Nowadays, making money online using affiliate program is getting popular, most of the internet marketers are trying to promote their affiliate link and hope to get someone to sign up the affiliate program under their affiliate link, when their referrals make money, they make money too without doing anything, it’s simple.
There are two options for you to make money online with affiliate program, one is promoting the product in the affiliate program, when you make a sales, you will get paid a commission. Another is referral program in the affiliate program, when you refer someone to sign up the affiliate program, and your referral make a sale, you’ll get paid a commission as well.
Nevertheless, I’ve seen many people is still using the affiliate link or referral link that the affiliate program provides, so you will see affiliate link like this, example :
http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=myblog2day
When you point your arrow on the link, the corner of the bottom left of your browser will show the link URL. It doesn’t look professional at all and everyone knows this is an affiliate link, you know up to 50% people ignores affiliate link, including myself unless the link is something that interests me. So in this post, I’m going to show you how to hide your affiliate link and modify it to any pattern you like.
6 Steps How To Hide An Affiliate Link
I’m going to modify my Hostgator affiliate link as shown above. So here is the step-by-step tutorial on how I modify and hide my affiliate link.
- Open a notepad and paste the coding as below.
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv=”Refresh” content=”0; URL=http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=myblog2day“>
</head></body>
</html>After that, save the notepad name as “index“.
*Change my affiliate link to your affiliate link. - Open a folder and name it as whatever name you like, it’s better to name it as something relevant to the affiliate program. My affiliate link is the Hostgator affiliate program, so I name and save it as “Hostgator”.
- Copy the “index” notepad file and paste into the folder that you created in step #2.
- Now copy the affiliate program folder and paste it into your wordpress folder using FTP. I pasted it into the root directory, you can either do the same or create a new folder says “recommends” and paste your affiliate program folder into the “recommends” folder.
- If you create the recommends folder and paste your affiliate program folder, eventually your affiliate link will be looked like this.
http://www.domain.com/recommends/affiliateprogram/
- I pasted my Hostgator affiliate program folder into the root directory, so my Hostgator affiliate link will be looked like this.
http://myblog2day.com/Hostgator/
Now, it looks more professional right? The affiliate link is looked like a page in your blog, when people clicks it, it will redirect them to the affiliate program site. Hiding affiliate link is very simple, it increases the click through rate as well as the chances that they sign up the affiliate program under your affiliate link. With that said, your affiliate earning will be increasing equally.
Make money online with affiliate program is not that complicated, but it’s not as easy as you think because you need to drive more traffic to your site and refer your readers to sign up. If you able to drive more traffic to your blog, I believe that getting your readers to click on the “professional” affiliate link and sign up the affiliate program is not difficult. Eventually, making money online with affiliate program is not a myth anymore.
This is a simple tutorial that teaches you how to hide your affiliate link and modify it to be more professional. There are many ways to hide your affiliate link such as using TinyUrl.com, Bit.ly and etc, they allow you to modify your affiliate link to a short URL, but I think that modifying affiliate link by using our own domain name will be more personal and this increases the trust from your readers.
Have you done this for your affiliate link before? Besides of this, what method did you use to hide your affiliate link?
Agent Deepak
Sushant @ Techooze
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{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Great tips,Lee
However, I think the above tips will only practical for those who only be part of limited number of affiliate progams.
Is there any alternative ways that will make the process to be faster for those who are part of a lot of affiliate programs?
@Helmi,
A wordpress plugin named GoCodes could make the process faster and easier. If you don’t mind to invest, Ninja Affiliate would be good.
This is a really good tips on hiding your affiliate URLS. I would also say if you have a WordPress blog then there are plugins for this.
Greg Ellison´s last blog ..Google Wave Application
@Greg,
Yea, for Wordpress blog, there is a wordpress plugin named GoCodes could do it. You will need to do it manually with the tutorial that I mentioned above.
Thanks again for reading my blog Greg!
great tip and will be useful to me in the future as I have not dived into affiliate marketing too much yet. Greg, could you share some plugins? I only know Ninga and I do not want to pay for it.
A nice post, but for non-technical users, it would be best to use gocodes plugin as all can be done from your WP admin.
George Serradinho´s last blog ..WordPress 2.8.6 Release – 2 Security Fixes
I also use this manual way to hide my affiliate link.
Dana @ Online Knowledge´s last blog ..WordPress Upgrading: 2.8.6. Version
I guess hyperlink it will be much easier.
This tip can be practical no matter how many affiliate programs you are in. Many peopple create a folder called reccomends or something like that and then names these files whatever they want then to stay. For example, for me to create a link to host gator, my link would look like http://www.jimclarymarketing.com/reccomends/hosgator.html
and it would accomplish the same thing.
Jim Clary´s last blog ..Top 5 Benefits Of Hosting Your Blog On Your Domain Name
Hi Lee this is really very good tutorial. It is really very important for us to hide our affiliate link, so that our visitor do not come to know that we are promoting other products.
work at home´s last blog ..Analyze your work at home blog link structure [Digg]
The link is more attractive and people will be likely to click. But it takes 6 steps to make one, novice users prefer a plug-in, would you suggest or write one?
Phaoloo´s last blog ..12 Best Tools To Find And Manage Proxy Servers
@Phaoloo,
If you’re using Wordpress, a wordpress plugin named GoCodes can do the work for you.
I think use Wordpress plugins as: Gocode & Ninja Affiliate for hiding affiliate links will help you save time and better than using HTML & PHP & .HTAccess code
Toan Nguyen Minh´s last blog ..Wordpress 2.8.6 is available –> Upgrade your Wordpress Blog to WordPress 2.8.6 Now
@Toan,
Cool! Seems that you’re using various plugin to hide your affiliate links, Ninja Affiliate is a great plugin and I’ll be getting one for myself soon.
I agree you should make your links professional looking. I use Affiliate Link Clocker and the Ninja Affiliate plugin.
Andrew
Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com´s last blog ..Create a Product Once, Sell for Ever
@Andrew,
Ninja Affiliate is a cool plugin to hide our affiliate link professionally, but the price is slightly high for those who just start their affiliate marketing. I’m sure will getting one for myself in future as I’m on the track for affiliate marketing yet.
Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment Andrew!
else you can opt for gocodes plugin which does all the home work for you..
Rajesh Kanuri @ TechCats´s last blog ..Register Domain Names For 5$ at Register.Com
@Rajesh,
You’re right Rajesh, seems that many people is using GoCodes to hide their affiliate link. But I prefer to do it manually since I have not much affiliate link need to be hide. I’ll get Ninja Affiliate in future.
I think the hyperlink function of at least an HTML coder will do. Nevertheless, the tip is quite a good one. Will try this when I have an affiliate sponsor in the future. Thank you.
Rian´s last blog ..Facebook vs Friendster
@Rian,
You’re welcome Rian, I hope you like this tutorial.
There are many programs out there, free and paid, just Google.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..I Want You To Review Me. Part 1
cool. i guess many people already do this.
titan´s last blog ..Review: Pakej Blogging Sepaku Hosting
How can you hide affiliate link if you use free blog hosting?
ebiz4life´s last blog ..Download PERCUMA E-Kamus
@ebizlife,
This tutorial is for those who have self hosted wordpress blog. I see that you’re using free Wordpress platform, I think you’re not allowed to place any banner or insert link in the blog, it’s Wordpress’s policy.
Let me know if you would like to grab your own hosting and domain name, I could help you out.
Hiding affiliate links is important, but I think it is more important to hide those links from search engines. There is no way that 50% of people ignore affiliate links. More than 50% of people have no idea what an affiliate link even is.
Another step that I like to do is blocking the search engine spiders from the ‘recommends’ directory as well as each individual redirect file. This can be done with the robots.txt file and meta tags. If a search engine finds too many affiliate links on a site, they usually won’t rank that site very well.
Thanks Lee for the great info. Just 5 minutes ago i thought of this when i saw some thing similar to this on shoutmeloud (Hope u know it). Just then after 5 minutes i came to your site and saw this post and it made me so much happy since i dont need to search for how this was done. Thanking you again Lee.
Good Luck in Your Blogging Journey.
Amal Roy´s last blog ..How to Get a Valid IMEI Number For Mobile Phones in India
@Amal Roy,
Yea I know Shoutmeloud but I didn’t know he wrote the same tutorial. I hope you find it useful.
Anyways, some people create a folder called recommends or something like that and then names these files whatever they want then to stay
How to make money from home legitimately´s last blog ..An Internet Marketer’s List – Is The Money Really In The List?
I use Go Codes Plugin for Wordpress. Its the best thing I think for hiding affiliate links
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Interview with Simon from Teenius
I have never try it before. is it difficult to do it ?
KevinChong´s last blog ..online bachelor degree