The Affiliate Link Cloaker is a user-friendly WordPress plugin which allows you to cloak affiliate links. It can also be used to shorten links on your WordPress blog.
Plugin Description
Affiliate Link Cloaker allows you to create a cloaked link for any affiliate URL. After you created a cloaked link you will be able to use that anywhere on your website. Anyone visiting your website will see the cloaked/shortened link. Once the link is clicked the visitor will be redirected to the full URL.
Installation
Via FTP
1. Unzip and Upload the folder ‘affiliate-link-cloaker’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
Via WordPress Plugin Uploader
- On your Dashboard go to “Add New” under “Plugins”.
- Click “Upload”.
- Click “Browse”.
- Select the “affiliate-link-cloaker.zip” file and hit “Install Now”.
- Once the Installation is completed, click “Activate Plugin”.
Usage
- Once you install and activate the plugin, go to “WP Link Cloaker” under “Settings”. (See screenshot here)
- Under “general settings” of the plugin there is a field “Cloak Word”. In this field you can enter any text which will be used to create the tiny URL. The default text is “item”. If you change any text of the field click “Update”. (See screenshot here)
- Now go to the tab “Add Link”. (see screenshot here)
- There is a field called “Target Link” where you need to enter your full affiliate URL or any link that you want to shorten. Enter the URL and click “Save”. (see screenshot here)
- Go to the tab called “Manage Links”. (See screenshot here)
- You will see that a “Cloaked/Shortened URL” has been created for the URL you just provided. Now use this “Cloaked version of the URL” anywhere on your blog. (see screenshot here)
Plugin Demo
This link has been configured to work as a cloaked link. The actual target link is the following:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-estore-plugin-complete-solution-to-sell-digital-products-from-your-wordpress-blog-securely-1059?ap_id=naa986
Click here to see how it works.
Download
Download the Affiliate Link Cloaker plugin from here
If you want to get a more robust affiliate link cloaker plugin then you can get the WordPress Affiliate Link Cloaker plugin from here
Please leave a comment if you have any suggestion.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Is this a free plugin?
yes, it’s a free plugin.
Hi, Thanks for the link cloaker plugin. It’s really handy.
Great plugin. I’ve been looking for a link cloaker plugin like this.
Thanks
Thanks for this plugin. I was searching for a wordpress link cloaker plugin on google and your site was diplayed on page 1,
However, I have an issue with it. I have installed it and it looked like what I realy want but after I paste the cloaked version of my aff link on my post, the link is not clickable. It looks static like normal text on my post. What do you think is the problem?
Pls help.
Can you please post a link to the page where you are using the cloaked version of the affiliate link?
“link is not clickable and looks static like normal text” – Actually Affiliate Link Cloaker has got nothing to do with creating a link on your website. Even if you create a link on your website without the plugin installed it should be clickable, no matter if the URL is correct or wrong. The problem can be if you click on the cloaked link and it doesn’t redirect to the target URL because that’s what this plugin do. So I think something else could be wrong.
Cheers
i cut n paste the cloak link to my browser and the it’s like a redirecting.
it now display my real url in the browser.
but this is not how it should work right?
Affiliate Link Cloaker is just like any other link cloaker or tiny URL maker plugin. It only allows you to cloak any link on your website so that your visitors can’t see the actual affiliate link when they hover the mouse on that link. But once they click on it and go to the actual URL it won’t be cloaked anymore.
How do I delete all of the cloaked links and start fresh? I tried deleting the plugin and re-installing, but that didn’t work. All of my original cloaked links are still there.
I need to either edit the links or start fresh because I cloaked the wrong URLs. I don’t want to delete the URLs and re-add them, because the cloaked link will not restart at ?item=1. I need to add the URLs, but I need the link cloaker to start at ?item=1, otherwise I would have to change all of the links in each of the posts to reflect the new cloak link URL. I have some blogs with 100s of links, all cloaked, so I would really like to know how to reset the link cloaker by deleting all existing cloaks and reseting the ?item= sequence.
Thanks,
Alex
Actually each cloaked link doesn’t have much information. That’s why I didn’t bother about implementing an option to edit them. Yes, you can’t get the same item id once you delete a link as it is automatically generated in the database and it is unique. I will see if I can get time to add the feature of editing existing link, I’ll let you know
Cheers
What the heck is link cloaking? To be as plain as possible, cloaking affiliate links is the art of showing your visitors an internal link when they mouse over an affiliate link so that the visitor doesn’t think they are leaving your site.
Is it even possible to use the cloaked link on an email auto responder or e-book (PDF format)? I read on another blog that the only way to use a cloaked affiliate link on all three places (wordpress, email and e-book)is to purchase a domain that is similar to the affiliate site and use a 301 redirect. is that accurate? Thanks
Mark