It looks much better, and many times increases your sales, if the link appears to stay in your site: www.mydomain.com/special-discount

Many new marketers try to use a URL shortener to hide the affiliate links, but to most users they look odd, and make them wonder where you are sending them, and are expecting it to be a big sales pitch. Even though TinyURL, Bit.ly, and other shorteners have gained a lot of popularity, they may not be your best choice for marketing on your blog or website. Their place is in Twitter where you must keep your URL’s short.

You can also buy cloaking programs to change your links, and most of them work great.  The problem with them is the cost. Most of them are expensive, and for a new marketer, may be more than your budget can afford.

An inexpensive and very effective way to change your links is to use a simple PHP script. You can create your own, or you can download the script I found and use it for your affiliate links. Here are the steps to download and use this  free link cloaker script:

1. Download the script from this location
2. Once you have download the script, upload it to your domain FTP and run the installcloaker.php file.
3. Create a MySQL database for this application on your hosting control panel. 
4. Put your database info on provided field (You can leave the table name blank), and press “Submit” when you are done
   
5. You should see the successful message on the next page if you done correctly.
   
6. To start cloaking your link, run the newcloak.php file from the script location on your browser. Put your affiliate link on “Link” and your affiliate keyword on “Keyword” field.
   
7. Press “Submit” and you should be getting your new affiliate cloaked link.

This script does require you have your own domain name, and paid hosting for your site.  This is one reason some people use TinyUrl or another URL shortener, to save money while they are starting out. I always recommend using paid hosting and your own domain name as soon as you can.

Using a PHP script to modify your affiliate links is a great way to make your product offers appear to be from your own site, and increase your conversion rates.

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