Cloaked Affiliate Links and TOS

[RyanWeb]

So as many people have said they cloak their affiliate links using a php file to make for easy updating..

This is just what I am doing, only I am doing it off domain.. I have setup piwik on my new domain visit-casino.online and I will be running my affiliate links from multiple sites through it:

visit-casino.online/casinoname.php (will be the url that will redirect them to my affiliate link)

This way I can track the stats, and update all my links, across all my sites from one location.

For example, my affiliate links on thecasinochat.com will look like visit-casino.online/luckyred

While updating a massive amount of URLs... I started to wonder, no affiliate program will have a problem with this, right?

Since all my traffic will look like it is coming from the domain 'visit-casino.online' .. Basically a blank site used to redirect my traffic.

I would say it is similar to using bitly to cloak links.. Only I own the domain/service..

I don't want it to appear like I am doing anything not legit..

 

[3joker]

I can't imagine that the affiliate programs would have a problem with this or even care, especially if you send them new depositors. But I guess the only way to be sure is to ask them directly. I wouldn't even have considered it a problem.

 

[RyanWeb]

Yeah neither would I.. Until my 4th hour of changing out links thinking to myself... This better be permanent...

I've used 301's in an htaccess to clock links, but on the same domain.

I was just thinking since technically there is no click.. Its a refresh that redirects the user to the affiliate link (after the initial click of course, that takes you to the refresh page.. )

I think the tedious work may have me losing my mind

 

[tobbe]

If you send quality traffic (not spam) it won't be a problem, worst scenario is that your AM will ask you from what sites you send traffic and you can just tell them.

Cloaking is used to return different results for different users/agents.
For example if you try to improve your SEO by displaying links only to googles crawler, but not regular visitors, that would be cloaking.
Or if a network doesn't allow direct traffic from facebook, and you fake the referrer to make it look like the traffic comes from your site instead, that would be cloaking.
Or you create an AdWord campaign about milk, but all people from X gets redirected to a gambling site instead, that would be cloaking.

I'd prefer to call what you're doing Link Masking, Pretty URLs or URL Shortening.
You hide (mask) the end url (affiliate url) from the naked eye, but robots and crawlers will still be able to follow the redirects like normal visitors.

I've been masking my urls since day 1, and no one has ever asked about it.

EDIT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking

 

[RyanWeb]

Ha yes, URL Shortening is what I will call it then They look 100x better to! Plus now I got awesome tracking across all domains, I think this will really help improve my CTR (after reviewing the stats).

FYI Piwik is an awesome opensource analytics program.. First heard Guard Dog mention it about a year ago.. Wish I would have looked into it more then!

 

[tobbe]

Ha yes, URL Shortening is what I will call it then They look 100x better to! Plus now I got awesome tracking across all domains, I think this will really help improve my CTR (after reviewing the stats). FYI Piwik is an awesome opensource analytics program.. First heard Guard Dog mention it about a year ago.. Wish I would have looked into it more then!

Yeah once you have everything set up it's easy to split test and see what performs best.
I don't know how you have set it up, but if you haven't I'd recommend you to set up Events, unfortunately I'm not too familiar with Events tracking in Piwik but I'd guess it's pretty similar to Google Analytics.
Basically it allows you to track click troughs (or other events) for different places on your site.
For example you could track main article text links / sidebar links / different ad spots.
And it gives you something like this.


http://piwik.org/docs/event-tracking/
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/eventTrackerGuide?hl=en

A tip, instead of creating a php file for each site like visit-casino.online/casinoname.php,
I could write you a small php script which design the links like this: visit-casino.online/casinoname and combine it with a text file including all info like this:

casinoname1;http://affurl
casinoname2;http://affurl
casinoname3;http://affurl

1 text file, with all info, easier to overview or mass change if needed.

I built my redirect script a bit different last time, I pass the end-domain/url to the redirect script.
It then checks if I have an affiliate link for that domain, if so it redirects to the affiliate url instead, if not it redirects to the given url.

http://freespins.eu/leave?url=http://www.igame.com <- Goes to my igame.com affiliate url
http://freespins.eu/leave?url=http://www.google.com <- Goes to google.com, not affiliate obv

If you want to go even further and make the links look even better you could show the original end-domain when people hover over the links, and with help of jQuery change the HREF of the element to your short url on click. In my case it look like this:

The link doesn't go directly to igame.com, but /leave?url=http://www.igame.com (affiliate link) -> igame.
You can view it live at http://freespins.eu, hold over any link in the sidebar and you'll see.

I'm not saying anything is right, wrong or better then the other, just sharing some ideas with you.
Shoot me a PM if you need help.

 

[RyanWeb]

Thank you for the tips.. I wrote a nice reply but got a forum error on post and lost it.. Figures..

Anyway, I love the fact that your site only shows the main domain for each brand (link hover), makes it look like a direct link and I'm sure increases clicks.

I apparently like to do things the hard way. Instead of a jump script I put every index.php into its own /casinoname folder. A bit more time consuming but I also have a bit of tracking code inside each index.php that tells me the website and page the user came from before hitting the redirect script, among other things.

I will have to look more into event tracking, I think I read that I can add something like sitename.com/casinoname#mainsidebar and it will append the note mainsidebar for events... I will have to double check but if I recall I think thats what I read somewhere..

 

[KasinoKing]

So as many people have said they clock their affiliate links using a php file to make for easy updating..

Do you mean clock - or did you mean to write cloak?

KK

 

[RyanWeb]

Nice, and I spelt the title wrong as well

Yes I meant cloak...

 

[KasinoKing]

Nice, and I spelt the title wrong as well
Yes I meant cloak...

I thought so - but wanted to check first. Corrected!
KK

 

[RyanWeb]

Thank you!

I may have been drinking that night who knows.. Could have been that or could have been the fact that I went to school in America

Anyway, if AGD ever makes a forums blooper page..