Hiding affiliate links
I have to admit, this is something I don’t always do. Call me lazy. It can really eat up my time having to add the cloaking code to all links I add to my sites. But I’m working to be better about it.
Why should you hide your affiliate links?
The two reasons that come to mind include:
- Avoiding commission stealing (someone seeing the affiliate code in your link, and then opting to enter their own affiliate ID and collect the commission on their own purchase)
- Turning off potential clickers (would you rather click and order from this link www.domain.com or www.tracker.com/domain.com&aff=123456?)
The benefits to cloaking your links are not limited to discouraging the behaviors above. It can also save you time IF you cloak your links in a particular way. So what am I talking about? Normally, I use the following code to hide my links:
a xhref=”AFFILIATE LINK” target=”_blank” onmouseover=”window.status=‘LINK PEOPLE SEE’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=’ ‘;return true;”
(I removed my beginning and end tags so you can see the code)
But this becomes a hassle if my link changes or I drop the program later because I have to go back in and change all my links. Instead, you can cloak your links using actual pages. Here is how:
- Create the page (example: mydomain.com/affiliateproduct.html)
- Then insert this html into the body of your page: (again, I am NOT using the first or last “<” “>” tags)
html
head
meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;url=http://AFFILIATE LINK”
/head
body
/body
/html
Then you just send your visitors to the page you created and it automatically sends them to your affiliate link (which they never see).
Setting up your links this way makes it easier for you to manage. Should your link change, you update the ONE page. You could also download AffiliateJump. It’s a free program that will cloak your links for you. And when I say “for you” I mean that you enter the affiliate link, and then it creates the redirect page for you.
I’ve added this task to my to-do list for the week. Cloak my links.
Related tutorials that might interest you:
- How to edit the top menu links in ZenCart
How to edit SiteMap links in ZenCart
Hiding product descriptions on category pages
Recommended plugins for wordpress
How to add HTML into a WordPress post
Tags: Affiliate Marketing
The Affiliate Jump program seems great.
Thanks for the info.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future. Thank you
Thanks for the visit Muhammad
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future. Thank you