There is lots of stuff online about cloaking affiliate links. Many times you don’t want to put a big long link in the status bar. Other times you don’t want people to know they are going to navigate away from your site. Sometimes you just want your links to look pretty. But for me, I often rotate affiliate companies looking for the best conversion. This will cause me to find every link that points to that merchant to swap it out.

Let me just show an example:

You are selling a widget with the referral link of:

http://www.anyaffiliate.com/theproduct.php?mid=4588&id=77832

That is not really pretty. Especially when your domain is nurseknowledgetoday.com or something like that. A better referral link might be

http://www.nurseknowledgetoday.com/jump.php?m=widget

The advantage with this is that you can make all your links similar. Product number two could be:
http://www.nurseknowledgetoday.com/jump.php?c=product2 or whatever modifier you want.

This is going to be a down and dirty tutorial so follow along. I am neither a coder nor a teacher so show some grace.

Make a page and title it whatever little cleaver thing you will like. We will keep with the nursing theme (for reasons I do not know) and call it health.php.

Within health.php

<php
if ($c == “”) {$link = “http://nurseknowledgetoday.com“;} //Homepage
if ($c == “widget”) {$link = “http://www.anyaffiliate.com/theproduct.php?mid=4588&id=77832″;}
header(“Location: $link”);
if ($c == “product2″) {$link = “http://www.zxmp.com/theproduct.php?mid=a9d57″;}
header(“Location: $link”);
exit();
?>

Then if you use the link:
/health.php?c=product2

it will take you to
http://www.zxmp.com/theproduct.php?mid=a9d57

• $l – This is the ID that determines which link the user is directed to. For instance if c=widget then the user would get directed to the first link. If product 2, then they would be redirected to the second link.
• $link – This is the link we do not want revealed.
• header() – This is the redirect PHP code. The requested page for us will be the $link URL.

Now if you decide to change affiliates for one of these products, you don’t have to find every instance, just change the one line of code.

Hope this helps!

—————-
Now playing: Robin Mark – How Great Are You Lord

One of my sites gets a couple million page views a month, a fairly loyal usergroup with 10+ pageviews per visitor. I have had the site for a while and it is clean, without any adult material. But it is a Christian community.

I have been looking for a CPM company to fill the 728 x 90 banner at the head so I thought I would give Doubleclick a try. Here was the response I got:

Thank you for your interest in Performics. At this time we cannot approve your application. Your site may have been declined for one or more of the following reasons:

1. We were unable to access and review your site based on the URL provided.
2. Your site was under construction.
3. The information provided doesn’t match registered domain information.
4. Submitting unsolicited commercial email (Spam) or trademark infringement.
5. Contains gambling information.
6. Publishing libel or defamation.
7. Promoting illegal substances.
8. Uses violence or hate-oriented speech.
9. Has extensive religious commentary or attempts to preach or solicit members for a particular church or faith.
10. Contains adult, obscene, or offensive content.

Please feel free to contact us for additional information or after you have made the necessary adjustments to your site. We are more than happy to review again.

Sincerely,

Performics Affiliate Network…powered by ConnectCommerce
www . performics . com

Christianity is now in the same category as spam, porn, violence, and illegal substances.

Way to distinguish yourselves doubleclick.

—————-
Now playing: Misty Edwards – My Soul Longs For You

John Chow dot Com is holding another evil blog contest. He’s giving away a 24? wide screen LCD monitor and a signed copy of the best selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek! Find out how to enter here. The contest is being sponsored by The Million Dollar Wiki. Use coupon code JohnChow to save $10 on a page.

No, I am willing to give this guy a whole post on my blog just for the possibility of winning a contest.� I don’t know how much these monitors cost but I bet they are less than the cost of all these backlinks!

I wrote on another post about how to put Adsense on a web page that is not quite finished yet. There are lots of uses for this. This is really useful for developers that release code and don’t want their adsense account put at risk on every site (thought they may do that to try to increase earnings but this is a really short term solution).

Anyway. I am sure you know the reasons for this. Google does not want you to put their script on a site that is not done. But you need it there to help with the layout. One solution is to use a graphic the size of the ad block. The other is to use this code. Just change the dimensions to fit your need.

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_adtest = "on";         // new line
google_ad_client = "pub-0000000000000000";
google_alternate_color = "ffffff";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel = "0000000000";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

I am trying to get ready for php5 since php4.4 will no longer be supported after the end of this year. So I loaded Xampp and gave it a whirl. First problem was I got a 500 server error when I tried my first site. Since I know nothing about these things, it must have been the Holy Ghost who told me that I needed to check if mod rewrite was enabled.

Since I have no idea how to do that I had to do a search and here is what I found:

By default mod_rewrite module is not enabled. I usually just put in a ticket to the help desk and ask them to enable such things. Since that is not an option (I have to ticket system to ask myself to do things) I had to turn it on.

To enable mod_rewrite in xampp open windows explorer and go to the installation directory {xampp-directory}\apache\conf and edit httpd.conf.

Do a search for

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
and take out the little # thing (uncomment it). It should now look like this:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Also find AllowOverride None

Should be:

AllowOverride All

It is correct once and wrong twice in the file. And that should do it!

I know this blog is getting more and more techy but I am not tech guy and this is what it takes sometimes to keep things going!

hattip: rudy

—————-
Now playing: TACF Worship – River Of Joy

This work I am not going to work.

I am not going to:

• Build links
• Read rss feeds
• Research anything
• Tweak my ads

I am going to:

• Turn off the computer
• Spend time with my family
• Spend a significant time in my house outside of my office chair

Now go enjoy the weekend!

—————-
Now playing: Canton Jones – The Password

You know what AuctionAds is, the Ebay feed thingy that Jeremy Shoemaker built and sold.

Well, if you have tried it you most certainly found out that it is not a very good product. While if you have a site that is based on a niche product it may be an income producer but short of that it is almost worthless.

But the one thing it had going for it was the ease of use and its founder who was constantly trumpeting its value.

Enter the MediaWhiz buyout. Since then things have gone from bad to worse for the technical side of things. Then this morning I was checking Jeremy’s blog when I realized that even he does not run AuctionAds anymore! I don’t know if the technical problems were to much for him or the awful returns but he went back to running Adsense of all things! (check out the ads google is serving. Even ads for Alden shoes are better than Auction Ads)

To all those who stuck with this product in the hopes of the “snowball effect” there it is. His bankroll snowballed on the back of your publishing.

—————-
Now playing: Hillsong United – My Future Decided

I saw this MySpace error and I had to catch it.

Can’t find your own server. That is not good.

I signed up for Microsoft’s Affiliate program.� First impression:� Are they serious?

One product.� $0.50 CPA .� Why exactly would someone want this?

	The new Windows Live OneCare offer is now available for promotion. The payout rate for this offer is $.50 per unique, valid download originating from US or Canadian IP addresses. Please review the terms listed here: http://microsoftaffiliates.net/forms/onecareaddendum080807.pdf If you are currently running the original OneCare offer, your existing links will work for the new offer. � Continuing to run this offer after 4:00 p.m. EST 8/8/2007 will be considered acceptance of these terms. If you want to start promoting this new offer, please log into your Affiliate Account Center, click the Offers link and choose the banners or text links you’d like to use. Thank you for promoting Windows Live OneCare. If there is anything we can do to help you succeed, please let us know.