There are, unfortunately, some dishonest people who will either hijack or try to bypass your affiliate links while you work your tail off wondering why you are not getting any sales. I’ve found the best solution to stop that from happening.
There are many services on the net offering shorter links, etc., but to me they don’t seem as professional as this script I found recently called simply Free Link Cloaker. Not only will this script mask your affiliate links, but it uses a friendly keyword format such as http://yourdomain.com/recommends/keyword
Nice!
Another added feature is that the script keeps track of the number of clicks your cloaked link gets, so you will know which affiliate products are converting for you.
It does require a MySQL database and it uses PHP rather than Javascript, making it a much more stable link cloaker than others you may find in your searches. It is easy to set up, taking only minutes, but you can get support if needed and upgrades for life. I find this little script to be an invaluable resource for every affiliate marketer, or for anyone who just wants shorter URLs.
Download Design
May 4th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Thanks for this excellent resource!
I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time, and this sounds like an excellent solution.
The fact it uses PHP over JavaScript is a huge plus. I’ve used some JavaScript methods in the past, but was never happy with them in the end.