Affiliate Marketing Network Site

Cloaking Affiliate Links

Posted by admin on February 22nd, 2012

One of the most important components to your entire affiliate empire is the links you use to get those sales. These links can be slapped on for the whole world to see, or they can be cloaked so that it glaringly obvious that they are affiliate links. Most wise old affiliate sages believe that cloaking the links is the best overall practice.

Affiliate marketing isn’t new. People have been utilizing affiliate links for years, so many readers will know an affiliate link a mile away. Some won’t, of course, but many will. This means that an uncloaked link with your affiliate number out in the open for all to see is too easily manipulated if the buyer should decide they don’t want you to have the sale. They may also decide they feel like giving the sale to themselves rather than you, and get their own affiliate link to use. And, there are a lot of marketers out there that make joining their affiliate network easy in order to take advantage of sales like that. I could name a few sites that do, but I won‘t. Suffice it to say that if the buy link is right next to the become an affiliate link, they probably anticipate lots of buyers joining to get a commission on their own sale. With a cloaked link, the buyer may not realize that the sale is going to someone else, or how easy it is to switch the numbers. If you have a high number of sales and only two or three people a month try to switch the link, it is still worth it to cloak.

Another problem with naked links is that some of them just look bad. You have probably seen affiliate links that are long and convoluted, with a never ending stream of numbers and letters. That is just unattractive. It also may make internet newbies wonder what the heck that thing is and whether it contains a virus or the plague. If you don’t want to cloak the link altogether you might think about shortening it to make it look a little more attractive.

There are those out there, however, who recommend keeping the link as is, no matter what the thing looks like, to avoid any appearance of dishonesty. This may go well with your own affiliate philosophy, or you may have difficulty with the technical aspects. Either way, there are still sales out there to be made, but you can anticipate losing a few to link changers. When trying to decide whether to cloak, you should take a look at your page and try to see what other people see. Does the link look easy and non-threatening? How hard would it be to just cut out the affiliate number? What is the content like on the rest of the page? If the page is all about honesty and trust, do you really want to then cloak the link? The links should fit in with the style and content of your page. Cloaked or naked, as long as the link flows well on the page and will invite readers to click, there will still be sales made.
Gray Rollins writes for MarketingE Learn more affiliate marketing secrets, affiliate ebooks, and Internet marketing lessons.

One of the most important components to your entire affiliate empire is the links you use to get those sales. These links can be slapped on for the whole world to see, or they can be cloaked so that it glaringly obvious that they are affiliate links. Most wise old affiliate sages believe that cloaking the links is the best overall practice.

Affiliate marketing isn’t new. People have been utilizing affiliate links for years, so many readers will know an affiliate link a mile away. Some won’t, of course, but many will. This means that an uncloaked link with your affiliate number out in the open for all to see is too easily manipulated if the buyer should decide they don’t want you to have the sale. They may also decide they feel like giving the sale to themselves rather than you, and get their own affiliate link to use. And, there are a lot of marketers out there that make joining their affiliate network easy in order to take advantage of sales like that. I could name a few sites that do, but I won‘t. Suffice it to say that if the buy link is right next to the become an affiliate link, they probably anticipate lots of buyers joining to get a commission on their own sale. With a cloaked link, the buyer may not realize that the sale is going to someone else, or how easy it is to switch the numbers. If you have a high number of sales and only two or three people a month try to switch the link, it is still worth it to cloak.

Another problem with naked links is that some of them just look bad. You have probably seen affiliate links that are long and convoluted, with a never ending stream of numbers and letters. That is just unattractive. It also may make internet newbies wonder what the heck that thing is and whether it contains a virus or the plague. If you don’t want to cloak the link altogether you might think about shortening it to make it look a little more attractive.

There are those out there, however, who recommend keeping the link as is, no matter what the thing looks like, to avoid any appearance of dishonesty. This may go well with your own affiliate philosophy, or you may have difficulty with the technical aspects. Either way, there are still sales out there to be made, but you can anticipate losing a few to link changers. When trying to decide whether to cloak, you should take a look at your page and try to see what other people see. Does the link look easy and non-threatening? How hard would it be to just cut out the affiliate number? What is the content like on the rest of the page? If the page is all about honesty and trust, do you really want to then cloak the link? The links should fit in with the style and content of your page. Cloaked or naked, as long as the link flows well on the page and will invite readers to click, there will still be sales made.

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eMail Link Exchange Request

Posted by admin on February 10th, 2012

Improving the link popularity of your web site helps you to get higher search engine rankings. (Not sure what “link popularity” is? Read about link popularity.)

A good way to increase the link popularity of your web site is to contact other webmasters. Nowadays, webmasters get many link exchange email messages so it’s more difficult to get noticed.

Do the following things to make sure that webmasters reply to your link exchange request:

1. Don’t require too much action from the other webmaster

Some people write link exchange messages that read like this: “If you want to exchange links with us, click this, go here, and fill out this to make a request.”

Remember that you ask the other webmaster and not the other way around. Link to the other web site first and tell the other webmaster where he can find the link.

2. Don’t teach the other webmaster about search engine optimization

Don’t tell the other webmaster how great the effect of a link exchange will be for the search engine ranking of both web sites. The other webmaster probably knows this anyway. Some people don’t like to be taught in an email message they didn’t request.

3. Keep your email message short.

Don’t bore the other webmaster with long email messages. Come straight to the point, tell the other webmaster where he can find his link and where he can find easy to use copy/paste code for the link to your site.

4. The request email

When I receive link request emails, anything that has a generic subject line (i.e. attn webmaster, link request, We linked to your site! etc)

Makes ludicrous claims (ie.e we believe …)
Doesn’t use personal names (i.e. Dear Site Owner — you want a link from me – find out my name!)
Resembles an automated form email from bots
Contains excessive grammar/spelling mistakes
Are long and tells me how good links are for me etc etc etc.
goes to the trash.

5. Don’t ask for a link if the other web site is totally unrelated to your site

Many webmasters don’t like it when they receive a request from a totally unrelated web site. Most people will only link to another web site if the other web site has something to offer for their visitors. Only write to related web sites.

6. Quality of content

I try to make sure that my links come from pages with original content that are not sourced from an affiliate program or duplicated hundreds of times on the Internet. I want links from websites that someone seemingly to have taken time and effort to put together. In addition, it is steer clear of ecommerce sites that is only recently launched and heavily SEOed.

7. Link to the other web site first

Make sure that you link to the other web site before asking for a link back. Why should the other webmaster link to you if you haven’t bothered to link to him first?

Tell the other webmaster where he can find his link and make sure that the URL is correct.

8. Make sure that your web site has a professional design

It’s very important that both your web site and your link pages have a professional design. Your company shouldn’t look like a dubious shop. Professional site design is very important for the success of your linking campaign. I look for glaring typos, English mistakes, excessive fla shy banners, broken images, or the ever infamous animated Under Construction gifs.

9. The links page

Check what the links pages are like. Definitely avoid links pages that have over 50 links, or use dynamic URLs, or are not ind exed by search engines.

10. Be polite and humble

Don’t praise your own web site. It’s enough to mention your web site URL and to explain what both your site and the link partner’s web site have in common.

Don’t use superlatives or more than one exclamation mark in your email message. Do not use “sales talk” in your link exchange message, for example listing 5-10 benefits to the potential link partner.

11. The topic

Unless the links page of the site receives a large amount of traffic or that they have a high PageRank, stick to sites about the same topic as your own. If your site is about widgets, I usually look for sites that are about widgets, widgeting, or anything widget-users would find useful.

12. Don’t use free email addresses

Do not use a free email account, for example “you@hotmail.com”. It makes your link exchange mail seem like a spam mail.

13. The links page should be too far from the home page

Search engine bots are unlikely to go more than three levels deep on any website. So links buried deeper may not be found. When looking for quality links look for websites that provide links as close to the home page as possible. Even a massive site like BBC News has a rule that every piece of content must be available within three clicks of the News home page

14. Format of link

I usually look at the source code of the links page to make sure that I will be receiving honest inbound backlinks. Does the site use rel=nofollow or external redirects for their outbound links? If so, they won’t benefit you at all (SEO-wise) unless the link gets many human clickthroughs.

15. Are they willing to put the link in a “real” page of their site?

If they are willing to place your link on a content page, then they are definitely my valued link partner.

16. If I see their phone number in the request email…

Then I’d classify them as a valueable link partner. The same goes to your request emails: always include your name and phone number in order to be trusted.

That’s it for me. As you can see, I’ve only mentioned PageRank once. I believe that as long as a site has quality, it has a good potential (PageRank or otherwise) and is worthy to trade link with. Finally, although these are good criterias to stick to in order to identify good link partners when receiving requests, don’t forget to see if you are adhering to these when you are the one sending requests!

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How much per day??

Posted by admin on January 23rd, 2012

If you have been thinking about how you might make money on the Internet, then you should take a look at becoming an affiliate.

For those of you who don’t know or understand what an affiliate is, then in simple terms it is someone who promotes someone else’s product or service and if that promotion results in a sale then the affiliate gets paid a commission.

So how does that work in practice, well first you must register with a company or affiliate network as an affiliate. Some good affiliate networks to start with are ClickBank and Commission Junction. ClickBank mainly deals with ebooks and software which can be downloaded as soon as they have been purchased. Commission Junction on the other hand has a much wider range of possible affiliate relationships, many with well known large companies.

Once you are registered with one or more of these networks you will be able to select which products you wish to promote. With ClickBank you can promote any product that they list. With Commission Junction however, you have to also apply to each program within Commission Junction that you select and you may or may not be approved for that program by the company concerned.

Having selected a product or service you then have to promote it using the web links that the affiliate network will provide to you for that purpose. An important part in this web link information will be your Affiliate ID which will be used by the affiliate network and the company whose product/service you are promoting to identify you as the affiliate sending them a potential customer. If that person makes a purchase the affiliate network will be notified and will allocate the appropriate commission to your affiliate account. At regular intervals the affiliate network will then send you the commission you have accumulated in your affiliate account. The web link information mentioned previously that you obtain from the affiliate network can be used on your own website or blog or possibly in email newsletters or even directly via web advertising such as AdWords. This gives you a basic overview as to how affiliate marketing works. Many people are making extra money or their living as an Internet affiliates in this way.

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Affiliate Start

Posted by admin on January 23rd, 2012

The best way to get started in internet marketing is to promote someone elses product or service. When you do this it is called affiliate marketing. You do not need to come up with your own product idea, you do not need to ship products and you do not need to contend with payments or customer service issues. It is a low cost way to start an online business and if you are successful it can prove to be quite lucrative.

Here are 3 ways you can profit by marketing affiliate products:

Blogging

You can get started blogging for free. However, I would suggest if you are going to promote products that you at least pay for a domain name and host your own blog. It can costs as little as $7.00 per domain name and you can get hosting for as little as $10.00 per month.

Becoming an affiliate is a great way to monetize a blog. If you are blogging about motorcycles for example, you can post an affiliate page to ebay and list all the motorcycle auctions that are going on or it can be as simple as reviewing a product on your blog and including a link to that product. Incorporating affiliate products into your blog is easy and can earn you some extra cash.

Email Marketing

If you dont have a list of potential customers than you should definitely start one. For those that already have subscribers to a newsletter it is easy to make recommendations to your readers. Once you have established trust with them they are more likely to take what you say to heart. This includes recommendations. If a product offers an affiliate program than it costs nothing to mention it in your email.

The one thing that is important here is to remember that the product should be of value to your readers and related to what you do. All you need to do is include a special link to the product in your newsletter and earn a nice commission. If you have a large enough list your commissions can get high very quickly. This depends on the type of product of course. Some products offer more commissions than others.

Review Websites

Its easy to start a small mini site that reviews products. You want to do your research and keep it focused of course. You can recommend anything from web hosting providers, credit cards, insurance companies to what is the best educational toys for kids. The list is endless of all the different types of products you can review.

The more value you can add to your website the better. You can add value by including a comparison chart, past customer reviews, ratings and comparing features. When people are looking to make a purchase they often do some research on the internet. What better way to provide value to a new customer than to provide them information about all the different products in one area of interest.

If you are good at writing reviews people are more inclined to click on your link. The link that they click on is a special affiliate link that goes to your affiliate website and if the person decides to make a purchase off of your recommendation than you will earn commission on the sale.

It is important to remember when marketing affiliate products to make your recommendations as stream- lined as possible. What I mean by this is, when you are putting your affiliate link on your site, blog or email make it look as though it is originating from your own site. You can do this through redirects and link cloaking software for example. It can be easy for someone to bypass your affiliate code and go straight to another website without using your affiliate link. After putting in all the hard work and research into your website or blog you would not want to lose your commission.

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How to increase your PR ranking

Posted by admin on January 12th, 2012

As you may remember, we recently launched Sports Fan 4, a sports site focused on delivering Boston sports news and opinion with the voice of a fan. We launched the site on March 31, 2009 and kept our expectations reserved. While we felt we had a great team of writers for the site and knew that there is no satiating the thirst for sports talk in the City of Boston, we also knew from past experience how tough it is to get a new site up and running.

Well, a few days ago Google updated their public Page Rank for the first time since we launched SP4 and low and behold we were ecstatic to see we were upgraded to a PageRank 5!

While we knew we had optimized the site well for our readers (which also usually corresponds to good SEO too), we weren’t quite expecting our first Page Rank update to land us with a nice juicy 5. To be honest, a 3 or a 4 would have had us high-fiving. So you can imagine how pumped we were when we saw the Google Page Rank toolbar halfway full.

How we got a Page Rank 5 in Two Months

But enough talk about how happy we were, what you’re really interested in is how we did it. As with most SEO tips, the real truth is locked inside Google’s walls but here’s five steps we took that likely helped us achieve such a nice Page Rank so soon.

Comments, comments, comments

When Josh and I were sitting down and hashing out ideas for the site, one point I made repeatedly over and over is that Josh had to take initiative and comment on other blogs. Simply put, you cannot blog on an island (figuratively) if you want to have success. A huge misconception with blogging is that it is a solo activity, where the blogger just pumps out content isolated from the outside world.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Blogging is really about building a community with your readers and fellow bloggers. Commenting is thus a great way to build backlinks, expose your brand, and connect with other bloggers.

I could easily devote a whole post to this topic, but Brett Borders already wrote a fantastic guide on creating a solid online presence by commenting. Commenting is a big reason we have over 3,000 links pointed to the Sports Fan 4 domain as of this post.

Twitter, twitter, twitter

We set Josh up with a Twitter account on May 15 and he immediately began using it to connect with other sports fans. The key here is we setup a strategy for Josh to connect and communicate via Twitter.

Promoting posts was a secondary aim. It’s been a great strategy so far as Twitter has delivered traffic, guest writers and backlinks to his site. When you approach Twitter with the goal of communicating with others, the promotion will happen organically. We also installed a Twitter widget which kept fresh content flowing to the homepage.

Thesis Theme

Out of the box, Thesis theme is relatively well tuned for SEO. We tweaked it and tweaked it until we were comfortable that it was very finely tuned. Here’s a great SEO tutorial for Thesis theme. Also check out our guide to showing all posts in a category on one page.

The quick tips I’ll give are to show only titles outside the homepage and to enable teasers on the homepage. Also, show excerpts on the homepage. These three tweaks will keep duplicate content penalties to a minimum.

Unique content

A big boost to Sports Fan 4 came when we progressed from writing game wrap ups to producing unique content not commonly found on other sports blogs. I wrote a post about Five Life Lessons From “He Hate Me”, Josh wrote a post on How to Spot Steroid Users and began producing player profiles, while Matt published a list of things to do when the Sox game is rained out.

For the most part, these posts were content you could not find elsewhere and we all know that Google loves unique content. Not only does Google love it, but other bloggers and readers do too. These were some of our most highly trafficked and linked to posts on the site.

Our Network

A tip that really only applies to some of our audience. At The 42nd Estate we have a network of sites and on all those sites we post links back to our other sites. It makes sense since all the sites are part of The 42nd Estate’s network. Most of these sites have Page Ranks of 3 or 4, which gave Sports Fan 4 quality links right from the start. In other words, utilize your existing sites when launching new sites.

As you can see, there were no black hat (nor grey hat) SEO methods used here. Neither were any of them complicated or tough to initialize. Having said that, there was a lot of time spent in producing solid, unique content, reading and commenting on hundreds of blogs, connecting with over 1,000 people on Twitter. It required time and energy, but luckily those are the only two real costs to our strategy. That means you too can implement these tips and watch your Page Rank soar!

Now there were other steps we took that played a role in our Page Rank increase, but for space considerations I’ll leave it at those five. If you enjoyed this how to post and want to hear more about how Sports Fan 4 increased its Page Rank, or you have your own Page Rank/SEO tips, leave a comment below and let us know!

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Banner Glossary

Posted by admin on January 3rd, 2012

* Banner Ad — A graphic ad linked to an advertiser’s website. These usually run across the top of the page but can also run up the page (“skyscrapers”). Banners are usually limited by size.

* Banner Views –The number of times a banner is seen by users. This is usually the same as “page views,” but counts the number of times the banner is actually downloaded rather than the number of times the page is downloaded. Some users click away before the banner finishes loading.

* Clicks/ Click Throughs — Banners are operated by clicking the cursor over them. Not too surprisingly these responses are called “clicks” or “click throughs.”

* Click Through Rate (CTR) — The percentage of users who see the banner and click on it.

* Conversion Rate –The percentage of people who visit your site and actually give you money. The higher the better!

* Cookies — Small files placed on a user’s computer. They’re used for all sorts of reasons and by all sorts of sites. Banner ads use them to make sure the user hasn’t seen the banner recently, which banner brought them to the advertiser’s site, and even which adverts they’ve seen recently.

* CPM — “Cost Per Mille.” The amount you pay for every thousand times a banner is shown–the usual way of charging for banners.

* Hits — The number of times a server receives a request for a Web page or an image. Not a great way to measure interest. One page can have lots of images and get lots of hits, even if it’s only seen once. Often, people will say “hits” when they really mean “page views” or “impressions.”

* Page Impressions or Page Views –The number of times a Web page has been requested by the server. Much more accurate than hits: each view is a potential customer looking at a page of your site. But not necessarily a different customer…

* Unique Users — The people who download a Web page, counted by IP address. You want to bring lots of users to your site so that you can create a broad customer base. The same user clicking on a banner a dozen times could cost you money without increasing your sales. Most reputable sites will check the IP address of the person clicking on a link and only count it once in a 24-hour period. If a site doesn’t do this, don’t advertise with them.
Tim Yu is the owner of providing information on Creating Your Own Business Online. To get Free “Internet Marketing Guide” & “49 Ways To Find A Profitable Niche Market Instantly!” course, go to
* Banner Ad — A graphic ad linked to an advertiser’s website. These usually run across the top of the page but can also run up the page (“skyscrapers”). Banners are usually limited by size.