Hi, try a PHP redirect. Do a simple search online and you will find many scripts that do that. Alternatively, PM me for a new site that not only hides your affiliate link and also gives you stats of no of unique visitors and clicks.
There are many ways to shorten or hide affiliate links. I agree that Tinyurl is the least desirable way.
Why is this such a big deal to people? Is it SERP or perception? I don't believe that normal non-IMers even know what that is.
The reason is because sometimes long urls with special characters sometimes don't work in emails/im. You could also try http://shortio.com
That is true.. I know really long / dirty urls are not great for SEO either. Although, isn't a way to tell Google to ignore only certain variables in your Robots.txt?
There are many ways in doing so... Like php redirect, using frames setting, javascript, htaccess... But I suggest you should use one that has the ability to track your links so that at least you know how many people are visiting your websites. For a free service, I suggest urlfreeze.com... not the best but good for a start!
As an alternative to htaccess or PHP, use a simple HTML redirect page. Create a new html file and name it let's say widget.html Then write this in your widget.html <HTML> <HEAD> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK"> </HEAD> <BODY> </BODY> </HTML> Code (markup): Then everyone who visit domain.com/widget.html will be redirected to the affiliate url that you wrote.
Paste the following into notepad: <? header('Location: http://INSERT-AFFILIATE-LINK'); ?> Then save it as a .php file (for eg. affproduct.php). Upload the file to your server and link to it whenever you want to make a referral. However, as erictan mentioned, it's really better to use one that provides statistics, eg. GoTryThis, Covert Affiliate Links, PowerLink Generator etc, so that you can track whether your campaigns are working...
This is the most easy way if you want to track clicks and hide your id. Use the html method above and create pages for your links. I see a lot of people using things like mydomainname.com/product Then the index in that folder goes to the affiliate program. You can also add html pages for certain keywords but php is probably less time consuming.
No you doesn't need a website. You just need a domain for it. So far it's the easiest way for PHP noob like me to mask aff ID beside htaccess.
Oh please! I'm just trying to put it in general terms... If you're so specific then, you may want to talk about the sub-domain... the hosting... dns server... ...know what I mean?