In my last article, we were discussing the problems with affiliate links. We also looked at one solution to having “overt” affiliate links by using tinyurl to disguise them. We ended up with a disguised link (one offering protection to the link), but one that didn’t look either pretty or natural.
Today I want to discuss a much more satisfactory solution: using a redirect script. Although, initially, a little more complicated, once you’ve used it a few times you’ll find yourself redirecting links very quickly AND you’ll be much happier with the disguised link itself.
In essence, a redirect script is a piece of code that is uploaded to your website; and the term “code” is very appropriate here (think in terms of “secret code”) because the sole purpose of the script is to disguise your true affiliate link. The script I use is a “php” script (don’t worry: I can’t write in php either - just stick with me. I only mention it so that when you see “.php” in a little while, you’ll know why).
Let’s assume that you ‘re going to promote a ficticious ClickBank product called “Earn with Adsense” and your affilate link is going to be:
http://yourclickbanknickname.earnwithadsense.hop.clickbank.net
and, for the reasons we’ve discussed, you want to redirect it. Firstly, before we look at the script itself, we need to decide where it is going to fit into the structure of your website.
I would suggest that you use a format along the lines of:
domain name/”generic” sub-directory/(appropriately named) script
e.g if we called our sub-directory “recommends” and we decided an appropriate name for this link is “adsense”, then, instead of sending traffic to our ugly affiliate link we can send it to:
www.yourdomain.com/recommends/adsense.php
- much better, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Here’s the script itself (I suggest you copy it into notepad and save it as a text document called “redirect”):
<?php header(”Location: *put the url you want to redirect to here*”); ?><html><head><title>redirect</title><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″></head><body></body></html>
END OF SCRIPT
In our example, you need to replace: *put the url you want to redirect to here*
with: http://yourclickbanknickname.earnwithadsense.hop.clickbank.net
Then you need to save the document, like this:
choose save as
in “File name”, enter: adsense.php
in “Save as type”, choose “All files” from the drop-down menu.
All we need to do now is to open our FTP client and upload our adsense.php file into our “recommends” sub-directory. And, of course, send our traffic to:
www.yourdomain.com/recommends/adsense.php
the redirect script will do the rest and send it to our TRUE affiliate link.
I hope this helps.
