Archives: Affiliates
Re-directing Affiliate Links
Re-directing an affiliate link or ‘cloaking’ a link is an easy task and can be a great advantage to your site for good reason.
As I have done on this site, many other sites link to domain/name-of-product/ and redirect either using a PHP jump script (as do I) or manipulate the htaccess file.
What are the advantage of redirecting an Outbound Affiliate Link?
- Keeping others from stealing affiliate sales and making it harder for “newbies” to see how to access the affiliate program or view it is an affiliate link.
- Easily change the merchant offer by changing only one affiliate link within your php redirect file or .htaccess. It’s especially helpful when you’ve sent out an email, newsletter or posted a link on a forum and a merchant has changed the link. You can easily change the redirect on your end and keep the affiliate sale alive.
- Increase confidence of clicking on an affiliate link as many people are hesitant to click on links that look like: http://www.tkyrse.com/affiliateid?12345
- Protect your affiliate links as many will hover over an external link and manually type in the top level domain in the address bar of browser instead of clicking on the link. It seems pretty silly as the site’s owner has gone through the trouble of finding valuable information for free, as the actual click doesn’t cost the reader anything.
There are some instructions on the web to set up a redirect by using .htaccess/301 redirects or php scripts that may appear confusing or overwhelming to a handful of site owners. There are also many software products on the market that charge $20-$60 to assist in protecting your affiliate commissions. But…actually, hiding your affiliate links can be so easy.
Using PHP
Create a file in notepad and call it moneynow.php and enter this:
<?
header(”Location: http://www.susansuarez.com/ref=2424538″);
?>
Of course, change the URL to be your affiliate link and upload the file to your server and use moneynow.php as the new link. So in this case it would be: http://www.susansuarez.com/moneynow.php. Now anytime anyone clicks on this link they will be redirected to the actual affiliate. Very simple, huh?
You could even create a directory called “information” or “recommended” that may add more trust to the link and will appear like this: http://www.susansuarez.com/recommended/moneynow.php
But before hiding an affiliate link, review your affiliate’s TOS and make sure it doesn’t forbid cloaking.
Using .htaccess
.htaccess is located in the same folder as your index.html or .php files. Open it up and at the bottom of that file, type this (Example):
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^moneynow.php$ http://susansuarez.com?ref=2424538 [R]
“RewriteEngine on” turns on the rewrite program and the affiliate link will be redirected.
Additional Cloaking
There is a free tool and easy way to further cloak your links from those who hold a mouse over a link to view the destination. Check out ClickFire to automatically add the coding needed to hide the destination, even a .php link, if you want that hidden from experienced marketers aware of php cloaking techniques. Just make sure your links are a different color than your other text so people know that it’s a link to click. Blue is a good standard color to use.
Robots.txt
To keep search engines issues at bay with creating a cloaking page, it’s highly recommended to keep Google from indexing pages that have nothing on it and are used only as a redirect. Google doesn’t like these pages and you wouldn’t want Google to index the page anyways, since it won’t have any content.
Save all of your redirects within one directory and exclude that directory in your robots.txt. If you don’t have a robots.txt file, you can create one in notepad and upload it to the root directory of your web page. The robots.txt file gives spiders a direction as to which directories or files they can examine and retrieve information. To prevent them from accessing any part of the site (including redirects with no content), enter the following within the robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder-to-be-excluded/
The asterisk (*) indicates “all” spiders or agents. If for some reason, you want to disallow access to any directory, then use a forward slash “/” and not an asterisk for “Disallow: ” To read more on robots.txt, take a look at
Cloaking your affiliate links should increase conversions, for many reasons noted above. There is no need to lose out on money by not ‘hiding’ affiliate links!
Posted in Affiliates, Blogging, Tools | 12 Comments »
5 Great And 4 Not-So-Good Affiliate Programs
If you’re only getting 21 cents per week with Adsense, you’re probably wondering if it’s possible to make a living from blogging. Unfortunately, many fail to look past Google Adsense as ways to monetize their blog or website. The best channels for making money are usually through affiliate programs but even affiliate programs can range in degrees of success.
Lets start with the not-so-good four you shouldn’t waste your time on.
1) Amazon - Initially the affiliate program seems extraordinary. You get to sign-on with a superstore but the kick-back is between 4% to 8.5% of the purchase, with a maximum of $25 on personal computers, which otherwise be a great affiliate item to get a commission from. There are some people who are making money with Amazon, but most aren’t making a whole lot. Typically people will earn an average of .05-2 cents for every click they can send to Amazon.com. You’ll have to decide for yourself it that’s a good or bad number.
2) Chitika - You may find success with this affiliate program if your site is directly product related. If it isn’t…you may receive a poor performance from Chitika.
3) Auction Ads - Auction Ads gives 2% of referral revenue and many haven’t received much success per cut. Things may change as AuctionAds has just been sold to Media Whiz.
4) Clickxchange - Clickxchange’s interface is poor and their website performance is lousy. The quality of advertisers is low in comparison to the other alternatives, like CJ or ShareASale.
5 Great Programs/Networks
1) Text Link Ads - Text Link Ads lists your blog within their marketplace exposing your site to thousands of advertisers, allowing for easy payment. Upon referral, new advertisers get $100 worth of free text link ads if $125 is invested. That’s not too bad….and the referral program offers $25.
2) Commission Junction (CJ) - Commission Junction is an affiliate network bringing advertisers and publishers together. Best performing ads are listed first and a large variety of big advertisers utilize their system. They supply many advertiser text links and banner options to choose from. There are a few free offers on their site, such as Free Credit Report. A similar site to CJ but smaller is ShareASale, which offers some advertisers that CJ doesn’t list but their interface isn’t as easy to use.
3) Website Magazine - Website Magazine offers free magazines regarding internet news for a commission. The great thing about this magazine is that it has a lot of great information and news valuable to webmasters.
4) Bidvertiser - Besides Bidvertiser having a lower minimum payout of $10 versus Google’s $100 payout, Bidvertiser also allows you to categorize your listings instead of having them figure out which ads are best to place on your site like Google attempts to do. You can change the size and ad color, but make sure that they appear different than Google’s Adsense as Google’s TOS states that you cannot have other ads alongside it that look similar to your Adsense placement/format.
5) PayPerPost - PayPerPost is a great way for bloggers from time to time use to monetize their blog. I don’t suggest using it all the time, as your site will appear as a spam site (nothing other than reviews for money). Referrals are paid $15 per sign-up once the referrals first blog posting is approved. ReviewMe also has a referral program and offers $25 for new advertisers but you’ll probably get my sign-ups with PayPerPost.
Of course, this isn’t a complete list and possibly you may be one of the few to obtain great success with the not-so-good affiliate programs. It’s important when evaluating an affiliate program to find one that has been established and been around for years. Find affiliate programs that pay good commissions since you are going to work hard at selling the product. You don’t want to end up in situation of being overworked and underpaid.
The best affiliate programs to maximize conversion and also attract people to your site, are usually free offers! So, if you can find a free offer that makes sense take advantage of it.
Posted in Affiliates, Make Money | 7 Comments »
Free Subscription
I recently signed up for a free subscription to Website Magazine that covers important topics many webmasters would find valuable, especially at no cost. The magazine is also valuable to those working at home on their blog/website looking to make the most out of their site’s online presence.
A free subscription can either be mailed or sent you via a digital issue. I found the internet topics interesting as they covered backlinks, Google, advertising, and affiliate programs.
To sign up for a free subscription involves no other commitments or ‘trials’. They even have an affiliate program if you want to share this with your fellow friends :)
Posted in Affiliates, The Net | 4 Comments »
