the Blogoholic

I’m pretty sure that many of you know how cloaking your affiliate links can double, or even triple your conversions. But have you ever wondered how or why?

Why? Simply because when a potential buyer sees that ugly referral link he is about to click, it will immediately hit him that you are only promoting the product to make a quick buck.

But seeing a URL that looks like this: john.com/go/google.php will most probably cause him to click the link without thinking twice.

How? Although there are numerous ways to cloak an affiliate link, I find that using a PHP redirect works best. After you finish reading this post, you’ll know how to create links like the one above and redirect them to your affiliate page.

Step One

Create a new directory in the root of your website (public_html) with the name you’d like to appear in your cloaked affiliate link.

For example, if you wanted your link to look this: john.com/go/google.php, then create a new folder named “go”, or “recommends” if you want it to look this: john.com/recommends/google.php

Step Two

Now that you’ve created your new folder, open your favorite text editor and paste this code into a new file:
<?php
header('Location: http://www.youaffiliatecodehere.com/');
?>

Substitute the URL with your own affiliate and then save the file as filename.php (eg. hosting.php) That’s it, just repeat the second step to make as many cloaked affiliate links as you’d like.

The reason why this method works better than a .htaccess redirect or JavaScript code is because you can link to the file on other websites and can change the content of the file without having to worry about changing each individual URL.

This tactic probably won’t do you any good in the Internet marketing niche, as its members are constantly on the lookout for these tricks, but it will most certainly work wonders in the other niches.