Author Archive
Are you Cloaking your Affiliate Links?
As an affiliate marketer, there may be many reasons why you might want to consider cloaking your affiliate links:
- Preventing other affiliates from stealing or hijacking your links
- Better link management - A merchant may expire or get dropped from an affiliate network and you need to reflect those changes on your site. It’s much easier to update the link in one location and have a sitewide effect as opposed to trying to remember everywhere you used that particular affiliate link. I learned the hard way when I couldn’t figure out why I kept getting invalid links in my commission junction reports.
- Normal affiliate links are very long - e.g. yoursite.com/product.php vs www.merchantwebsite/mumbo12121jumbo……r&23232@%$?ref=affid=007 - which one would you click on?
- You may want to cloak the links from search engines or prevent bots from crawling the links
- Users are more likely to click on clean looking links, increasing your affiliate conversion rates
There are many ways to mask your affiliate links - I’m only going to cover a few. The most easiest way is by a simple .htaccess redirect method. Let’s say we want to launch a campaign promoting mangoes from a fictional merchant “selfpreneursmangomania.com”.
- Create a .htacess file at the root of your site (use notepad or any other plain text editor)
- Add the following: redirect 301 /buymangoes http://www.selfpreneursmangomania.com/mumbo12121jumbo….r&23232@%$?ref=affid=007
You’re done. Redirect 301 just tells search engine spiders that the links you are redirecting to are not on your site. “Somename” is whatever you want to call what you’re marketing. Your masked link will now be something like yoursite/buymangoes.
The problem with using the .htacess file to manage your links is that after a while, as the .htaccess file grows larger your site will slow down. Everytime there is a request, the server checks the .htaccess file. The more links you have in there, the longer it takes to read etc.
URL Redirection sites are another method of hiding your affiliate links.
- Go to a site like tinyurl.com
- Enter your affliate link
- Use the resulting the link the site will give you, something like http://tinyurl.com/3drlg3
Use http://tinyurl.com/3drlg3 wherever you want to market that item. The problem with this method is that the link doesn’t really look nice. It’s short, confusing and you’ve just handed control of your affiliate link to another company.
In my humble opinion, the best method of hiding your affiliate links in my opinion is by using php redirects along with a robots.txt file.
- Create a file called buymangoes.php in a subdirectory on your site
- Open up your .htaccess file (create one if you don’t have one at the root of your directory) and add the affiliate link you are given in the location area <? header(”Location: http://www.yourwebsite/mumbo12121jumbo….r&23232@%$?ref=affid=007); ?>. So now your affiliate link should be within the file called buymangoes.php. The link that refers to that particular gadget will now be yoursite/subdirectory/buymangoes.php
- At your root directory, create a file called robots.txt and add:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /subdirectory/
This tells bots not to ignore links that for items in that subdirectory. This way if you ever need to manage your links just look for the php file and edit the php file accordingly.
Last but not the least, always make sure that whatever program you’re promoting allows the use of redirects. Why do all that hard work to pluck those mangoes only to find out that you can’t eat them?
Know of an even better method? Let us know in the comments section.
Do you have a Business Plan for your online strategy?
Before you begin your online venture (blog, e-commerce site etc), giving some thought and consideration as to where you’d like to end up in a couple of years will could ultimately mean the difference between success and failure. Launching an online venture WILL take up a considerable amount of your time, energy and financial resources. Here’s how to ensure that those resources are spent in an effective manner:
1. Start with the end in mind: Consider both your short term and long term goals. Give some thought to where you’d like to end up in a year, 3yrs or 5 yrs down the road. What are the basic goals behind your decision to start an online venture - do you desire the ability to spend more time with your family, achieving financial independence? Picture yourself in the future, and write this down to help provide you with motivation for the rough times ahead. What are you doing this for?
2. How do you plan to make money online: Will it be from a blog (e.g. ad sales), online retailing, multi-level marketing, etc? There are so many business opportunities available, and failure to clearly choose and identify one can make you feel overwhelmed and confused. You should also give some thought to marketing costs involved with choosing your online strategy - the costs (minimal to zero) of someone who plans to make money online blogging will vastly differ from someone who wants to operate an e-commerce site.
3. Know your audience: Who is your audience? Develop a profile for your target audience
- How old are they?
- Where do they hang out - both online and off?
- How will you market to them - can you find them on MySpace, Facebook, at your local gym, grocery store etc?
Knowing this will help ensure that your audience finds your message receptive. For example, would you try and sell a life insurance policy on MySpace? You probably wouldn’t do very well - the majority of MySpace users are teenagers and young adults. However something like ringtones would be excellent. Know your audience!
4. Network, network, network! Join as many groups, forums, social networking sites as you can in your industry. Establish relationships with other influential people in your niche and the media as soon as you can. Networks are great places to market yourself and learn of the latest developments and events in your industry. Networking groups are also great places to receive support from experienced business people in your industry.
5. Plan B / Exit Strategy: What will you do if things do not ultimately work out the way you expect them to? Will you just give up entirely, flip your blog/site/service for a profit or try your hand at another industry? Thinking about this ahead of time will help you identify other potential business markets and expansion opportunities.
Mapping your course to success beforehand will help ensure that you do just that, succeed!
