Affiliate link cloaking
May 2, 2008
I’ve just read a great post from Rockfuse
It is about the ethics of affiliate link cloaking. This is when you use some method which disguises a referral id of yours to a product you are an affiliate of, from which you earn a commission if someone buys via your link. I have often wondered how much better I’d go at selling things by doing this.
My main concern was not whether it is ethical or not though, but whether by cloaking the link, the referral information will go through. Apparently it does.
Frankly, if I see something that I want to buy and it has an obvious referral id in the link, I will go back to the site after without that referral link, unless I like the site and it offers me something. So if I do that, so do others.
The products I advertise on my web site do not have cloaked links, but if you visit my affiliate page, you will see down the bottom a LinkProtection software link. This is an exe file, but there is no spyware. This application will encrypt your referral link.
For blogs one can’t use the php method as far as I can see. So for blogs one could use either snipurl or tinyurl. I’ve noticed tiny url being used a lot these days, not always for referral link cloaking but for long titles in blogs. Both of these sites can be dragged to your browser toolbar for easy access.
Now the PHP method for web sites.
You can use a jump php script which you will find here
You can use a redirect in a .htaccess file
or use this script:
<?php
$url=’http://affiliatelinkhere’;
header(”Location:$url”);
exit()”;
?>
Save as something.php
Upload to your server.
To link to your product that you are an affiliate of
< a href=”http://www.domain.com/something.php“affiliate name</a>
Posted in affiliate programs, blogging, web design, word press
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May 3rd, 2008 at 2:53 am
Thank you for the kind mention. Really appreciate it.
May 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 am
No worries. As a trained librarian I am very careful about acknowledging sources and believe in intellectual property rights.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Why do you cut off the refer id when you buy something but yet you don’t want people cutting of YOUR referral links and you are telling your readers how to protect their referral links. It’s not like you are normally going to get a better price if you do that. The better affiliate programs will cookie the refer id if there isn’t one already cookied and save it for some time so even if you come back some time later the affiliate still gets his cut anyway. Some of the nasty programs deliberately give the visitor the better marketing schtick if you come in without a refer id, and they display the grade B marketing schtick when there is an affiliate link and they don’t cookie anything. This is their attempt to cheat their affiliates out of the commission. What have you got against a commision? Give the poor blighter his commission. He is after all the one who told you about the product.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Interesting information about what affiliate programs do.
I’ve actually never bought anything online, except my anti-virus software.
I was posing the thought of what other people might be doing and what I might do if I bought something.
I think there’s something to be said about building a loyalty with your customers. Some sites are there merely to make money from affiliate sales.