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Free Link Cloaker
By Alan | August 13, 2007
Link cloaking is an important tool that should be part of your affiliate marketing campaigns for two main reasons:
- When your affiliate URL is visible, thieves can substitute their own affiliate ID and effectively receive a discount on the sale and or even steal your commission.
- Your affiliate links look more professional and “safe” for your prospects.
We tend to forget that we live in the world of Internet marketing but most folks do not. So when they see one of those monster long affiliate links some folks get nervous and will not click. So instead of having your affiliate link appear as:
http://webzu.quitdayjob.hop.clickbank.net/
You can cloak your link so it looks friendlier:
http://www.imnirvana.com/Recommends/High-Preformance-Affiliate-Marketing.php
There has been studies done that show the cloaked link above with “Recommends” in the link converts better than an uncloaked link.
I’ve been cloaking my links (like I did above) by hand using PHP re-direct but I found in the Warrior Forums a really cool script by Andy Fletcher that lets you cloak your links very easily and he is giving the script away!
You can get Andy’s Free link cloaking script by visiting his website at Free Link Cloaking.
Installing the script is pretty simple and shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes it just depends on your comfort level installing scripts.
The installation is pretty straight forward you FTP six files to the root of the domain you want to run Free Link Cloaker from than you run the installation.php page and follow the step by step instructions from there.
I noticed some folks where having problems installing FLC so I created a how-to video showing the step by step process of installing FLC. I installed it using an FTP software client and cpanel which is provided by my web host. It’s the easiest way to setup the necessary MySQL database.
Hopefully this video helps you install FLC so you don’t miss out on a great script.
Topics: Internet Marketing Video Tips |
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:02 am
[...] Free Link Cloaker [...]
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:17 am
a question, probably pretty dumb.
once the cloaker has done its job, how do you get the link from the cloaker to your email or wherever you want to go with it?
it locked into the text pad or what?
thanks for the video. it is very informative.
Justin
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Hi Justin,
I’m glad you found the video informative.
Once you cloak your link all your cloaked links will be visible from the Free Link Cloaker “monitor” page from there you can copy and paste the cloaked link into your email, website, forum post, etc.
–Alan
August 25th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Thank you for this video.
I’ve been putting off configuring
FLC until I had a handle on what
to do.
You severely cut down on
my learning curve!
Thanks again
Jack
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:48 am
[...] It’s three steps and takes about a minute. Here is my post on the Free Link Cloaker script. [...]
September 4th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Hey Alan,
Thanks for the video. It confirmed that what I’ve done so far is correct and that the problem seems to be with my .htaccess file.
I’m trying to install this on a brand new, basically empty domain so there is no .htaccess file already there. I’ve created one and tried variations of content but haven’t done it correctly yet.
What needs to be in the .htaccess file ABOVE the code given in the “Failed” instructions?
Thanks!
September 4th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Hi Cindy,
I’m not sure if this what you did:
Open up notepad and paste the .htaccess code for FLC into notepad then save the file by entering the name as:
“.htaccess” (use the quotes). If this doesn’t work save it If this doesn’t work, save it as htaccess.txt and then upload it to the server. Once you have uploaded the file then rename it using an FTP program or from cpanel to .htaccess.
If after doing that you still get errors you need to check with your host. Some hosts do not allow .htaccess. Email your host ask them how to do this or have them create an .htaccess file for you.
I hope this helps you out. Let me know.
-Alan
September 7th, 2007 at 5:36 am
I can’t say how much I appreciate that video on Link Cloaker. It also helped me understand why one of my other programs would not instal. I am impressed more and more by people like yourself who are willing to put in your time to do things that help us all without the obvious money making reason that most do. The program is also fantastic and much better than sending people to other sites to then have your link cloaked and redirected back t your own. You get full control with this one…
Thanks again for your selfless work :o)
Warmest Regards
Mark
November 13th, 2007 at 5:34 am
Well!
I installed it with no problem but when I use the newly created cloaked link it goes on to the merchants landingpage and then it still shows the Click Bank hoplink…?
What am I doing wrong?
Ton
November 13th, 2007 at 8:44 am
Hi Ton,
You’re not doing anything wrong, that is how it is supposed to work. Most problems occur on the affiliates page not at the merchants page. Plus ClickBank is a stickler about masking the hoplink on the sales page. Here is their TOS on that -
—————————————-
10. Will I get referral credit if I hide hoplinks by making them open into a frame, iframe, layer, applet, image, or other sub-window object?
No. These are illegal hoplinks. For security reasons, and to ensure proper tracking of your referrals, all hoplinks must be targeted to the top level of a new or existing window.
Source - http://www.clickbank.com/hoplink_faq.html#hoplink_question_10
————————————————-
FLC won’t mask the hoplink on the merchants sales page. You can buy a cloaking software like this one >>>> http://www.imnirvana.com/goto/affiliate_link_cloaking/
That will do what you want and they claim it’s okay to use with ClickBank but I would be careful.
As I wrote above cloaking your links on your web pages/emails is the goal since that is where most thieves would strike and you want the professional looking link for your potential customers. And remember nothing is 100% when it comes to stopping a determined thief.
January 29th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Hi Alan
Thanks for this video. Really helpful.
I have a question, how to cloak affiliate link from cj or linkshare?
Because they have img source and they said that we have to put all the code to perform correctly.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Hi Edy,
I just copy the actual affiliate link from my CJ and linkshare accounts and I haven’t had any issues. I save the image myself and then enter the cloaked as a hyperlink to that image instead of using their img source code.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Hi,
Your video is a good one but I need to know how you got to the free link cloaker page where you enter in the database info, etc. If you wouldn’t mind, I would greatly appreciate that link! Thanks you.
February 19th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Hi Amalia,
Once you have uploaded the FLC files point your browser to:
http://www.YourDomain.com/flc/installcloaker.php
Make sure you replace “YourDomain.com” with your actual domain. That will bring up the section where you enter your database info.
February 28th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Do you know of a conflict with the FreeLinkcloaker and customized 404 error pages?
I have a conflict and either it work on or the other. It has to do with the .htaccess file
February 28th, 2008 at 6:48 am
Sorry, i wanted to say that if one works,then the other does not and viceversa
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Hi Frank,
No I haven’t hear about that conflict. But I don’t have a custom 404 page setup on the domain I have FLC on.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Hello Alan,
Every time I try to view the Free Link Cloaker video it says its unavailable. Will it be made available again?
March 5th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Hello, I just checked and it’s available. I haven’t taken the video down. Here is the direct link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4172928893757482198&hl=en
April 4th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
your video states to place all files in the root directory which im assuming is just inside the public_html folder, but other instructions ive seen as well as your own reply above indicate them being installed in a newly created folder titled “flc” that is in the public_html folder. I cant get mine to work so im just wondering
April 4th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Hi Ernie,
You’re right you upload the folder to the public_html directory of your domain. The folder you see in the video called “flc” is where the six files are in. So will you have a folder called “flc” which has the six files you need all in that one “flc” folder which is in the root (public html folder) of your site.
April 4th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
i did all that and got the 2 errors like in video. I created the 2 files ( didnt have an .htacess in the flc folder just the 6 files so i created one ) and uploaded them to the flc folder as well. When i try the install cloaker now i get “unable to connect to database”
Im clueless what ive done
April 5th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hi Ernie,
Usually the database connection error is when people don’t input the correct DB info so I would double check that first.
Are you using cpanel? Here are some pretty excellent tips on setting up your MYSQL DB:
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=171669
So I would check your host name…it should be “localhost” with hosting services. Is your DB name and user id correct? Check your cpanel sometimes its adds the username so if you named your database “cloaker” the name should be “username_cloaker”. So check that first. You’re very close. Once you get the DB info sorted out it will work. FLC can’t find your database because of the input info and that is why it can’t connect.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
ok so i got it installed. Now when i create a cloak it is successful and gives me 2 links to try. They both lead to 404 error pages??? i verified that the link i was cloaking is good.
Now what is wrong LOL
April 8th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Not sure on that one. If you want send me the cloaked link and your php redirect file and I can take a look. I think it might have something to do with that. My email is alan AT imnirvana.com.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Hi Alan,
Thanks for the video. I was with you until the part where it asks to create a database. I’m using FileZilla. I was able to uplod the 6 files, but I just can’t figure out how to do create a database. Is there a workaround to move forward?
Please help!