Yesterday I spent all day trying to create a blog on blogger. I ran into trouble when I tried to put links from a couple of articles from a free article website. The links that were displayed after I put them in (I copied and pasted the URL) were VERY LONG and when I clicked on them it took me to the free article website. Here is an example: http://www.articlesbase.com/pets-articles/how-to-spoil-your-luxury-dog-wine-crate-dog-dishes-for- your-pooch-151750.html If a potential customer clicks on it and sees it is from a free site, I'm afraid it will turn them off. Is there a way you can put the link in without it being so long and going straight to the free website page? I was hoping it would just take the one article out and the customer would only see that one article. If anyone can help me with this I would be so grateful! Thanks

Hmm, well the only way to get the links to not go to the free article site is to NOT link to the article directory site. If you'd like just the article to appear on your blog, I suggest you copy and paste the entire article into your actual blog post. This really is the only way to do it. You can't link to the article directory and expect the article to show up on a different page other than it's origin.

Remember you must include the authors resource box when you copy and paste an article into your blog. It's required in return for you to use the article.

As far as shortening your links, there are a few different methods. Are you using your own hosting company yet? You don't mention that or not. Since you are using a free blog like Blogger.com, you can use something like http://www.tinyurl.com . You may also try http://www.urlfreeze.com. Both of these will work fine for shortening your links.

If you have your own hosting account, I have a software which I distribute which allows you to quickly create redirect pages. This is especially helpful with protecting your affiliate commissions. It creates a quick page, and then you upload the redirect page to any one of your domains so the page is live.

You can download that for free here:

http://www.groovytastic.com/GroovytasticCloakerElite.zip

Holly also has a very nice cloaking software. It's works really well and has a very nice interface to work with. She offers it for free with her book, or she also offers it in The Honest Brands site to help people protect their affiliate commissions. But, to use this one you must be able to upload and install it on your own server. If you don't have experience at this, you might have a bit of trouble with it.

Nonetheless, If you are interested in getting that. You can download it here:

http://www.honestbrands.com/mvs/?m=99999999&pid=583

If you find you would like to have her cloaker installed, Holly will install it on your server for a small fee.

I hope that helps you. That pretty much covers all of the bases with all of the options I've provided you.

Take care,

Davin

Sorry Davin, I don't think the problem Katy is having has anything at all to do with link cloaking.

Yes, Katy copy the whole article from the article site and paste it into the new post on your blog as Davin suggests. You shouldn't have a problem with a long link then.

However, The reason you have that really long link is that you are using the URL as the Hyperlinked text. In other words your code looks like this...

Code:

<a href="http://www.WhateverTheReallyLongUrlis.com"> WhateverTheReallyLongUrlis.com</a>

When it should look like this...

Code:

<a href="http://www.WhateverTheReallyLongUrlis.com">The short text you want as your link</a>

-Mark.

Yes thanx Mark. I did realize that. I was just trying to cover all of the bases with her as far as cloaking perhaps in the future as well.

Cheers
Dav

Thanks, Davinator, for the insight and the free download tips. I will try my hand at this again!

Thanks, Mark, for your help. I was trying to just use a link to the article since I didn't want the entire article in my blog. I will try to do it again.