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Hiding Affiliate Links
As Web surfers become more knowledgeable of how affiliate programs work, more people will omit your affiliate ID or use someone else's ID when ordering. Either way, you lose commissions you're supposed to get.
--Protect Commissions--
Using full window frame page is probably the most effective (though not perfect) way to prevent such loss. In fact, all of affiliate link cloaking software I know (including the famous Affiliate Link Cloaker, http://www.affiliatelinkcloaker.com) uses this method. The address bar won't display your affiliate URL unless the affiliate site has a frame breaker. If visitors book mark, they will come back to your frame page. This means they use your affiliate ID every time. Also, keep in mind that "right click" -> "view source" displays the affiliate site's source, not the source of your page that contains your ID.
--Do It Yourself--
If you like this type of protection, you can do it without buying software. First, download the file "sources.zip" from http://www.thatswise.com/free/sources/cloak.html It contains two files, "example.html" and "test.html." Open "example.html" with Windows Notepad. In the 5th line (without counting blank lines), you will find "affiliate_URL." Replace it with your actual affiliate URL. (Don't delete quotation marks.) Then, save the file with the name you like.
Basically, that is all you need to do, but Affiliate Link Cloaker has a few extra tricks. Let's see the source of their example page. Go to http://www.affiliatelinkcloaker.com/ese.html From the browser's tool bar, select "view" -> "source." (Don't right click.) You will see only a comment, and you might think the code is protected. But it's not. There are 45 carriage returns after the comment. You need to scroll down to see the codes. If you like this feature, replace "Howdy" in the first line of example.html with whatever you want to say, and put a lot of carriage returns after.
You will also notice the URL look like this, "ht..." (If you see "ht..." please read HTML version of this issue at http://www.thatswise.com/free/lessons/0803.html ) These are numeric ampersand entities. Another way to display characters in Web browsers. For example, "a" (If you see "a" please read HTML version of this issue) is displayed as "a." To convert your URL, replace each character of your affiliate link with the corresponding entity. (I post the list of the entities at http://www.thatswise.com/free/sources/entities.txt) To check if you have converted the URL correctly, open "test.html" with Notepad and replace "URL_Here" with your numeric ampersanded URL and save. Then, open the file with your Web browser. You will see the URL in normal characters. Past that converted URL in "example.html," instead of the normal URL.
That's it. You've just hidden your affiliate link as secure as Affiliate Link Cloaker does.
--Bonus--
You can download the e-book, "How to Hide Your Affiliate Links" for free. You will find more detailed instructions and a few more extra tricks. Please go to http://www.thatswise.com/free/e-books/hide_links.html
You can get the book for yourself, or you can give it to your affiliates.
