Cloaking your affiliate link basically means hiding the raw affiliate code you get from the affiliate network and instead displaying a more attractive link like http://www.richardpargeter.com/recommends/aproduct.php

Why would you want to do this?

For a couple of reasons:-

1. It looks better.

A normal affiliate link can look something like this:-

http://34035cphs8mcd498ykrm4v3x7t.hop.clickbank.net/

…urggh! pretty ugly don’t you think

A cloaked affiliate link looks like this:-

http://www.richardpargeter.com/recommends/product … much easier on the eye!

2. Unscrupulous people can’t steal your commissions (as easily)

Believe it or not there are people hiding in the shadows of the great world wide web that are prepared to steal your commissions.

How?

Well if you have a naked affiliate link without cloaking it’s fairly easy for those in the know to realise it is an affiliate link. They can then go and sign up with the merchant themselves get their own affiliate link and purchase the product through their own link, in effect giving themselves a discount and robbing you of your commission for directing them to the merchant in the first place.

Don’t get too hung up on this but just be aware that it does happen.

3. A naked affiliate link looks dodgy!

Some people will see the source of the link and think that the code looks untrustworthy and may even be put off from clicking on the link. If you’ve got a nice looking link like the example above your visitors are more likely to click the link not knowing that it is in fact an affiliate link.

Affiliate Link Cloaking

The process of hiding your affiliate link really is very simple and involves just three steps.

Step 1. Copy your affiliate code. If you haven’t got your affiliate code I tell you how to do this in my previous post on how to add your affiliate codes to your website

Step 2. Create the Redirect Script

Open up a text editor like Notepad and type the following code:-

<?php header(Location:'YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-GOES-HERE');?>

Replace the YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-GOES-HERE with the actual code you got from the merchant or affiliate network.

Save this file something like specialoffer.php and save it in a new folder called ‘recommends’

Remember to save as .PHP otherwise it won’t work.

Step 3. Upload to your server

The final step is to upload the ‘recommends’ folder with the specialoffer.php file (or whatever you’ve decide to call it) inside, to the root directory of your domain server using an FTP program like Filezilla (See my resources page)

The file structure should look like http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/recommends/specialoffer.php

From now on when you are promoting your affiliate product you should use this new CLOAKED affiliate url.

And what happens is when someone clicks on http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/recommends/specialoffer.php they will be redirected to your affiliate offer without your affiliate code being visible.

Have you found this post useful? Please leave a comment below…

Technorati Tags: affiliate link cloaking, cloak affiliate link, free affiliate link cloaker, hide affiliate link

I received a question from somebody the other day who was just starting out in affiliate marketing and was getting a bit confused of how to put their affiliate links on their website. So I thought I would share the information with everybody out there. In this example I’ll be using Clickbank but the rules apply to all networks, okay here goes:-

Step 1: Grab your affiliate code.
Once you’ve found a product on ClickBank by searching the Marketplace, you need to click on the Create Hoplink link

Step 2: Enter Your ClickBank ID
You’ll be presented with a pop up window where you’ll need to enter your ClickBank account username. You can enter a tracking code if you wish (I’ll talk about this in a later post)

Step 3: Copy your Affiliate Link
Click the Create button and your affiliate link will be created (ClickBank likes to call them hoplinks but they’re the same thing)

In the image above the highlighted code is the raw link code that you should copy and paste into a text file or spreadsheet so you can use it later.

If you like you can copy the second line of code and you will have a ready made link that says Click Here! like so. (This is an actual working affiliate link so you can see the results…the product is good too)

Step 4: Adjust the text link

The actual html code that creates the link looks like this:-

<a href="http://a73911fnmbjf64copdlbqa00og.hop.clickbank.net/" target="_top">Click Here!</a>

So if you wanted to change the link so that it reads as something else you just need to delete the “Click Here!” and type in whatever text you want.

Step 5: Copy & Paste

Once you’ve got your code all that is left to do is copy it and paste it into your website, making sure the source code view is active in your HTML editor.

That’s it. That’s all there is to including your affiliate link on your web page, in fact this is the code you’d use on any website that you wanted to promote the product on.

Important note: If you go back to Step 3 above and hover your mouse pointer over the Click Here! link you’ll notice that your full affiliate link is displayed in the status bar of your browser. To be more professional you need to consider cloaking your link so that instead it reads something like www.yoursitename.com/recommends/the product This looks so much better and hides any important information that could identify you as the affiliate. Watch out for my next post where I’ll show you exactly how you can cloak your links professionally.

I hope you’ve found this post useful, if you have let me know by leaving a comment below.

Technorati Tags: affiliate code, affiliate links, Affiliate Marketing

One of the easiest ways to start making money on the internet, in my opinion, is by affiliate marketing. Now when I say easy, it is by no means a get rich quick scheme. If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is then keep reading because I’m about to tell you.

In it’s simplest definition affiliate marketing is promoting someone else’s products in return for a commission.

How Affiliate Marketing works:-

First off you need to sign up at an affiliate network which is basically a big marketplace where you can find products to promote.

Clickbank and Commission Junction (CJ) are affiliate networks, there are many more but when you’re just starting out these will be the 2 big players you’ll hear people talking about the most.

Clickbank specialises in digital products and CJ deal with both digital and physical items.

Then you find a product to promote, I’ll be talking about this in later posts but just a word of warning if you get this wrong from the start you won’t have much chance of making any money before you even start.

Once you’ve picked your product you’ll be given an affiliate code. This is a unique link that you can place on your website to promote the product.

An affiliate code looks something like this – http://62739ftlq8r87t7fxzo-j5s8u5.hop.clickbank.net/

So lets say you have a blog and you include this code in one of your posts. When a visitor to your blog clicks the link they are redirected to the merchants site. At the same time a tiny file is placed on their computer called a cookie and this tells the merchant that you sent that visitor to them. If the visitor then purchases the product you’re promoting you earn a commission which is paid to you through the affiliate network.

Therefore the more people you send to the merchants site the more chance there is of you earning commissions.

In my opinion affiliate marketing is the easiest entry in making money online because you don’t need a product of your own and you need very little cash to start.
Stay tuned to my blog over the next couple of weeks because I’ll be going in to detail on how you can start to profit from affiliate marketing.

Did you find this post interesting? Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, make money online

As an affiliate marketer it is essential that you do your niche market research before you enter any niche and spend time generating traffic by whatever means you choose.

If you enter an unprofitable niche your chance of success is already decreased.

In this series of articles I’m going to share with you my affiliate strategies of how to find niche markets. In this first one I will use Amazon. I’m going to take the step by step approach because I think this will be easier to follow for the internet marketing newbie.

Amazon.com is probably one of the biggest if not the biggest retailer online, but it is also a fantastic resource for our niche research online.

Go to http://www.Amazon.com/bestsellers
On the resulting page you’ll get the best selling items on Amazon sorted by department. You’ll see that this list is updated hourly, so you know that you’re getting the latest information in almost realtime.

As you can see from the image above the Apple ipod touch has spent more than 80 days in the top 100 for electronics so we can assume that this would be a good niche to explore.

Scrolling down further we can see the Flip UltraHD Camcorder has spent 197 days in the top 100 so this would also be a good market to look into.

By moving over to the left of screen we can see all the categories. This list alone can be excellent for brainstorming niches. If we click on the Books category we are then taken to the top 100 best sellers and we can then see which products are the most popular and also which products are moving up or down the chart.

In the image above you can see that the book The Help has spent 280 days in the top 100 and is also rising up the charts. Whereas, the Diary of a Wimpy kid has moved down the chart. This could be for 2 reasons that it has become less popular or the books above it have knocked it down. This would be something you would need to consider when choosing your niche.

You should also notice that there is now a list of categories within the book category on the left hand side of the screen and you can even drill down further within those categories. You can treat each category as a niche and the categories within them as sub niches.

On Amazon.com you can also check out the Movers & Shakers. These are the products that have risen up the charts sharply over the last 24 hours and can indicate a new trend. Go to www.amazon.com/movers-and-shakers

Once again you can select your category and drill down further.

One word of warning following the movers and shakers could just be a short term trend and you may find that going in to this niche will only provide short term profits. I would always advise to sacrifice short term profits for long term wealth.

For example I have many niche sites for Amazon that earn me a modest income throughout the year, nothing that I can retire from but generally a steady income. Now with Amazon sites in particular there is always a spike in sales come November and December for the Christmas period, because people are more willing to spend their money and they have a deadline to spend it by… unless they want to upset little Johnny come Christmas day.

Anyway, if I wanted I could surf this wave trying to maximise the cash on the short term because I know come January the sales will drop again. And there lies the problem, I could spend 2 months squeezing the most money out of my Amazon sites for the short term or I could concentrate on building a business that will bring in rewards all year round. So I would advise when you’re looking to find a niche market to enter go for one that is evergreen and has consistent sales all year round you’re business and bank manager will thank you for it.

I hope you can see how powerful Amazon is for finding niche markets. In the next article we’ll be looking at another fantastic way to find niche markets.

If you’re struggling with affiliate marketing and need a proven blueprint to follow you should really check this out

Did you find this helpful? Please leave a comment below

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, how to find niche markets

I’ve been affiliate marketing for some time now mainly with Amazon and a few smaller networks, but it’s only been recently that I’ve started to promote ClickBank products.

After dabbling for a couple of weeks I received my first cheque this morning.

Now I’m not going to be able to retire just yet the payment’s only for $246.73, but what it proves is this stuff works. I’ve had my days where I’ve thought making money online is not as easy as the big gurus make out and to some extent it’s not.

You have to put a lot of time and effort in, whether that’s building websites, squeeze pages or generating traffic and it’s definitely not a get rich quick scheme.

For me my first clickbank cheque signifies a starting point and proof that with hard work and dedication to the cause, you can get to see results and rewards pretty quickly.

So if you think making money online is not possible, think again you’re probably going wrong somewhere…I know I have in the past.

Now, how do I pay a US dollar cheque into a UK bank account?….

I’d love to hear your experiences please leave a comment below

Technorati Tags: clickbank

It’s been a while since I posted to the blog as I’ve been busy trying a few new things with Pay Per Click (PPC) and Pay Per View (PPV).

I’ve had more success with PPC so that’s something I’m going to explore over the next few weeks and months… I really want to become a success at it because IMHO it’s the best way to get a huge amount of traffic fast!

I’m not going to rush it because I want to avoid losing my shirt and my underwear for that matter at the hands of Google I’ll keep that story for another post.

I’ve dabbled with PPC before with very limited success not really knowing what I was doing, so I bought a few Adwords books to answer my questions but the problem with printed material or digital come to that is it’s very difficult to keep up with the Google changes.

I needed some questions answered fast, really an assessment of whether I was going down the right track. So where did I go?

The Warrior Forum!

If you don’t know already the Warrior Forum is one of the greatest sources of Internet Marketing information online and it’s all for FREE!

I’d been a member for a while but hadn’t really used it, I’d dip my toe in now and again but I never really went for a swim.

With my PPC questions ready I posted them in a new thread and within minutes I had many replies giving me advice about where I was going right and wrong. I picked up some little gems that I’m sure some of the big gurus out there would charge many dollars for… but I got them for free because it seems at the Warrior Forum everybody likes to help.

Now obviously like anything you have to use your own judgement on who to listen to because there are some people over there from ‘the grumpy club’… you know the ones who tell everybody that internet marketing doesn’t work and the make money online stuff is all a big scam. My advice is read their comments and then forget about them, only listen to the people who give you good sound advice. Now, granted you may see the advice as positive or negative but if they have proof to back up their claims it’s still good advice and down to you which one you go with… just don’t join the grumpy club blaming other people if things don’t turn out as expected the buck lies with you…END OF RANT!

Since becoming an active member of the Warrior Forum I’ve learned loads of useful information that I could have probably paid for… but why put my hand in my pocket when I can get most of my questions answered for free.

Please Note: I am in no way affiliated to the Warrior Forum, I don’t earn any cash from recommending it, I just do because I wish someone had told me about it earlier on in my internet marketing endeavours

I’d love to hear what you have to say, please leave a comment below:-

Technorati Tags: warrior forum