How to hide/cloak affiliate link with another link

Affiliate marketing is a source of income from website. Persons who show affiliate links on their website, generally show affiliate links of this structure: www.advertiser.com/ref=mark. Sometimes the website owner feel the need to hide the real affiliate links.

What it means to hide/cloak affiliate link

Hiding affiliate link means to hide affiliate link with another link. For example, you can hide affiliate link “www.advertiser.com/ref= ar” by “www.yourwebsite.com/advertiser”. When visitors click on “www.yourwebsite.com/advertiser”, they will be redirected to “www.advertiser.com/ref= ar”. When the visitors buy product from the website or does some other work of value, the affiliate earns commission.
Before cloaking affiliate link, be sure that your advertiser allows it. Some advertisers allow it and some do not. 

Why hide affiliate link:

Hiding of this link gives advantages:

1.       Visitor may deprive shower of affiliate link of his commission, by visiting the link directly from browser instead of clicking on the affiliate link.

2.       People are reluctant to click on affiliate link. Therefore, presenting the link as not affiliate link becomes necessary. This can be done by cloaking affiliate link by another link.

How to hide affiliate link

Suppose, your affiliate link is www.advertiser.com/ref124, you want to hide it with www.yourwebsite.com/advertiser. You can do this in following popular ways of hiding affiliate links:

1 Using .htaccess file:

Open .htaccess file on the root (www) folder of the host of your website. Go to bottom of the file. Write the code

RewriteEngine on

redirect 301 /www.yourwebsite.com/advertiser http:// www.advertiser.com/ref124

In this process, you do not have to create page for each link. You just have to enter a code for a link.

2 using HTML redirect:

You have to

1.       Create a page for the link and name it advertiser.html.

2.       Put following code on the head section of the page

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.advertiser.com/ref124"/>

3.       Set your link as www.yourwebsite.com/advertiser.html.

Now, you visitors shall be redirected to your affiliate link location.

3 Using PHP redirect:

If you have PHP on your server, then you can use PHP redirect method. You have to

1.       Create a page for the link and name it advertiser.php

2.       Put following code on the head section of the page

<?
header("Location: http://www.advertiser.com/ref124");
?>

3.       Set you link as www.yourwebsite.com/advertiser.php.

Now, you visitors shall be redirected to your affiliate link location.

4 Use plugin:

If you are using CMS link Wordpress, Joomla etc., then you can use plugins to hide affiliate link.