Affiliate Link Cloaking – Protect Your Affiliate Commissions
Affiliate link cloaking is nothing more than hiding (cloaking) your affiliate links and one of the smartest things you will do as an affiliate is to start cloaking your affiliate links today. Why? There are two reasons! The first is that research shows that visitors are less likely to click affiliate links or links that look like affiliate links. The second reason is that affiliate link cloaking helps keeps thieves and dishonest affiliates from stealing your commission.
So you know what affiliate link cloaking is and what the benefits are, but how do you cloak an affiliate link? Well there are several ways to do this. Some are paid and a some are free. While most of the paid versions are honest, I have heard of affiliate links getting rewritten and people losing commission while using affiliate link cloaking software or scripts. I prefer to use the free way below, because I can be sure that no one is trying to overwrite my affiliate links and it is free.
Now on to the best method (at least to me). The first thing you want to do is create a directory (folder) on your hosting account and give it a name. What i do is name the directory after the product or service I am promoting. Example a directory named hostgator would mean that I am promoting hostgator hosting.
Once you have your directory created, you would then want to create a simple php redirect (below) using notepad and add your affiliate link to the redirect. Once you have added the affiliate link, save your new redirect as index.php and upload it to your new directory. Example - my affiliate link for hostgator would go into my new directory called hostgator. Now instead of some ugly affiliate link that scares away visitors, my new link will look like affiliatesblog.net/hostgator and my affiliate code is hidden from prying eyes.
<?php
header( ‘Location: http://youraffiliatelink.com’ ) ;
?>
While affiliate link cloaking does add a couple of minutes to your task, you are protecting your money and the hassle is well worthit. Feel free to copy the code above and save it as index.php and just remember to update the affiliate code each time you use it. To keep things uniform accross your site, I recommend using this on all outgoing links (affiliate or not), this way there is no difference in appearance of your outgoing links.
Be good!
Matt
Building Backlinks – An Easy Way to Build Backlinks
If you are like me, you find building backlinks to be one of the most brutal parts of affiliate marketing. I find that building backlinks is boring and I really do not feel like I am accomplishing much, yet I know the importance of having backlinks to my sites. So I thought I would share with you how I go about finding links for my sites. Ready?? I follow my competition! Whereever my competitors are, I want to be. Where ever they stick a link, I need to have a link. Some people call it cheating, some call it blackhat. I call it an easy way to build backlinks for my sites.
So how do I find my competitors backlinks? Simple I type the following into Google
link:http://www.mycompetitorsdomain.com/
Once I have the results, I start going through the backlinks of my competitor and start finding places to add my own. So how do I find my competitors? I simply search Google for my keywords. Any site that comes up is my competition.
So as you can see, there is not much to my method. However, this extremely simple method can be very effective and yield some nice links. I recommend setting aside some time on a regular basis to work on building backlinks and by doing so you should (as long as your site is properly optimized) see an increase in your rankings.
Good luck
Increase Your Adsense Earnings – Adsense Revenue Guide
I do not recommend a lot products from ClickBank, because I think 99% of them are junk, but I have found an excellent guide to making money with Adsense. The Adsense Revenue Guide is one of the best guides I have read when it comes to making money with Adsense and you can even take the info learned about increasing your Adsense revenue and use it for promoting cpa offers, pay per sale programs, etc.
While most of the ebooks out there are junk, the Adsense Revenue Guide is actually filled with information that will help individuals from all experience levels. If you already have a site with traffic, your gonna learn the steps needed to see an IMMEDIATE increase in revenue. Put the information to work and you should see immediate increases in click through and earnings per click. New to making money online and not sure where to start? This guide walks you through researching niches, setting up your site, finding a good domain name, etc. Also included is a list of over 1500 sites that you can add to your competitive filter to keep out low paying ads. Really good information here guys. The only way you will not make money is if you do not put the information to work for you.
Your gonna spend $47, but in my opinion this is very solid information and well worth the money. Straight to the point with no fluff and filler. Do yourself a favor, if your not gonna put the information to work then do not buy it. I feel so strongly about this, I will not even post an affiliate link. Click here to go to the site now or just go to adsenserevenueguide.com and buy today.
Is ClickBank Scamming Affiliates?
I am not making accusations here, but I am reporting what I have found. There are a lot of accusations floating around about ClickBank shaving and/or stealing affiliate commissions. While I am not a big affiliate of ClickBank, I have noticed that my sales have completely stopped. Does that mean CickBank is scamming? No, but some of the arguments and claims being made on some of the most popular forums leaves me wondering if they might be scamming.
Personally I do not accuse ClickBank of scamming, but when I take a look at my personal stats I do see an issue. I have 3 sites promoting ClickBank products that have a ranking on Google of #1 – #5 for their respective keywords and used to generate a couple hundred dollars per week. Over the past few months my rankings have stayed the same, but my commissions steadily decreased to nothing and have been nil for the last five weeks. Does this mean ClickBank is scamming? No, but if they are not scamming, they have a serious tracking issue that is getting ignored and ignoring the issue is just as bad as stealing in my opinion. So what should an affiliate do? I would only push ClickBank organically and stop all advertising for ClickBank products until the problem is identified and corrected. No sense in spending money if you are not 100% sure you are gonna get paid.
Affiliate Marketing With Out a Website
Affiliate marketing is an easy home business to start and has a small to moderate learning curve to get you started. As an affiliate, you will promote products through your website and earn a set amount for generating a lead or you will receive a percentage of the sale for promoting the product. But what do you do if you do not have a website or do not feel like you have the technical qualities to build one? You are still able to take part in one of the easiest ways to make money online. Here is how to get started.
Step One – Pick Your Topic or Niche
What are you passionate about? What are you good at? Answering these questions will be the easiest way for you to find your niche or topics. It will be easy for you to write articles about something you are good at or have a passion about.
Step Two – Pick Your Affiliate Product
Once you have chosen your niche, find affiliate programs that have products related to that niche. ClickBank is recommended for this plan, because they do not verify whether or not you have a web site.
Step Three – Write Articles
Research your topic and write 5 articles for your niche. Make sure to include your affiliate program link in the article and in the author’s biography at the end of your article.
Step Four – Promote Your Product
Create an account at Squidoo and create a lense with one of the articles. After completing your Squidoo lense, create blogger.com and wordpress.com blogs. Post an article on each blog. The fourth and fifth articles need to be posted at ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com. Last, submit a free ad at usfreeads.com promoting your product. Once your articles have been posted and you have a free ad, start linking the sites together. Add a link to the article posted at ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and the ad at usfreeads.com to each of the blogs and the Squidoo lense. Once you have linked the articles and the ad, link the blogs and Squidoo lense together. Once you have all sites linked together, go to Ping-O-Matic and ping each blog, article and the lense.
Step Six – Rinse and Repeat!
Once you have your first niche completed, start the process over with a new niche. Aim to get three to four different niches completed.
Once you have completed your niches, you should aim to post one article per day per niche and rotate them between the blogs and ezinearticles.com. Writing quality articles will help visitors find your sites and click your affiliate links.
