January 29, 2009 By

How to Redirect Affiliate Links Using cPanel

In the previous article I showed you how to redirect affiliate links using simple HTML. Now lets look at the second option – creating “redirects” in your Cpanel administration area.

To do this, please make sure that you have a web hosting with cPanel installed. Then login to your cPanel account and click on “Redirects”. The process is quite similar to creating a www redirect but this time you’ll be using your affiliate links.

So make sure you have the correct affiliate link.

In this example I will be using this affiliate link: http://winniche.gobala.hop.clickbank.net which leads to my own product on ClickBank. I would enter something like this in the configuration section.

cpanel redirect affiliate links

You can basically enter any file name you want. You can put a /go/ or /recommends/ followed by the product name. Then just enter the actual affiliate link, select “redirect with or without www” and click on “Add”. Your redirect link should now be functioning.

NOTE: This method will not work properly if you are using WordPress or other CMS that uses a .htaccess file to manage access permissions.

If you are using WordPress, then these are your options:

  1. Create a sub-domain, and use the sub-domain instead when creating cPanel redirects – so that would make your redirect links something like http:// track.gobalakrishnan.com/recommends/product
  2. Use the Ninja Affiliate plugin for WordPress, it does a much better job of managing and cloaking your affiliate links
  3. Create basic HTML redirects instead, or PHP redirects
  4. Get another domain name for the purpose of redirecting affiliate links

Any questions or comments?

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing Tagged With: , ,
January 22, 2009 By

How to Redirect Affiliate Links- Simple HTML

Affiliate marketing can be one of the simplest forms of making money online – just get traffic to your links and when a sale is made, you make money.

But if you want to get serious about it, there are other things you may want to do. For example, all serious affiliates mask or cloak their affiliate links. This not only allows them to appear more professional, but also prevents “commission hijacking”.

The easiest way to mask affiliate links is by using HTML “refresh” in the meta section of your HTML document.

So for example, let’s say I want to promote WordPress Adsense System by Gobala Krishnan. Here is my naked ClickBank affiliate link:

>> http://winniche.gobala.hop.clickbank.net <<

Let’s say I want to change it, so when I give out a link it will look something like this:

>> http://www.gobalakrishnan.com/recommends/wordpressadsense.html <<

imageWhat I needs to do is create a folder in my web server and name it “recommends”. Within this folder you save all your HTML files, each file represents one product that you are promoting. In this case, I will create a new HTML file and save it as “wordpressadsense.html”

Now, using DreamWeaver I can just click on the Insert > HTML > Head Tags > Refresh and I’ll see a window like this:

image

Select “0” seconds to make the page redirect immediately, and enter the actual affiliate link as the “Go to URL”. Your HTML codes will look something like this:

<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv=”Refresh” content=”0;URL=http://winniche.gobala.hop.clickbank.net” />
</head>

Now you can link directly to that page when promoting, for example www.yoursite.com/recommends/wordpressadsense.html and it will automatically redirect to your affiliate link. Simple, but it works.

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing Tagged With: , , ,