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Free Link Cloaking Fraud?
jmunguia121
Posts: 16
Joined: 30 Jan 09
Trust:
18 Apr 09 7:07 am

Free Link Cloaking Fraud?

Hi Everyone,

Is it possible to have your affiliate sales stolen by using a free cloaking service like FreeLinkCloaker.com?
Has anyone had their affiliate sales stolen because they used a free link cloaking service?

Why I ask:

I'm in the process of cloaking my affiliate link using FreeLinkCloaker.com and the first step to do this is by pointing your domain name (DNS Hosting IP Address ...or something like that) to them.

I was thinking, if they have access to ALL of my info because I am using their free service, they could just change my affiliate ID with theirs after signing up with ClickBank to obtain an affiliate ID of their own.

I just feel like I'm giving them complete control over my affiliate ID for using their free service.

Has or IS anyone using FreeLinkCloaker.com? If so, what's your experience and is there something better you are using to cloak your links.

Note: I'm only using this service because I don't have a website of my own and are marketing through Articles, Blogs, Ads, Forums - not this one ... not my niche! THANKS A BUNCH EVERYONE!
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PremiumMember
whistlerh
Posts: 37
Joined: 22 Mar 09
Trust:
19 Apr 09 5:36 pm

 Godaddy used to do forwarding and masking of a domain for free. Not sure if they still do. What I used to do was buy a domain name, then have godaddy forward and mask to my affiliate link. I now own a couple of VPS which alows me to do all that myself and I dont have to wait on godaddy to do it.

If you know someone you can trust that has a site have them sure you up a redirect page on their site. They could track your traffic but atleast you would personally know who they are instead of relaying on a free service that is for sure tracking your traffic.

I usually use redirects from one of my own sites using a variation of the techniques that can found here https://www.affilorama.com/site-building/creating-affiliate-redirects. I do this even with "direct linking" from Google Search Ads. I personally wouldn't give over the control of my links to a third party when the ablity to cloak your own links is easy enough, if you have your own site.

I would also suggest looking into .htacess redirects if you get your own site that allows you .htaccess and mod rewrites. Here is an article I found on the topic http://www.reaper-x.com/2007/09/08/hiding-affiliate-links-using-htaccess/ Messing with your htaccess files can really mess up your site if you are not careful. There are lots of guides floating around on different blogs on how to do this plus a number of other link cloaking tricks.

Hope this helps and would like to know what solution your come with regarding cloaking link without a site of your own.

Whistler
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wollowra
Posts: 869
Joined: 14 Mar 08
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20 Apr 09 1:56 am

 Great post Whistler,
I don't know about them stealing your affiliate sales but they
definately track your traffic and where it's coming from and going to etc...
Can you imagine if they got caught replacing your affiliate ID as a trusted redirect company...
that would be one doozy of a lawsuit.
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they were the big things.

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jmunguia121
Posts: 16
Joined: 30 Jan 09
Trust:
22 Apr 09 7:24 am

 Great stuff Whistler, I appreciate your help.

I was forwarding & masking my link through a domain I purchased from GoDaddy.com, but for some odd reason I began having trouble this way.

While doing a routine check on my links, I found that every time I clicked on my links and was forwarded to the merchants site, small block figures were appearing on many letters of the merchants content were a spanish accent mark should have been.

I'm in the spanish market so I think maybe GoDaddy forwarding or masking doesnt work so great for spanish content with accent symbols and stuff.

Any more advise is more than welcomed- thanks again!
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garry1
Posts: 9
Joined: 24 Apr 09
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24 Apr 09 10:07 pm

 Not sure if this type of link could be of use to you, but if you have your own web address (works with the free ones too), just open the text editor that you use on your pc (i use notepad).

Add the following code to the document, and make sure to insert your affiliate link in the correct place.

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://your-affiliate-link-here" );
?>


Name the document what ever name you like,the name i've used for this example is link-cloak-example ,and save it as a .php document.

Upload the document to your website hosting files (Filezilla is good and free) and then use the address to that file as your link.

I'm not very good at explaining things, but i hope this helps.

Heres the link i've used for this example, it's my website address that redirects to another website.

http://ulnoth.com/link-cloak-example.php
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PremiumMember
whistlerh
Posts: 37
Joined: 22 Mar 09
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24 Apr 09 11:15 pm

 Good Example Garry,

Just a note to anyone that wants to use this type of redirect with Adwords. You want to make sure your display url and and destination url match. With Garry's example Affilorama.com needs to be the Display url. If you are facing the double url serving problem look into masking the link in addition to the 301 redirect.

Whistler
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