What is an Affiliate Link?
In affiliate programs, it's a special URL that contains username or username of the affiliate and is used by the advertiser to track all traffic the affiliate sends to the advertiser's site as a part of the affiliate program. So it is with QpidAffiliate’s Affiliate Link. There are three different direct links with its member sites, ChnLove, CharmingDate and iDateAsia, respectively.Why choose to hide your Affiliate Link?
- It looks friendlier
Most affiliate links cannot be seen through what’s inside through the text of the URL. Instead of posting your affiliate link, you can also create a PHP page that automatically redirects to your affiliate link. Then you can send the address of this redirect page on your site to whom you intent to guide them through the affiliate link. So it’s friendlier to for a URL like
https://www.qpidaffiliate.com/index.php/promote/click?aid=80&oid=EXAMPLE
to be redirected with
http://www.example.com/dating-sites/recommend/chnlove.com
Then you may put such an address inside emails/newsletters and it will look much more attractive to your readers.
- Easy managing your external links
Setting up redirects for all your affiliate links will save lots of work if the merchant ever changes their affiliate network or affiliate link system. If that happens, all you need to do is to change the link in just one place instead of checking all your web pages and email templates to update the links.
How to create redirects of Affiliate Link?
Redirects can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but as this blog focuses on self-hosted WordPress, I will be going over an easy way to do this using a PHP redirect. Here are the steps I took when I hid my affiliate links for this website:
The are more than one way to build redirects.I will introduce one as using self-hosted Wordpress with PHP redirect as it is an easy way to do this. So here it is how to hide your affiliate link,
Step 1. Create a folder, let's name it "go";
Step 2. Create a .php document-you can create it with Notepad or other programs, and name it after your affiliate link, let's make it "ChnLove.com.php";
Step 3. Copy the following code and paste it into the documnet:
<? header("Location: https://www.qpidaffiliate.com/index.php/promote/click?aid=80&oid=EXAMPLE"); ?>
Step 4. Save it to the "go" folder as created above;
Step 5. Go to your FTP server and upload the "go" folder under the public_html folder;
Step 6. Repeat creating and uploading as above if you have more affiliate links.
Then you can get a redirect link like
http://www.example.com/go/chnlove.com
Remember that the "go" folder can be named as whatever you prefer to. As for the first example, it is uploaded to a folder called "date-sites" instead of in the root folder.
Besides the above method, some publishing platform like wordpress, also offers some plugins which could accomplish the 'link cloaking ' target. Searching with key words like 'link cloaking' or 'link cloaker', you will be easy to find them.
------
- More questions about this? Please contact QpidAffiliate Support Team and leave your account ID and email;
- No account with the best dating affiliate program yet? Please sign up here.
