name 2 languages.
Yeah I kind of got that feeling to after hearing it would cost a good chunk of money.
I think tinyurl is also a bad choice since it is being overused for everything
Try googling him before you start running your mouth off. He is actually 13.
Think before you speak.
So you’re jealous and you’re attacking him because you can’t do what he’s doing – getting promotion from Shoemoney.
Great way to big yourself up – beat up on someone who is actually 13 (read his blog or Google him).
I’m not here to get into a fight, but how many people know PHP, C# and who else knows what, let alone has the time to package it all into a software package?
There might be better things out there, sure, (I invite you to check out all the options open to you before spending ANY cash), but I use NLC and that’s why I promoted it as part of the article.
David, not to be a dick, but MD5 encryption is built into PHP. It’s a standard function. Just call md5() with a string arguement, and you get the MD5 hash of that string. It’s not complicated.
Also, any competent PHP programmer should be able to whip up a solid PHP redirection system in less than an hour. Adding so-called MD5 encryption doesn’t help anything…at all. It’s a useless buzzword that has NOTHING to do with link cloaking.
Also, you aren’t really cloaking your links. You are masking them. The search engines following your links still will end up finding them as affiliate links. To fully cloak them you’d be using robots.txt to keep the search engines out. From what I can tell, you a aren’t using robots.txt, so when you drop links like that, the engines will see them as aff links and penalize accordingly.
Agreed. There are lots of flaws to tactics like TinyURL, and if you can get your own hosting, go for a software package, PHP, .htaccess, or run some form of a script on your server.
Even better – you promoted a product using one of the tactics I mentioned. TinyURL. Hypocrite…
Not trying to fight either. I’m just pointing out that md5 is not a big secret or technically difficult to use. I liked your guest post. It was well balanced and provided viable alternatives to the product your recommending.
Wish you the best of success
Scott
If you’re short and cash and can’t be bothered with TinyURL, try using PHP like mentioned.
What I can’t figure out is why you should need MD5 encryption to generate a redirect-URL..
I hope you don’t mean that Link Ninja is using some kind of encryption to protect its source code?
Then again, I can’t figure out either why Shoe is letting a 13y old fuck up his blog :-’(
I don’t think it’s such a problem to drop affiliate links into a blog post, heck that’s what I do in my blog. But there needs to be a balance. I think you dropped the Ninja Cloaker link 5 times, your own blog 6 times, and the helpful resources only 4 times.
I really enjoyed your last post and I wish you the best of success in future articles.
I found out the hard way about what not cloaking aff links does to getting listed in the SEs, heh. Very valuable post here, Shoe. Thanks!
‘only focuses on promoting a stupid product’
If you insist on me pointing out the facts… (colour coded for your convenience – two colours – wouldn’t want to confuse you)
http://www.techzi.net/when-will-they-learn.png
Thanks Scott – Sorry if I came across as a bit overly defensive/agressive. Just trying to hold my ground against the hoardes of people who aren’t keeping so much of an open mind as yourself.
David
Agreed, many simple hosting packages nowadays have PHP available. It’s a great resource for even the n00b, due to flexibility for marketers and bloggers alike. That being said, I need to brush up on scripting with it.
I am already using such cloacking… The advantage is that I can also number of clicks on the link.
This is truly great advice for anyone hoping to successfully promote an affiliate site online. Based on my own experience with affiliate sites, it truly is essential to use cloak linking. Especially since Google and Yahoo will only show one URL per search results page, if you choose to use your own site (or alternatively have the registrar forward the domain directly to the merchant site from your site) you will most likely get more action in the sponsored links.
That was the point obviously…
Thanks for the info, David.
Contrary to popular belief, not all of us familiar with “md5 encryption” and stuff like that.
Again, thanks and continues success.
The article was a giant sales pitch for a useless product and then he comes in here and is pretty aggressive towards anybody who comments about his tactics. Please skip the junky 13 year old articles in the future.
You said yourself andrew… you came here to read shoe’s thoughts… so why did you “waste your time” by reading anything past the first line of this post todaY???
Giant sales pitch…
http://www.techzi.net/when-will-they-learn.png
*cough* As for being agressive, I’m merely standing my ground. People accusing me of being a spammer, or suggesting I’ll become one clearly aren’t here for a constructive conversation… I’ll match them in turn, manners for manners. They want to bitch about? I’ll bitch back in their faces.
A very good sales pitch, I dont even know what your selling but Id like to buy.
This is a great guest post packed with tons of top notch info! Kudos on hiring this kid to help you out…
Dude, I downloaded your report, and its crap. Theres nothing in it, i’ve seen more genuine information in a digitalpoint post. Good thing i used a junk e-mail that I never check.
im a quick reader. I’m not gonna rule out anything thats not posted by shoe. I just expected a better editorial process on shoes part.
Exactly. If the post was 1/3 as long, maybe I would have let it slide without a comment. But several of the top commenters on this blog are here complaining about this. Unless you are getting paid for these posts shoe, dump the junk and keep up the good work. Just my 2 cents. (6 cents now)
Who cares most of the top commentors suck. Ever since Shoe installed that god damned “Top Commentors” plugin comments have gone to shit. Its mostly just a big circle jerk of comments consisting of “OMFG SHOE great post!” and “I totally agree”.
Definitely helps to have the links cloaked.
This post has been brought to you by the letters “M” and “D” and the number “5″.
I want a cookie for reading that.
I’m to lazy to check but if he’s doing a proper job the software should block google based on IP and referrer agent too.
the important question is…does this really work? anyone besides david have used this?
right because everything on teh intertubes is true.. lol..
Keep doing David… most of these whiners haven’t done 10% of what you’ve accomplished in the last few months. Some have come a long way however, they can at least identify your strategy.
Freeloading whiners… get busy.
How do you know he is trying to profit from Shoe? Maybe Shoe is letting him to help a kid out. What he learns now can set him up for a long time. Maybe a lifetime.
Hey David. Don’t sweat the haters. Anytime you market to a sophisticated crowd, you need to use different tactics. The blog readers here are experts (when compared to the average Internet user), cynics, and can smell a sales pitch a mile away.
Next time, just focus on writing an outstanding article for your end user and if you really MUST sell a product, do it with more sophistication.
One more word of advice, don’t respond to every Internet critic. They’ll just drag you into a shouting match and you’ll never win (it just makes you look worse).
hah