About cloaked links

[paulserban]

There are hundreds of sites that can short a link for free, and some of them have billions of links.

Now a few hours I was thinking what would happen if the services of cloaked links would disappear overnight.

Disaster, is it not so? Billions and billions of links will be gone in the wind!!!

Don't you feel a hole in your stomach?

What would be the solution?

A plugin for bloggers and a script for static sites, perhaps.

I found a very good Plugin for Wordpress: "Affiliate Link Cloaking", unlimited links and stats for them.

You can find the plugin in Wordpress.org, it's free. Try it, you will love it.

For my site, I test some scripts now, if anyone knows one which is very good, please let me know.

What would be the advantage of using a script? You'll be sure it will die with you, not before!

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

My all time favorite for cloaking and forwarding was "Easy Redirect Script" for many years, 
 

[Garrett Hutsko]

One thing being ignored in the cloaking question is can you track the clicks and get stats from the clicks. Not all Link shrinking processes  offer this.

[paulserban]

A problem is that not all safelists accept to redirect a link.

[thanhgiang888]

   My time is spent online !

[Johann]

Thanks for this

[John Priestley]

Hi there!

 

I use a tracker which of course helps to hide the real destination (cloaking?), but not all sites allow this. However, it dos give me a good indication of what is working and what is not. I see what you mean about the tracker not working. I had a day recently when this happened and that meant not clicks getting through to many of my sites. However, it has only happened once (that I have seen/noticed) in a couple of years.

 

Have a grand day, John.

[thanhgiang888]

Hi,

 

   Thank you for your comments !

[John Priestley]

I know, I know... I spoke too soon. The very next day my tracker decided to go on strike. I could not effectively market for more than a day. I hope not too many people were affected by this. If you were, you know which tracker i am referring to. 

 

Have a grand day, John.

[simkesrb]

Use Blastmyads for cloaking and dont worry !!! Proven and working.

[redhat39]

Certainly using a web service that disappears is a problem but another people don't think about as much is that a lot of these websites get put on black lists. For example TinyURL is a well known link cloaker but also one that is blacklist by a lot of email service providers.

 

Bit.ly is another well known one that is widely used but also on a lot of blacklists.

 

IMO you're better off to do your own link cloaking from your own website. Pretty Links is an excellent free wordpress plugin you can use for this.

[Len]

I use Tiny.cc and it tracks my clicks too.

[opti]

I started using https://tr.im/money4u+ to shorten and track my links - remove the + and you get to see the page ...

[Brian Francis]

I have been trying out a few different types. But perhaps the easiest to get started with is http://po.st, (comes with a WordPress plugin too). However as mentioned by redhat39, I have the suspicion that social media sites, namely Facebook, black lists these urls (I may be mistaken so check for yourself).

[Garrett Hutsko]

This area starts out with a question about what to do when the Link Cloaker Site disappears.  Well that happened yesterday with a link cloaker service I use extensively. The site is: Instant Traffic Generation (http://instanttrafficgeneration.com/aff/2509). They had a temporary problem on their server but it cost me almost 2 days worth of email promos. I don't know if this means I should use multiple sites like this or the app mentioned above or just continue forward since this has happened only once in over 4 years. This has a unique cloaking process which includes a corner peal area where 3 adds are shown for a brief period of time giving me points I can use for my promos, plus I have a large downline there. Cloakers are important but problems can arise and we need to have a fall back when they do.

[iamherbertflores]

I use ViralUrl , it can cloak your links, promote them and see your business soaring higher and higher.

[Len]

Pretty links plugin is good too.

[roy]

yes it would be disaterous

[market101]

This area starts out with a question about what to do when the Link Cloaker Site disappears.  Well that happened yesterday with a link cloaker service I use extensively. The site is: Instant Traffic Generation (http://instanttrafficgeneration.com/aff/2509). They had a temporary problem on their server but it cost me almost 2 days worth of email promos. I don't know if this means I should use multiple sites like this or the app mentioned above or just continue forward since this has happened only once in over 4 years. This has a unique cloaking process which includes a corner peal area where 3 adds are shown for a brief period of time giving me points I can use for my promos, plus I have a large downline there. Cloakers are important but problems can arise and we need to have a fall back when they do.

Good Question.  The fall-back is the original URL 

[rpbizzz]

My all time favorite for cloaking and forwarding was "Easy Redirect Script" for many years, 

 

Must try this out...thanks

[Garrett Hutsko]

I think that a good link cloak-er would be one that uses your main domain as a base and part of the resulting link as well. This would result in being able to track your link and having a short version on the original link as well as your domain being shown in the resulting link, wow that is a lot. I have started using bweeble for some of my cloaking because I like how they build their link with extras included. I think that this area has a lot of room for growth and redo. A good link could do a lot in the promo arena I think. I am curious if anyone is using the new smart url I have see recently, I have been thinking about checking it out to see if it might be good to use.

[market101]

I use several different cloakers, but the one I like best for ease of use is Instant Traffic Generation

[Garrett Hutsko]

I recently tried and started using the Bweeble link processor. I would not all it a cloaker perjust just a just say but I like what they have done to make the link more unique. not only can you track links but you can show other information as is your want. I would like to see more of these types of tracker/cloakers from others, more than just we offer a tracker/cloaker for you. I think Bweeble has the right idea.

[oldbuddy]

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I saw a page that said this link is BROKEN for some reason. The advertiser had no idea his effort was wasted and was probably over there making more links with the same redirect service. I am NOT talking about little fly by night services either, but the big names everyone sees daily.

 

If you have your own hosting (or are willing to pay $1 a month plus the domain name fee) it's simple to set up your own private service for free with Yourls (a free script) and not depend on anyone else.

[Garrett Hutsko]

I am looking for a link shortener to use. I was using a link shrinker for a long time then it seems they went out of business causing my links to fail. I tried the google process but that service does not work well in the SL and TE environment, The bit.ly and some of the other shrinkers have problems also, I am looking for suggestions because many of the link I have are long and ugly and in some of my promos and cost me characters for my promo.