Hey guys! Been awhile since I posted a tutorial, but I figured I'd spill this one, since I know people have been having trouble with some of the shorteners. Now, there are indeed ways to make your OWN URL shortener (here's one example I've used), but the common shorteners seem to be far more trusted with certain audiences, so it's pretty easy to see why someone might still want to use one of the major ones. The problem is, many of them will prevent any "clickbank.net" links, give precurser warnings, or will delete the link altogether, taking dollars out of your pocket. Well here is something I've used in the past to get around that. I should note that IF they do come across your eventual link (via complaint or random audit, for example), then they will most likely remove it. However, I only had that happen maybe a handful of times, and I used a new link every day. Here's what you need: A domain name and hosting ... domain name doesn't have to be short, as it's not the link they click, nor is it the link they end up on. That's all you need really. Now, we'll start with my affiliate link: http://otrap1.fff000ggg.hop.clickbank.net (obviously not a real link) I will now go into my cPanel (I'll use my old the-guru-code.com hosting for this, I suppose), and I'll create a new file. I'll name it "fff000ggg.php" to make it simple. After creating it, I need to edit it, so that it does what I want, so I'll edit it and place the below code into it. Code: <html> <head> <script type="text/javascript"> <!-- function delayer(){ window.location = "http://otrap1.fff000ggg.hop.clickbank.net/" } //--> </script> </head> <body onLoad="setTimeout('delayer()', 0)"> <p>Â </p> </body> </html> Save it, and now I have a link that is NOT a direct CB link, but DOES still take visitors to my CB link. Finally, I go to the shortener services (I'll use fur.ly) and redirect the shortened link to http://www.the-guru-code.com/fff000ggg.php instead of http://otrap1.fff000ggg.hop.clickbank.net, which they will allow. Here you go! http://fur.ly/8at3 Enjoy!
Will the shortening services kick it back if you just create your own redirect on your site? Like this: Code: <?php header( 'Location: http://otrap1.fff000ggg.hop.clickbank.net/' ) ; ?> I've never tried that's why I'm asking.
They finally took down the fur.ly link. Let's try a TinyURL one now. http://************/czks96h Have fun with this. If your marketing model is a "smash 'n grab" type, then the fur.ly links would probably work. They were up for at least two days. Not sure yet on TinyURL. EDIT: Forgot that TinyURL was a no-no here, but you guys know the link (if you actually care to see it, which isn't necessary).
Hi Otrap, another thing that works pretty well is doing what I call double redirecting. I use "tiny" and ow.ly So: tiny=> ow.ly => hoplink. Even you can do this if you want to hide the referral for some blackhat traffic methods.
tinyurl doesn't work on sites like reddit. You can just make yourself a link shortener site, you will need a domain or folder on your domain, an available database, and server hosting of course. If someone needs help with setting it up they can PM me, it's not that hard and they are extremely useful, especially when your site has been banned.
If you have WP site, the easiest method for cloaking I found is using free Pretty link plugin. Very easy to use and it creates pages off your domain name like mydomain/productname (that you can make NoFollow). I am a noob and found it very easy to set up.
Just felt I needed to mention. You will be much safer using a meta refresh. Like this: Code: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://otrap1.fff000ggg.hop.clickbank.net/"> That should be in between the <head> tags to ensure it works. Problem with Javascript is, it can be disabled.
