I got quite a few emails around the How To Effectively Cloak Affiliate Links post I recently made citing some other sources and techniques to cloak affiliate links. A couple of them were so good I decided to write a quick follow up to let you all know too.
Firstly a guy over at http://studge.com/hiding-links-with-php-and-counting-clicks-with-mysql/ has made a superb and very easy to follow guide on cloaking links using php while being able to count the clicks for each link using a mysql DB. Very clever little script you can include on any site in about 5 mins.
The other source was http://teamtutorials.com/web-development-tutorials/how-to-redirect-affiliate-links which gives another great php based affiliate link cloaking solution.
A few people also pointed out how straightforward it is to just use the htaccess file to perform the actual redirects. Instead of using any specific programs or scripts you can in fact just type the following
Redirect /cloaklinks http://xxxxxxx.cloaklinks.hop.clickbank.net/
Into your htaccess file and you can the direct people to
www.coffeeblack.co.uk/cloaklinks
Instead of the long affiliate link.
Which brings me to the final recommendation which is the Affiliate Link Cloaker software. I normally dont recommend paid software but around 8-10 people have suggested this software to me now so i started to take notice. When you have multiple sites all promoting different programs this now seems to be the best tool going. I have linked straight to it using www.coffeeblack.co.uk/cloaklinks so you can see how a htaccess redirect works and visit it in one go Good luck increasing your affiliate commissions.
