Making Money With Affiliate Products Tips and Tricks.
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How Can Exposed Affiliate Links Hurt Your Marketing Efforts?
0223 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
Despite the fact that affiliate marketing is a truly great way to make money online, many are starting to find that it seems as though the well has started to ‘dry up’ so to speak. To be entirely honest, the truth is that this isn’t due to the fact that less people are buying online. Online sales are still rising, and seem set to continue to rise for the foreseeable future.
Instead, the problem is that most internet-goers have started to ‘wise up’ to affiliate marketing, and many actually tend to either avoid buying affiliate products, or opt to buy them without giving credit to the affiliate who is promoting them! Either way, this is damaging for your marketing efforts as it actually means that you’ll be earning less and not cashing in on the bulk of your marketing efforts.
All things said and done, it boils down to a question of exposed affiliate links. Anyone and everyone who has shopped online and chanced upon affiliate products before will instantly recognize affiliate links when they see them. In many ways, these links tend to stand out, and look something like: http://affiliate.hoplink.clickbank.com or http://www.website.com/?hop=affiliate, and so on. Basically, they’re easily distinguishable from the more ‘standard’ types of links out there, and so they can be spotted from a mile away.
Because these links are so easy to spot, the minute someone sees them they’re bound to recognize the fact that it is an affiliate link. Many potential customers, upon recognizing an affiliate link, may actually be ‘scared off’! Due to the fact that there are quite a lot of inferior and second class affiliate products out there, affiliate links have managed to develop a bad reputation of sorts – and this will invariably end up leading to the links themselves being avoided.
Of course, not everyone avoids affiliate links. Some people may choose to instead insert their own affiliate id into the link itself and thus earn a commission by selling to themselves. Doing this is highly inappropriate, but it effectively means that if you’re paying $ 30 for a product and earning a $ 15 commission, you’re actually only really paying $ 15! Now do you see why so many people actually end up doing this?
In both of the cases that we mentioned, the culprit would definitely have to be the exposed affiliate links. When affiliate links are exposed, they are bound to be subject to abuse and suspicion – that’s the reality of affiliate marketing nowadays. Due to that, it makes sense to invest a little bit in some of the methods of ‘link cloaking’, so that you never, ever, end up having this problem again.
To do so may end up costing you, but you’re still going to make up that cost and more by actually managing to prevent your affiliate links from being exposed!
Visit the Link Cloaking Blog!
Learn everything you will need to know about cloaking your links!
Just visit http://www.linkcloaking-blog.com and get protected.
Thanks.
Regards,
Christer Nyrud
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The Difference Between Exposed And Cloaked Affiliate Links?
0227 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
Considering the fact that affiliate link ‘cloakers’ are so popular nowadays, it is almost assumed that everyone knows what they are, and what they do. Sadly, this simply isn’t true and many beginners actually end up getting woefully confused by the very idea of affiliate link cloakers, and fail to understand just what the difference is between exposed and cloaked affiliate links are. Avoiding this confusion is going to be one of the best steps that you ever take in affiliate marketing!
Honestly, the most obvious difference between exposed and cloaked affiliate links would have to be their appearance. In fact, this is the main reason why cloaked affiliate links are so popular too!
In a nutshell, exposed affiliate links are really easy to spot, and you should be able to see them from miles away. Most exposed affiliate links (or hoplinks as they’re otherwise known) end up following several distinctive patterns, but one of the most popular would have to be: http://merchant.com/cell-phone/?hop=1234. As you can see, it really is quite distinctive, and the fact that it is an affiliate link is really blatant right from the second that anyone glances at that URL.
On the other hand, cloaked affiliate links are a lot more sneaky. In fact, they’re so sneaky that they could take any form whatsover! Some cloaked affiliate links might show up as something like: http://www.yourwebsite.com/like/product.htm. However, others might show up even less obviously and take the form of: http://www.productname.com.
Essentially, it could seem as though you’re not even actually linking as an affiliate, but just directing someone to a website of interest – that’s the true benefit of cloaked affiliate links and it is the reason why they’re so different from the exposed variety.
Naturally, there are other differences too, but almost all of them are focused on the core difference that we just talked about. For starters, exposed affiliate links are a big ‘turn off’ for potential customers. Partly, this is due to the fact that there are so many inferior affiliate products out there that savvy customers have actually caught on to this fact and have started avoiding affiliate products altogether as a result.
Equally threatening is the fact that exposed affiliate links can be hijacked or stolen with ease, thus robbing you of your hard-earned commission and making all the work that you put into it completely and utterly void.
Now that you know the difference between exposed and cloaked affiliate links, you should be able to see why cloaked affiliate links are the best possible solution to the problems faced by affiliate marketing. Be sure that you don’t miss out and start to apply this newfound knowledge of yours as quickly as you can!
Visit the Link Cloaking Blog!
Learn everything you will need to know about cloaking your links!
Just visit http://www.linkcloaking-blog.com and get protected.
Thanks.
Regards,
Christer Nyrud
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How To Manage Your Affiliate Links To Increase Affiliate Earnings
0229 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
One of the conditions to increase affiliate earnings is to manage your affiliate links before promoting them. For what reason? Because common affiliate links share some problems that have to be considered if you don’t want to lose from your commissions.
First, typical affiliate links are weird, long and ugly, so that some people usually avoid clicking on them. Then, these links are hard to promote especially on social networks. Also, there are great chances that someone could hijack your commissions by replacing your affiliate ID with their own.
In order to solve these problems and maximize your earnings, you have to do the following tasks: cloaking, tracking and testing.
The best way to protect and to hide affiliate links is cloaking them. The easiest cloaking method is to use URL shorteners like tinyurl, budurl, bit.ly and many others. These online services are very simple to use, and are effective in marketing on social networks.
Another method, used by most affiliates is the URL redirect. This consist of a script or a code uploaded to a page on your site, often in a folder named “go” or “recommends”. This way a redirect link will look like “http://www.yoursite.com/go/AffiliateProduct” and it will send the users to the merchant’s sales page through your affiliate link.
But the most professional looking and elegant way to promote your affiliate offer is domain forwarding. For this you have to register a domain name that suits the affiliate product and then forward it to your affiliate link. So, you will have to promote this new, nice looking domain name what will boost your earnings. Further, you can add masking to your forwarded domain, which prevents your affiliate URL from displaying in the browser’s address bar.
Next task is tracking affiliate links. A productive affiliate business requires multiple promotion campaigns with different marketing strategies and tools. For your business is vital to know which of them have the best results and bring you most sales such as to focus on them. There are also plenty of ways for link tracking, from some of the link cloaking services like bit.ly to dedicated and complete tools like LinkTrackr.
Eventually, we have reached testing which has to be done always. When joining different affiliate programs, you have to check that your affiliate link goes to your affiliate account following the tracking statistics provided by that program. Later on, you must periodically test your links to ensure they are still live.
Well, these are some of the methods which can help you to efficiently manage affiliate links. By putting them into practice, you will succeed to maximize your affiliate earnings.
Want to find out how to become a high-earning affiliate marketer? Then get your FREE, 50 page ebook, a full guide of virtually everything you need to know about making money with affiliate marketing, here http://www.webtrafficaction.com/free/.
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Where to put affiliate links
0233 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
Where to put affiliate links on your website is a question many affiliate marketers ask daily. They are either not getting clicks or making any sales. So you may have put affiliate links in your websites articles and you may have gotten a few clicks.
But were you looking for better conversions? But you have to know where to put your affiliate link. Affiliate links in articles is an art and a science.
Where you place your affiliate links is key to success. So, how do you promote your affiliate link or how to promote affiliate links? Many marketers still believe they should just put up a ton of links pointing to offers all over the place. But this is not the way to do it.
Let me ask you a question? Have you ever used Google Adsense on your website? if you answered yes, then you are ahead of the game when it comes to affiliate marketing. If you understand Adsense and where to put the adsense code on your website, then you are on your way to more sales or sign-ups.
Ok, have you ever seen the Goolge Adsense heat map? If you have then you know Google states in the heat map and points out where to put Adsense for better conversions. Well affiliate links work in much the same way.
It all depends on where you put them and how relevant they are to your content. Now, links above the fold work great and get a lot of clicks. Again, if it’s relevant to your content and says the right words.
But did you know links right below the content may not get as many clicks but can convert a lot more. This is because people who read your article are actually interested in your offer and they read your content and see your link and click through to your affiliate program. Affiliate marketing works when you work it right.
Once you get the formula right and you learn to promote affiliate links, you can use links in your article marketing and article resource box. So place one link with relevant keywords in the top of the article, the middle of the article and at the very end.
But make sure you choose the proper keyword in your link. If you don’t, people will not click your affiliate links. But you also may need to experiment with links in articles. Some may out perform other so always test things.
Just take a look at the space on your site, make a determination and then place your links. These are the best ways to promote links on your website.
Use of the words Click Here. Using these two little words in your affiliate links can make all the difference. Just make sure you include them with your other relevant keywords in your affiliate links.
Promote your affiliate link as best you can and do not be shy about it. If you don’t use them and offer them out in the open, then no one can click on them. Just always make sure when you put your affiliate link in your article, to use relevant keywords people will understand why they should click.
Internet marketing is about being relevant. Give people a reason and then direct them in the proper way and they will click. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make an extra income on the internet. Just learn the basics and you can start to learn how to make money.
When you learn where to put affiliate links and learn how to promote your product, and use them properly in your article writing, you will actually start to see some sales. All that’s left at this point is compounding the effect and learning where to and how to promote your website.
Todd Jirecek has been and Avid Internet marketer since 1994. One his website he shares all of his secret affiliate marketing information. Get his FREE NEWSLETTER with online marketing TIPS! CLICK HERE for Todd’s affiliate marketing tips
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Ideas for Promoting Affiliate Links to Generate Internet Income
0234 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
Those who have joined a few affiliate programs and now have a number of affiliate links to promote often ask the questions: How do I promote the affiliate programs I have joined? How can I generate internet income from all these affiliate links? Do I need my own website on my own domain name?
The attractive and exciting idea about joining affiliate programs is that they give you everything you need to start generating internet income right away. Well that is how it seems anyway. You get your own custom affiliate website, banners and pre-written ad, a list of online advertising hot spots, etc. They say all you need to do is plug in and profit. Does it really happen that way? Not usually!
Unfortunately, the problem with joining affiliate programs is that people get lazy. They slave away 5 or 6 days a week at their job and then think they can take the standard affiliate website they are given, plug it into a couple of free advertising tools that take five minutes to setup and start generating internet income right away. People are willing to work hard at their day job every day, but they are not prepared to put in nearly the amount of work to their affiliate programs, yet still expect to make internet income.
Also if they have probably joined a few affiliate programs and therefore have a number of affiliate links to promote, confusion and frustration set in.
The key to promoting affiliate links and really getting an affiliate marketing business off the ground is to have your own website – one that you can control and one that is on your own domain name. This puts you in total control of your own business.
Having your own website establishes your credibility immediately – online and offline.
There are three potential problems with affiliate links, which can be eliminated if you have your own website on your own domain name.
Firstly, a big problem is that affiliate links can have the ID’s removed from them very easily. Personally owned domain names allow you to cloak affiliate links. You can also set up re-direct links which look more professional and ensures that nobody can remove your affiliate ID, which would cause you to lose the commission.
One of the main reasons people fail at affiliate marketing is because they never invest in getting their own domain name and website setup. For some unknown reason they think this is an unnecessary thing when the fact is, having your own domain name is one of the most necessary things of all to succeed in this business.
Never put yourself at the mercy of the company you are promoting. You want and need to be in full control of your internet affiliate business at all times. What happens if you have spent a lot of money and/or time promoting your affiliate link all over the internet and then the company you are promoting changes the structure of their affiliate links or goes out of business?
If you did not have your own domain name and were not promoting through re-direct links, you would be out of luck! But if you set things up correctly from the beginning and did all your promotions through your own website, all you would need to do is login to your hosting account, click a button and replace the link you were promoting that does not work anymore.
Secondly, personally owned domain names are controlled by you, affiliate links are not.
You have to be able to control your own website. Affiliate links do not let you do this. You need to be able to add your own style and personality to your site. You need to be able to add and promote other products you believe in. You need to be able to change the layout, color, the type of font, the message, etc. Ultimately, you need to be in full control of your own website.
If you are not in control of your site, someone else is and if someone else is in control of your site, their agenda will always take precedence over yours. Remember that. Take control of your website, you then have control of your business and you take control of your financial future.
Thirdly, personally owned domain names rank high in search engines, affiliate links do not.
One of the best ways to promote affiliate products online is to get good free rankings in the search engines. But you simply cannot do that with affiliate links. However, if you have your own domain name and hosting account, all you need to do is put up a site with unique content on it, get a few links from other sites and you are on your way to getting lots of natural free listings and traffic from the search engines.
Free traffic from natural listings in the search engines is some of the best traffic in the world. Your conversion rates on turning prospects into customers shoot straight through the roof once you get these natural listings. But this can only happen when you have your own domain name and hosting account.
By getting your own website on your own domain name for promoting your affiliate links, you will give yourself the best chance of generating internet income as an affiliate.
Cynthia Minnaar is the owner and webmaster of www.cyns-home-biz.com, the online business ideas site for internet home business opportunities, ideas to start an online home business, internet income training and more. Get your own Residual Income Generating Plug-In Profit Site setup free and start making money online. You may publish my article provided you include the resource box.
Protect Your Affiliate Income by Protecting Your Affiliate Links
0236 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
The whole point of stealing is to make easy money off of the hard work of others. This is a concept that is of course, alive and well on the internet. This has also translated to affiliates and their links. When you sign up to become an affiliate, you are given a link. When someone signs up for a service or product from this link, you are given a commission. In the end, the only way to make money from this affiliate program is to have people visit or make a purchase through your own private affiliate links.
Crimes are usually ingenious and you wonder why a criminal will choose to come up with new ways to steal instead of putting their knowledge and brains into something legal. This can be said for the stealing of affiliate links.
Criminals will steal your money and commission by replacing your affiliate links with their own. You may not even realize it for a time. If you have high commissions from a few different affiliate programs, you may wonder why your sales have taken a nose dive. A closer look at your affiliate links may show that they have changed.
There are two different ways that you will most likely lose money from your affiliate links. The first is a thief who switches your affiliate links with their own personal link. They may notice that you have a great website with a lot of visitors and assume that you make a lot of money from your affiliate links. This can be done by hacking your computer, sending viruses, Trojans and worms or they may be someone that you have commissioned to write content. Always check your links carefully.
Another way that you lose commission is from a regular website visitor. For some reason, we as humans sometimes hate to see others succeed. A visitor may mouse over your link or banner and notice an affiliate link. Instead of clicking the link, they will either type in or copy the main part of the website URL and cut off your affiliate link. This prevents you from getting a commission if your link was not used. There is no reason for it except some people do not like to know that you have made money because they signed up under you.
How to protect your links
To protect your affiliate links you can try a website such as tinyurl.com. At this website, you can redirect your affiliate links to smaller and more attractive names. This will prevent most visitors from realizing that it is an affiliate link which can prevent theft and boost your affiliate sales.
Cloaking software is another great choice for your affiliate links. It does the same thing that tinyurl does, so you have a choice between the two.
You can consider buying a domain name for your affiliate links. You can try to pick a wide term that can cover most of your affiliate programs under a certain keyword or if you make a lot of money, you can buy a domain for each affiliate link. Another way to do this is to use your main domain name and create sub-domains to redirect your links. It can be an extra annoying step but it can also be worth it, when your affiliate links translates into commissions.
Jude Wright has been the owner of http://aboutaffiliatemarketing.com since 2002. Stop by and pick up her free report, Newbie’s Affiliate Guide.
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The Best Ways To Stop Hijacker Stealing Your Affiliate Links
0241 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
Free ebook subscription via Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Email and more…
Let’s face the facts! Almost everyone online today is looking to make or save a buck any way they can. In the past, most of the people who clicked on your affiliate links used to purchase without a second thought… but, as times get tougher online, it seems a growing number won’t!
As money gets tighter and product prices rise, people who know how to manipulate the system will sometimes replace your affiliate ID with theirs and “hijack” your commissions.
Let’s say your affiliate link is www.ebookhead.com/?live-well.
Say the highjacker uses the affiliate ID of captain-hook. What he would do is replace your ID with his, and buy from the URL www.ebookaboutcats.com/?captain-hook.
The bottom line: the hijacker puts your money in his pocket.
In other cases, they can’t stand the thought of you “making money off them” so they bypass you by simply chopping off the end of your affiliate link that contains your ID.
Instead of buying from www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well, the bypasser will simply “chop off” the affiliate ID at the end and simply buy from the plain URL www.ebookaboutcats.com –without your affiliate ID attached!
Either way, you get cheated out of your rightful commission.
To help you fight these affiliate link hijackers I offer a couple of my best (proven and battle tested) tips, which will at least confuse these “hijackers” and, in many cases, often defeat and disarm them completely.
Side Note: If someone really, really wants to steal your affiliate commission, they will find a way; however, most hijackers are just opportunists who will only act if they see an easy buck.
The first and cheapest way to hide your affiliate links is using a javascript redirect page. This is where you hide your affiliate link in a page on your site using a simple javascript that redirects people to your affiliate link.
It works great not to expose your “naked” affiliate link in your actual email messages and ezine ads, but, once people get redirected to the true affiliate link, many affiliate programs expose the affiliate link along with your ID in the browser address bar.
Like it or not, someone can replace my ID with theirs and “hijack” the commission… but at least the redirect script keeps them from immediately seeing my “naked” affiliate link (http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets) when I publish it in my newsletter, email, or on my website.
You can get free redirect scripts just about anywhere you find free javascripts. Here is the script I use http://www.ebookfire.com/jrs.shtml.
A better way to hide your affiliate links is using a zero-frame or “invisible” frame that masks the affiliate link by making it appear you are sending people to a page on your website. In reality, you are actually sending them to your affiliate link.
This is the technique used by those “sub-domain” redirect services that provide you with urls like http://ese.ebookfire.net.
While giving someone a link like that is much better than using a “naked” affiliate link such as http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets, there is a problem. As soon as someone does a “view >> source” in their web browser they’ll see your naked affiliate link plain as day… which instantly blows your cover!
Currently the best way to protect your affiliate commissions from ruthless hijackers is to use a combination of a zero- frame page along with URL encryption. This involves sending someone to URL that looks like a page on your site, but actually pulls in your affiliate link like those “sub- domain” services. However, there’s one critical difference…
If someone does a “view >> source” in their browser, you have added protection in that all they will see is a jumble of computer code instead of your naked affiliate link.
Check out this example of a zero-frame with URL encryption in action. Click => http://www.ebookfire.com/ese.html
Side Note: Beware of cloaking scripts that use javascript to mask your affiliate link because they could malfunction in some web browsers.
Here’s the bottom line: if you are going to sell through other people’s affiliate programs, never send a “naked” affiliate link… you’re just asking for people to hijack or bypass you if you do.
If you want to get paid more often through your affiliate links, make sure it’s not obvious you’re referring people to an affiliate link. If they can’t easily see how to hijack or bypass your link, a lot more people who would have taken the money out of your pocket will just go ahead and buy through your link – which is, after all, the whole point! 
FREE Ebokk Subscription via Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Newsletter, RSS and more…
http://www.ebookhead.com
5 Ways to Shorten and Protect Affiliate Links With Free Software
0243 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
Affiliate programs are booming these days and many serious minded marketers have been making lots of money. However, affiliate programs are also fraught with risks like stealware and other malicious exploits that steal commissions from marketers. However, there are some great ways to protect your affiliate commissions, so you wouldn’t lose a cent.
Here are top 5 ways to protect your affiliate links and your commissions:
Why having unsafe links is problematic?
Typically, most affiliate marketers use standardized affiliate links that direct the customers to the merchant site. The problem with this is that customers can easily identify it as an affiliate link. It also makes your affiliate marketing more vulnerable to hackers and malicious people who can easily steal your commissions as well by replacing cookies. The best way to prevent customers or such malicious groups from identifying your URLs is to cloak them. There is free software available these days that can effectively help you cloak your links.
Affiliate link cloaking: how to go about it?
Customers tend to hesitate clicking on an affiliate link simply because they are tired of all those promotions. Then there are stealware and other malicious software that constantly keep track of affiliate links and try to steal commissions away from unsuspecting affiliate marketers. You can avail various software for free these days that can help you effectively cloak your links. You can use any of the following techniques to cloak your links:
1) Banner servers:
Banner servers are great because any advertisements that direct customers on these servers will have extremely long text links. This way, your customer will never be able to read the entire link to know it is actually an affiliate redirect. However, installing a banner advertisement server can be time consuming and complex so this may not be the best option for you. Moreover, banner servers cost money.
2) Scripts and software tracking:
You can also use software as well as various scripts to track the click-throughs from customers. This software will never display the affiliate links directly and instead show the link to the tracking software that has been installed on the affiliate’s – marketer’s website.
3) Using JavaScript:
You can also cloak your affiliate links using JavaScript. For example, if your target URL is:
Just replace – with for a code to work:
-a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/outgoing/article_exit_link/539457']);” href=”http://www.merchntxyz.com/app/aftrack.php?afid=12345″ target=”_blank” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://www.merchant.abc.com’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=’ ‘;return true;”-Click here-/a-
In this example, merchntxyz is your merchant advertising company – your unique affiliate link. The first portion of the URL contains your own affiliate link while the second portion of this URL shows what actually gets shown on the status bar of the browser. The end portion of the URL is the text link. Once a customer clicks on this link a new window loads so that you don’t end up losing your customer from your affiliate site.
4) Ultimate cloaking method:
One of the best and most fool-proof methods of performing cloaking on your affiliate links is to create a separate html file on your website, i.e. http://www.marketersdomain.com/greatprogram.html and paste the following HTML code into that website. Just replace that merchantxyz link with your own link to your affiliate program. This way your affiliate links will be cloaked and you won’t lose a single cent!
Note: please, replace – with characters, since this code won’t work.
-html-
-head-
-meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”-
-meta http-equiv=’refresh’ content=’0; url=http://www.merchntxyz.com/app/aftrack.php?afid=12345′-
-/head-
-/html-
5) Select a good affiliate network that supports affiliate link cloaking:
There are some good affiliate networks that automatically protects your affiliate link, so your affiliate commissions could not be stolen. Click2sell.EU (http://www.click2sell.eu) is an affiliate programs network that believes in protecting its affiliates. It is a highly reputed and renowned affiliate program site that has all the protections to protect your affiliate commissions. When you choose a network of affiliate programs to promote products, make sure to choose a good one that will provide you with full securities, so your affiliate commissions could not be stolen!
Egidijus Andreika is a creator of Click2Sell.EU Affiliate Programs Network. Sell digital products online and run your affiliate program. Get paid instantly, provide easy payment options for customers, recruit affiliates. Affiliates – your affiliate commissions are protected. Promote products and sell downloads online. Visit Click2Sell: http://www.click2sell.eu
Linkserp.com – Get High-Quality 3 Way Links and One-Way Inbound Links
0251 days
by Steven P Smith
in General
Linkserp.com – Get High-Quality 3 Way Links and One-Way Inbound Links
Link Campaigns The Way It Really Works! Linkserp.com Triangular Link Campaign Technology Will Ensure Your Website Gets Hundreds of Real, High-Quality 3 Way Links And One-Way Inbound Links. Recurring Commissions For Affiliates.
Linkserp.com – Get High-Quality 3 Way Links and One-Way Inbound Links