best way to mask affiliate links?

Please has somebody experience with masking affiliate links
I need to have many of them and would need an easy way to maks them which is also SE friendly.

I seen there is an option via htaccess
but I did read also to many lines in htaccess slows down server

I would need a way, so that I then also can change links if needed and they are then updated everywhere on my site.

Hope someone has some tips for me

Kind regards
Marina

your best bet is to build a tiny DB table in your site, and set up a list. then send everyone to yoursite.com/out.php?id=123

thanks
can i find somewhere how to add this?

I have also found something to set up a php file
like go.php and from there it redirects all links
is this what you say something similar?

yeah, same concept.

out.php contains something like

$sql = "select url from affiliates where id = " . $id;
$row = fetch_row($sql)
header("location: $row['url']);

great thank you briansol
seen already a few php scripts for this
I will try to read more about and sure shoud get this done somehow, lol

Regards
Marina

I simply use wordpress with an addon called WP-Affiliate.

Since i'm already using wordpress its not really an issue inputting affiliate links in like that, and then replacing any links i need wiht the code it generates.

You can see in action at my hosting review site (link in sig i beleive)

wow, cool that wordpress has such an add on
wish vbulletin would have that too
maybe i need to ask at vbull org?

thanks for letting me know

I'm using Fast Click SQL from PHP Scripts from FTRSoft.com

hello again ,
I finally start to mask my afflilate links,
we really getting lot on my forum, and its a pain if an affiliate link changes,
in the industry I am this happens quite often, and then I cannot go and change all links in all posts.

So, I need it only easy, and wanted to ask if anyone can tell me if I do that correct,

I created a folder like - visit
in there i create php files , name them like affiliate1
in the php file i have this code <?php header("Location: myaffiliatelink.com"); ?>

I already tested it and the redirect works fine,
my link is then mypage.com/visit/affiliate1.php

I disallow the folder visit in robots txt.

Now here my 2 questions.

1. Is this ok to do so?


2. Since now my aff links not external links anymore
the VBSEO will also not add a rel no follow anymore.

I heard its still good to add rel nofollow even you do redirect your aff links via divers methods.
Now how could I have them still rel no followed on my forum?

Hope I wrote a bit understandable and that somebody has some advice for me

Many thanks in advance
Marina

I think it is enough that I disallow the folder "visit" via robots txt ?

Since this was last brought up, there's been a few services come up that you might want to look into.

Driving Revenue is one of them. it doesn't mask links at all... it leaves them as posted and uses unobtrusive javascript to add the affiliate to it.

Ahh wow,
I did search days on the net for something
Thanks so much Bryan
I will check this out.

Masking will redirect another URL to the affiliate URL so that people will not see the original link in their status bars.
Most affiliate programs give the associates long and “suspicious-looking” URLs as affiliate links. People who see these affiliate links on websites have the tendency to not click them because they think that the links will just give them Trojans, viruses, etc. Some web surfers even avoid clicking those links just because they don’t want the webmasters to earn any money.
u can do mask affiliate links by:
1.Mask Affiliate Links through PHP
2.Mask Affiliate Links through URL Redirection Sites.

Originally Posted by Bonus Paradise

hello again ,
I finally start to mask my afflilate links,
we really getting lot on my forum, and its a pain if an affiliate link changes,
in the industry I am this happens quite often, and then I cannot go and change all links in all posts.

So, I need it only easy, and wanted to ask if anyone can tell me if I do that correct,

I created a folder like - visit
in there i create php files , name them like affiliate1
in the php file i have this code <?php header("Location: myaffiliatelink.com"); ?>

I already tested it and the redirect works fine,
my link is then mypage.com/visit/affiliate1.php

I disallow the folder visit in robots txt.

Is there any way you or someone else could expand upon how you did this? If someone could just post a sample script to use for above steps, I think I could handle this even with my 1st grade knowledge of PHP.

Basically, I'm just looking for the most straightforward way to mask an ugly affiliate link with something pretty. Ideally I would prefer it to be extra pretty...

Instead of this: http://example.com/linkout.php?url=amazon.com&p=12345
I want this: http://example.com/amazon/12345

You might be able to use a CRR for this, but it will require one extra paramter

Code:

'^linkout\.php\?url=(.*)&p=([0-9+])$' => '/link-$1/$2/'

for example