The affiliate link strategy that John Chow has been using on his blog has paid off nicely. John Chow uses PHP files to cloak his affiliate links. He has all those PHP files in a folder called “go” and links to them this way :
- Text Link Ads : http://www.johnchow.com/go/tla.php
- ReviewMe : http://www.johnchow.com/go/reviewme.php
This has now become useful, for Text Link Ads changed their affiliate link URL today. Today morning, i received the following email from TLA :
Shrihari,
As a Text Link Ads affiliate we’re pleased to let you know that we’ve begun using tinyurl.com to shorten and secure our affiliate referral links. We encourage you to update your affiliate links using the following:
- Homepage URL — http://tinyurl.com/2ukyfz
- Starter Promo URL — http://tinyurl.com/3botzy
** Please note that our old affiliate urls will no longer work in one week so please update today. Thank you!
As far as i know John Chow was the first to start this method of Affiliate linking. So, if you are not already following it, start doing it now. John Chow has written a detailed post on how to do this and how useful it is over here.
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That’s quite a clever idea for getting people to click the links. 
Do you think it’s deceiving your readers though?
Michael from Pro Blog Design wrote on August 24th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Actually i don’t think that this is much of a deceiving. After all, a link would be present only at a place which mentions about TLA or ReviewMe (whatever it is linking to).
And there’s a valid reason behind doing this. Easy to change affiliate links all over the blog.
Hari wrote on August 24th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Late pass on that one, this method is nothing new, sorry, had to burst your bubble.
Kiley wrote on September 5th, 2007 at 12:48 am
I have written an in depth article on using sub-domains to re-direct affiliate links that also provides full reporting and statistics that your readers may find useful as well. This method also solves some long-tail issues some people are having with Amazon, Linkshare, and the like.
Hide Affiliate Links wrote on December 28th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Yes, using a Subdomain is a great idea.
Hari wrote on December 29th, 2007 at 12:46 am
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