AuctionCut

Hi
Do you use Affiliate links in emails, signatures, ebooks, etc.
Do you send people to blogs (as I do) because they are free to run.


They are usually very long and a dead giveaway that they are Affiliate links and Blog links.

Why bother you are saying. Well your Affiliate link will usually begin with the website you are involved with.The observant will just go to that website using the first part of the link, whoops..No commission. The disguised link gives no indication as to the source.
Hide your true link address using my simple answer, visit my link at http://tinyurl.com/yyr49a
This is the link to my blog which is in my signature. You can see the difference.
Go to the bottom of the blog page, enter your long URL in the box and Hey Presto it will generate you a shorter and more importantly, disguised link

Thanks for your looking.

Excellent post.

There are many ways to disguise your affiliate link, if you own your own domain name you can redirect via this as well.

Many top affiliates use Tinyurl & it's easy to use. Highly recommended.

is there any scripts you can recommend that can redirect from my domain to the affiliate link? i don't want to use tinyurl.

it would look more trustworthy if it was a redirect from my own site.

is there any scripts you can recommend that can redirect from my domain to the affiliate link? i don't want to use tinyurl.

it would look more trustworthy if it was a redirect from my own site.

Sure - just use the htaccess file to redirect your link in the following format

Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://yoursite.com/newdirectory/newfile.htm

ok thanks mark. so you just keep adding a line to the .htaccess for each url you redirect then? that sounds easy enough. is there any downside in doing it this way?,...like does it slow down the server if you have a big htaccess file?

Another simple way is to make a directory with a name of your choice and then put a index.php file in there that is made up of the following:

<?php
$url="your aff url";
header('Location: '.$url);
?>

then just put your link as http://yourdomain/foldername and when the viewer lands there it redirects to the aff page etc..

thanks auctionman for the info,

i presume you could just create the one folder and then make the index.php file in such a way that, you just feed it a variable and it then take you to the corresponding affiliate link.

so for example the links might end up looking like this:

www.domain.com/link/index.php?link=1
www.domain.com/link/index.php?link=2
www.domain.com/link/index.php?link=3

i wish i knew more about programming! i think this should be enough info now to get me onto some free script that does this. i will have a look on hotscripts and see if i can find something.

cheers

ok i found a solution. the script is free and it is called the "PHP Affiliate Jump Script". you can read about it here

http://www.stevedawson.com/article0006.php

i have not used it yet but it is so simple i doubt that there will be any problems with it.

jumble wrote:ok i found a solution. the script is free and it is called the "PHP Affiliate Jump Script". you can read about it here

http://www.stevedawson.com/article0006.php

i have not used it yet but it is so simple i doubt that there will be any problems with it.

Thanks for your time and effort Jumble.
Looks a good idea.
..............

no worries. glad to help