Send A Email A Day

Using affiliate marketing as a way to make money online can be pretty awesome for people who are just starting out. It is really one of the best internet marketing strategies out there when it comes to ease of getting started. One question that I get a lot though is about affiliate links. People want to know, should they cloak them, leave them as is, or get a separate domain name for them? So let me help clear this up.

Once you have picked a product that you want to promote, you are given a link that is unique to you so that you can market the product and get credit for the sales. This is what an affiliate link is. If you want to get paid for sending traffic to a particular product…you must use the link that ties you to that product.

One of the reasons why you may not want to use the link “as is” is because it is usually very long, and has lots of weird characters in it. Bottom line? It just looks kind of ugly. Also, if your customer isn’t used to seeing these sorts of links it may make them confused. Or worse, they could open a new browser and type in just the name of the site, leaving off all of the stuff that looks unimportant to them…but is HUGELY important to you. No affiliate id, no money.

So here are some ways you can NOT use an ugly affiliate link and still get paid for promoting products.

First, you can use a domain name redirect. This is as simple as getting your own domain name and redirecting it to your affiliate link. One heads up on this though is you want to check out the terms of service for the product you are promoting. For example if you are promoting XYZ.com, they may have rules against you using XYZisgreat.com, so just be aware of that.

Another option is to use a link shortener. This is just software that that takes a long URL and shrinks it down to a short one. The problem though, is that it spits out random characters, so even though it is short…it is a weird looking short URL. A customer seeing weird characters whether they are short or long may still get confused or feel uncomfortable clicking on the link.

Finally, an option you can consider is using a link cloaker. With a cloaker, what the customer sees looks pretty much like a normal link. The software just hides that fact that there is affiliate information in the link…so the code is there, you will get credit for the sale, but the reader or customer can’t see it.

So these are just a few internet marketing strategies you can use to keep your affiliate marketing running smoothly and bringing in as many sales and as much profit as possible.