Can affiliate links be made to appear "naked"?

Is there any way, using .htaccess or something else, to make an affiliate link appear like a regular link when users mouse over it, but still function as an affiliate link? Somebody told me about something that accomplishes this in WordPress, but I am curious whether there is a way to do the same in vBulletin.

That is, can buystuff.com/product.php?affiliate=123

be made to appear as buystuff.com/product.php

but nevertheless function as/lead to buystuff.com/product.php?affiliate=123?

Thank you

The problem with this is the destination page.

With ebay its easy, because they have the flexible desitnation tool.

With others, it's not.

You can always turn buystuff.com/some-product/abc/ into buystuff.com?aff=123, but that lands on the .com, not the correct landing page (which will most likely screw the conversion rate)

How to you convert to the correct landing page?

Originally Posted by briansol

You can always turn buystuff.com/some-product/abc/ into buystuff.com?aff=123, but that lands on the .com, not the correct landing page

Plus it is still clearly an affiliate link, which would defeat the purpose of modifying it. Oh well. Hopefully people wouldn't avoid a link just because it benefits a person trying to cover the costs of providing the website to them...

You can use onMouseOver to change the text in the status bar, but anyone who reads your source code is still going to see the affiliate link.

You can also use a Javascript link encapsulator, but it only works for people who have Javascript enabled (which is most people).

try tinyurl.com

or this (found it online):

If you have your own website you can hide your links by setting up a page redirect.

All you have to do is to just insert this one line of code into a php file:-

<?php header("location: http:// www .YourUglyAffiliateLink"); ?>

You can name your php file to anything you want, for example, great-bargains.php, so your actual link would be YourWebsite/great-bargains.php which will redirect to the site you are promoting.

Hope that helps

Peace

but you'd have to generate a tiny URL for every affiliate link ever...

that is true....didnt say it was the best option...lol..i have 5 affiliates so it works for me

Originally Posted by briansol

You can always turn buystuff.com/some-product/abc/ into buystuff.com?aff=123, but that lands on the .com, not the correct landing page (which will most likely screw the conversion rate)

As you state, for deep affiliate linking to work, the merchant's site must be properly set up to track links pointing to places other than the homepage.

In addition, it's a pain in the *ss for affiliates as they need to go into the affiliate program's interface to generate a unique link per referral, if they want to deep link. Many simply end up linking to the homepage but killing conversion rates, as you mention.

I've always wondered why affiliate programs require such a convoluted process to track referrals, when programatically, sales can simply be associated to a referring site (think URL or domain).

If such system was implemented for affiliate programs:
1. Affiliates would be able to link freely to whatever page they feel brings the most value to their prospects, without having to "get" links anywhere, or having to create "tiny URLs".
2. Merchants wouldn't need to implement complex per-product tracking systems, allowing affiliates to deep link to their product/service pages while still tracking/remunerating sales.
3. Affiliates wouldn't need to worry about prospects avoiding their links just because they don't want to make the affiliate money.

Some webnauts even use the "affiliate" status of a user to try to undermine their reputation (think Minstrel vs. Loco @ DP). Such a system would also help alleviate this problem.

I think Crawlability should enter this space.