Your Link Cloaking Options

Link Cloaking Free or Paid

1. Free Services – There are many free services, here are a few:
http://www.tinyurl.com -Single text box entry that turns any URL into tinyurl.com/weirdcode

http://www.cloakedlink.com -4 Options but only one really cloaks (the others still expose the “ugly” link). The useful one works like tinyurl, leaving the same weird code

http://sparechangeprofits.com/plr-cloaker/ -Useful only for sites that allow Javascript. Generates an encrypted Javascript link. has been tested with several click bank products without any problems.

PROS: Free, easy to use.

CONS: Almost as ugly as “ugly” URLs, but doesn’t expose affiliate IDs. No reporting or tracking. No control. For example tinyurl.com just implemented the ability for users to preview the link if they desire. You are also risking that the company goes under, stops offering the service, or their servers go down. NO LINK CENTRALIZATION.

2. Buy A Domain For Cloaking – You can purchase a domain and have your web host or domain registrar redirect all traffic to a specific destination.

PROS: easy

CONS: very limited in functionality, requires a domain purchase for every affiliate offering you want to pursue which can end up being very expensive

3. Paid Cloaking Services – These are membership services that offer a wide range of link cloaking options. They usually do not require anything to reside on your web server for the cloaking to work. In fact you can usually use their service, including tracking, without even owning a web site.

PROS: Flexible, full featured, detailed tracking, no web site needed and LINK CENTRALIZATION.

CONS: Not free. You are also risking that the company goes under, stops offering the service, or their servers go down. Finally, these companies gain access to keyword and campaign information you may not want to share.

4. Free & Paid Scripts – The main difference between paid and free scripts is customer support. If a paid script doesn’t offer support as a feature I would stay away from it.The features offered vary widely and range from simple redirect to complete campaign management.

Powerlinkgenerator, a popular paid link cloaking script, for example, offers complete campaign management. Not only does it cover all of the reasons for using link cloaking above, but also allows you to store contact and log in information related to the offer, and much more.

I don’t personally use Powerlinkgenerator so I can’t vouch for the claims, but it is put out by Mike Filsaime who has a strong track record of quality products. For me, though, it offers more than I need, at least for now.

PROS: Usually a robust feature set, service for quality paid versions, leaves control in your hands, LINK CENTRALIZATION, data privacy.

CONS: Can be expensive or take time to find, installing and maintaining may actually take more work than the simple solutions I teach you below.

5. Build Your Own – This is the route I have taken, and why I don’t have much to offer in evaluating other link cloaking services and installable scripts. I started with the free cloaking services but found that with only a few minutes work I could implement the same functionality and have at least log files to evaluate the results of a campaign.

As I got more involved with Affiliate and CPA campaigns I expanded my link cloaking efforts to include .htaccess (explained below), PHP scripting, and MySQL Database tracking tables.

We won’t go quite that far in this report, but you will see how easily and quickly you can implement link cloaking.

PROS: Total control, deeper understanding of how linking cloaking works, usually leads to creative and profitable ways to implement the technique beyond just redirecting to affiliate landing pages. Data privacy and LINK CENTRALIZATION.

CONS: Need to learn a little bit of technology, will require more work if you want a lot of the “high end” features offered by paid script options like PowerLink Generator.

Raises the technophobe alarm in some.

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