The process of “cloaking” affiliate link is where your long affiliate link is being shortened, and this is done for 2 purposes:
 
 
Ease Of Remembering

Instead of having long affiliate links such as
http://www.merchantdomainname.com/productname.html&prodid=12345&affid=afflink, you can cloak it to something like http://shortlink.com/mylink.

As a customer, which link will you be able to remember better? Also, which link will you feel more comfortable in clicking on? Obviously, it’s the cloaked link, right?
 
 
Prevent Commission Hijacking

Commission hijacking is where another affiliate illegally replaces your affiliate ID with theirs before they purchase something that you recommend so as to “steal” the affiliate commissions you deserve.

There are essentially 3 ways you can go about cloaking your affiliate link, and I’m going to share with you what these 3 ways are in the next section.

 
1. Using Free URL Shortener Services

There are many free URL shortener services available on the Internet that allow you to cloak your affiliate links for free, and some of them are:

http://www.tinyurl.com

http://www.snipurl.com

http://www.bit.ly

 
 
2. Using Domain Redirects

You can get a domain name related to the product/service that you are promoting, and create a file called “index.php” using any text editor with the following lines of code:

You need to replace http://www.youraffiliatelink.com with your affiliate link. So, whenever someone enters your domain name, it will automatically redirect them to the product/service page in which you are promoting as an affiliate.

 
 
3. Running Your Own Link Cloaking Service

If you do not feel comfortable using free link cloaking services (for fear that they may have downtime from time to time), you can host your own link cloaking service.

All you need to do is to get yourself a short domain name (as short as possible so that it is easy for anyone to remember), and then install a link cloaking script (I would recommend this link cloaking script called “HideURL” and you can download the script here – HideURL Link Cloaking Script)

The following is a screenshot of how “HideURL Link Cloaking Script” looks like:

After you’ve downloaded the “HideURL Link Cloaking Script”, check out the file “Readme” for installation instructions.