How to Disguise a Link
Earning money online is easy when you know the tricks of the trade. You don’t need to take part in make money at home schemes or chain letters from a “dear friend” that won a lottery in Zimbabwe. Affiliate programs can earn easy money. If you have a popular website, you could actually make a living just off of affiliate income. There are thousands of affiliate offers that you can use and if you already have affiliate IDs that’s great. You can learn how to disguise a link that points to your affiliate ID. Some people just don’t like to click on any type of link that will make money for the person that referred the information. You can get around that.
Popular Ways to Disguise a Link
URL Shortening
You have likely seen a link online or from a social media post that looks like this: http://bit.ly/JtbbMq. This is an example of a shortened URL that brings you to the MBB homepage. It’s a pretty cool way to shorten long affiliate URL links and disguise the link as well. There are several companies that offer URL shortening. Important features to look for when selecting a company include tracking of clicks and conversion tracking data.
1. Bitly
2. TinyURL
3. Google URL Shortener
4. Tiny.cc
5. Snip URL
6. Ow.ly
7. Is.gd
8. Yahoo URL Shortener
Any link can be shortened or disguised using these free online services. A great thing about shortening URLs is that they can be used on your website, in your email, in YouTube video descriptions on web forums and in some mobile communication. Disguising affiliate links is easy and you can drop your shortened links anywhere you like. The only downfall to URL shortening is if your affiliate link changes. From time to time, affiliates discontinue products or services that have affiliate links. These changes will make your affiliate links inactive. There is a way around this too.
Domain Name Forwarding
Every domain name registrar provides a way to manage your registered domains. Many registrars provide extras free of charge that allow you to setup email, modify CNAME records and forward your domain to a file, folder or directory. Using a domain name to hide your affiliate link is easy. Many Internet marketers that setup websites for affiliate products and services have one general domain. Secondary domain names can be registered that point to a folder or directory on the web server. This can be used at anytime and changed easily if your affiliate link changes.
Example:
www.marketersblackbook.com (Primary Domain)
www.reviewsbymarketersblackbook.com (Secondary Forwarded Domain)
This secondary domain could be forwarded directly to an affiliate link, folder or page full of affiliate links that are not followed by search engines. Almost all ffiliate programs for weight loss, supplements, how-to and other products or services can be used with domain name forwarding. Entering the online area of your domain name registrar will give you access to domain name forwarding. Take your affiliate link, paste it into the forwarding settings box and you can then use the full URL to promote your affiliate link.
WordPress Plugins
Using WordPress is one of the easiest ways to setup a website. It is even easier for you to hide your links. A plugin known as Pretty Link uses a 301 redirect instead of URL shortening or website forwarding. The redirect is a response code that is sent to your web server telling it that the clicked link is supposed to be forwarded to another website. There are two versions of Pretty Link. The Pretty Link Lite version is free, but many of the pro features are not available. The Pretty Link Pro version gives more control over tracking data and autopilot functions.
Learning how to disguise a link will put you into a higher class of Internet marketers and will help you start building your online income without worrying about someone finding out about your affiliate links.
