How to Booost Your Affiliate Commissions by 30%

How to Booost Your Affiliate Commissions by 30%

by: Satyajeet Hattangadi

Affiliate marketing is one tough business. Everyone online today is looking to make or save money in any way they can.

In the good old days when internet marketing was in its infancy, most of the people who clicked on your affiliate links used to purchase without a second thought… but, now as times are getting tougher, and visitors getting more cynical, youกll be amazed at the number who won’t!

Just one flaw in a system and you will find dozens of unscrupulous people waiting to exploit it. Same goes for affiliate commission tracker systems. People who know how to manipulate the system will replace your affiliate ID with theirs and กhijackก your commissions.

Most affiliate links are some form or the other of http://www.thesite.com/?YOURID

Where your affiliate id is passed as a parameter. A thief has to simply change the กYOURIDก part to ‘tHEIRIDก to put your money in their pocket.

In other cases, there are visitors to your site who simply can’t stand the thought of you กmaking money off themก so they bypass you by simply chopping off the end of your affiliate link that contains your ID.

Instead of buying from http://www.thesite.com/?YOURID, the bypasser will simply กchop offก the affiliate ID at the end and simply buy from the plain URL http://www.thesite.com/ without your affiliate ID attached!

Bam! you just got cheated out of your rightful commission.

Studies have shown that this phenomenon causes about 30% lost sales.

By following some of these simple tips you will be able to at least confuse most hijackers and, in many cases, often disarm them completely.

You might notice I said most and not all. This is because if the hijacker is well versed at html and javascipt he will be able to eventually get to your affiliate link. However, most hijackers are just opportunists who will only act if they see an easy buck and its this segment that we can beat.

The simplest way to hide your affiliate links is using a javascript redirect page.

This is where you hide your affiliate link in a page on your site using a simple javascript that redirects people to your affiliate link.

This way your กnakedก affiliate link is not exposed in your actual email messages and ezine ads, but people get redirected to the true affiliate link.

One possible drawback of this method is that some affiliate programs, like clickbank for example, expose the affiliate link along with your ID in the browser address bar.

So if the viewer is eagleeyed he will notice that heกs been redirected through an affiliate link.

A safer method to hide your affiliate links is using a zeroframe or กinvisibleก frame that masks the affiliate link by making it appear you are sending people to a page on your website. In reality, you are actually sending them to your affiliate link.

This technique is also used by many domain redirection service sites.

Unfortunately if the user views the source of the page. He know whats that youกve loaded an affiliate link.

The solution is to use javascript encryption to scramble up the page code.

Even though there isn’t a 100% perfect solution to this problem, if you want to get paid more often through your affiliate links, make sure itกs not obvious you’re referring people to an affiliate link.

If they can’t see that its a affiliate link, lower the possibility of you getting stiffed of your commission.

If you are looking for a tool that lets you do all this plus earn affiliate commissions even from those folk who dont click your affiliate link then do check out Covert Affiliate at http://www.novasoftinc.net/covertaffiliate

About The Author

Satyajeet Hattangadi is the Owner of Novasoft Inc (http://www.novasoftinc.net), a software solutions provider, who specialize in affordable customized software solutions.

This article may be reprinted as long as the text and resource box are kept intact, and the links remain live and spiderable.

This article was posted on April 15

by Satyajeet Hattangadi

How To Boost Affiliate Profits Using Secret Domain

How To Boost Affiliate Profits Using Secret Domain Tricks

by: David Lovelace

Want to increase your affiliate link clickthrough rates and profits?

Then youกll need to learn how to master your domain.

One of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld was the กmaster of your domainก show where the gang bet each other as to who could hold out the longest without giving in to self gratification. Whoever กcaved inก would have to lay down the cash.

The question will the domain master you, or will you master the domain? There is a price to pay if it masterกs you.

In todayกs power tip, of course, Iกm talking about an Internet domain. One that describes your piece of Internet real estate. If your mother catches you mastering this domain, she may actually be proud of you! 😉

If you’re not using this technique, you may be paying the price of lost customers. So letกs get right to it.

Affiliate programs are the most popular choice of making money online. However, they’re so common that most people recognize an affiliate link and are less likely to click on one because of the selfish notion that they might be contributing to someone elseกs success. But thatกs another Oprah …

I want to show you how to conquer this issue while looking like a pro.

Take a look at the following examples. Each are affiliate URLกs. But 2 of 3 are กmaskedก; you don’t know that they’re affiliate addresses.

www.greatproduct.com/98765/aff?=dude

www.mysite.com/greatproduct.html

www.thegreatestproduct.com

In should not matter which link to click if you are compelled to click to find out more information. However, human nature says that we are guided by our emotions. Therefore, each link may portray a different image to you.

Hereกs how to make your affiliate link stand out in the crowd.

Typically #2 is the most widely used and is very easy to put into place using a redirect script on your own domain.

You simply create a new file on your domain server, name it (ie:กgreatproduct.htmlก), copy and paste the script code. Then enter the affiliate url address (where specified) that you want to forward to.

Now when someone clicks on the new subdomain you created (ie: www.mysite.com/greatproduct.html), their browser will redirect to the affiliate site but appears to the prospect that it is your site.

A simple redirect script can be obtained by sending any email to the following address mailto:[email protected]

Now hereกs a really cool technique as seen in example #3.

Get your own domain! Itกs the most professional strategy and will gain instant credibility and trust which can increase your rate of clickthroughs. More clickthroughs equals more traffic which means more eyes on your product or service, which means more cashflow in your pocket. Just be sure to sew up that pocket hole youกve been neglecting since 1977!

Ok, hereกs the cool part and you don’t even need your own website to pull this off.

Go to godaddy.com and search for the availability of your desired domain. Register the name, but be sure to choose the ‘redirectก and the กmaskก option. Cost? About $9 for one year. In about 48 hours, your domain will be live and kicking.

In example #3, if you chose www.thegreatestproduct.com and someone types that address in their browser, it not only redirects to the site you chose, but will show up in the prospects browser window instead of the siteกs real URL www.greatproduct.com/98765/aff?=dude

Did someone break out the pixie dust? Itกs marketing magic at itกs finest!

Use this powerful technique to add credibility and professionalism to subdomains and affiliate urls or any url where you want to increase your conversion rates.

Tip: Use your domain solely for tracking reponse rates to specific advertising campaigns such as pay per click, etc.

Follow these techniques and youกll soon be the master of your affiliate domain!

Copyright 2004 David Lovelace

About The Author

Dave Lovelace is publisher of 6 Figure Marketing Tips eLetter. Marketing tips that generate prospects and profits the smart way. Subscribe here: http://www.6figuremarketing.com/subscribe.html. Request your F.r.e.e 5 day Course ก5 Simple Steps To Online Profitsก when you subscribe. Dave is also owner and webmaster of www.6FigureMarketing.com and creator of www.AuctionPlatinum.com.

This article was posted on March 22, 2004

by David Lovelace

Someone Stole Your Commission

Someone Stole Your Commission

by: Bob Bishop

Someone Stole Your Affiliate Link!

If you use affiliate programs you may not be getting all the commissions you deserve!

Hijacking is what happens when someone replaces your affiliate id with theirs in the affiliate link. Let’s say your affiliate ID is cyberbooks and the product site is www.affiliatelife.com. Then your affiliate link would be www.affiliatelife.com/?cyberbooks.

Say the highjacker uses the affiliate ID of captainhook. What he would do is replace your ID with his, and buy from the URL www.affiliatelife.com/?captainhook.

Bypassing is what happens when someone sees an affiliate link and is either unfamiliar and uncomfortable with it, or just can’t stand the idea of your getting a commission (even though you’ve done the work to put the information in front of them).

So instead of buying from www.affiliatelife.com/?cyberbooks, the bypasser will simply ขchop offข the affiliate ID at the end and simply buy from the plain URL www.affiliate.com without your affiliate ID attached!

The bottom line: You don’t get your commission, and the hijacker puts your money in his pocket, in the form of a discount, by buying through his own affiliate link. Unfortunately, as long as people can see an affiliate code in the link that you offer them, a certain number of them are destined to hijack it – or bypass it.

If you’re using PayPal to sell digital products check your source code. In that code is the link to your thank you page which many people use as the download page for their digital product. All someone has to do is copy that link in your source code and voila’, they’re at your download page without having to pay for your product!

Your best bet to overcome this problem is to do some research and find some software that will cloak your affiliate links or hide your code.

This is something you should take care of before you start losing money!

About The Author

Bob Bishop is the publisher of the free ขTraffic Tip of the Dayข newsletter.

http://www.internettraffictips.com

Get a free copy of the Ultimate Link Tracker when you sign up for our newsletter!

This article was posted on November 14, 2002

by Bob Bishop

How To Boost Your Affiliate Sales With Free Articl

How To Boost Your Affiliate Sales With Free Articles

by: Michael Southon

Free Articles continue to be one of the most effective ways of quickly generating traffic and sales, without paying for advertising.

But how can you use free articles to promote an affiliate link? Putting your affiliate link in your Resource Box is not going to work, for a number of reasons:

people can easily remove your affiliate ID and just visit the main website of the affiliate program (you get no commission)

an affiliate link makes you look like just another beginner, instead of an expert with something unique to offer

So how do you use articles to promote affiliate products? Here are some strategies:

Turn your website into a กMarketing Resources Directoryก

On your website display book covers and provide brief reviews for a range of eBooks or software that deal with web marketing.

You could divide your directory into categories: Web Marketing (general), Affiliate Programs, Search Engine Positioning, Email Marketing, Copywriting, Ezine Publishing, etc.

In your Resource Box at the bottom of your article you could say: John Doe shows webmasters how to succeed in online business. Visit his collection of marketing resources at: http://www.yourdomain.com

Write a Free Report

Write a free report on web marketing and turn it into an exe format free eBook.

Your free report might have 5 or 6 chapters, each chapter dealing with a different aspect of web marketing (Affiliate Programs, Search Engine Positioning, Email Marketing, Copywriting, Ezine Publishing etc).

In each chapter you would include recommendations (and your affiliate link) for eBooks or software that deal with that topic.

Your Resource Box could say: John Doe shows webmasters how to succeed in online business. Download his free report, กWeb Marketing In 5 Easy Stepsก: http://www.yourdomain.com/free_report.html

Customize the affiliate links in Free eBooks

Most web marketers produce free or trial versions of their eBooks, and in many cases the order links in these free eBooks can be customized with your affiliate link.

You could build a directory of these free eBooks, each customized with your affiliate link.

The Resource Box at the bottom of your article might read: John Doe shows webmasters how to succeed in online business. Visit his collection of free eBooks today: http://www.yourdomain.com

Use your Resource Box to get new subscribers to your Newsletter and then promote your affiliate programs in your Newsletter.

This is the strategy most people use. But promoting your affiliate links in a weekly Newsletter is a subtle art the best way to learn is to join the Newsletters of marketers who specialize in this and study their techniques.

(c) 2002 by Michael Southon

About The Author

Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find out more: http://www.ezinewriter.com

This article was posted on September 18, 2002

by Michael Southon

Shooting A Flying Pigeon In A Dark Room

Shooting A Flying Pigeon In A Dark Room

by: Jane Fulton/Smart

Are you trying to shoot a flying pigeon in a dark room, when it comes to advertising? It would be a lot easier to do if you were using a bright spotlight.

Using a bright spotlight would mean:

Targeted Ads.

Who would you think would be more likely to buy your product..your target market or just anybody?

ExYou are selling a romance book. Who would you think would be more likely to buy your romantic book? If you ran an ad in a marketing newsletter, you might find 3 or 4 people that wanted your book, but why settle for peanuts when you can have the whole elephant? If you ran the ad in a womanกs newsletter, you would get a better response. Who would be more interested in a romance book than women? If you could find a newsletter that was targeted to women who read romance books, thatกs even better or a newsletter that did reviews on romance books.. You get the idea, Iกm sure.

Summary: Run your ad to a market that is interested in Your niche product.

Track Your Ads

You need some important answers that only tracking can give you:

1Is my ad a good ad?

Write 5 different ads for your product. Get your friends and family to read the 5 ads. Don’t tell them they are your ads. Tell them a friend asked your opinion about the ads. That way, you will get their honest opinion. Discuss the ads with them. Ask them what they think would make them buy the product, if they saw the ad in a classified section.

2Now that we are sure we have some good ads, we need to make sure that our ad is being read. Is the readers of a newsletter responsive?

To test this, I would run an ad in a newsletter 5 times. Why? Letกs all be honest. How many times have you had a deadline to meet, been working on a great product and haven’t had time to read a newsletter that you are subscribed to? Maybe you deleted it, maybe you saved it to read later but important things just kept coming up and you never got around to it? This happens sometime. Just like s__t happens. Thatกs why running an ad just once is not a fair test.

Summary: You need to run your ad more than once to get a true test.

3Which newsletter did the ad or click through come from?

To find this out, you need a different tracking url for each ad and keep track of which newsletter you put each unique url in. Most tracking scripts will do this for you. We have one at Three Dollar Ads that will do just that. You can see it here:

http://threedollarads.com/linkexpire/signup.php

Letกs say you place an ad in newsletter X and another one in newsletter Z. You use a different tracking url for each {even if itกs the same ad}. When you check your stats, you find that you had 2 click throughs from newsletter X, but you had 10 click throughs from newsletter Z. I bet you can guess which newsletter gave you the best results?

Summary: Use a unique tracking url for every ad you run to track itกs total performance.

4Will people buy from your affiliate link or will they change it to theirs {if they are an affiliate for that program EXClickbank} or bypass the affiliate link all together and just go through the company?

The best way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to cloak your affiliate link. The tracker we have setup at Three Dollar Ads will do both. It will track you ads, give you stats and cloak your affiliate link all at once:

http://threedollarads.com/linkexpire/signup.php

That way, you don’t have to worry about anyone stealing your affiliate commissions. That should take a load off your mind!

Summary:Cloak your affiliate links to keep from losing your commissions.

If you pay money to run ads, why not get your moneys worth? Find out for yourself what works and what doesn’t.

Stop trying to shoot a flying pigeon in a dark room! Turn on your bright spotlight. You just might be able to hit your mark!

About The Author

Jane Fulton is coowner of Three Dollar Ads with Jude Wright. They are working hard to find new ways to help you with your advertising needs. Check out the site today right here:

http://threedollarads.com

This article was posted on April 19

by Jane Fulton/Smart

Turn OneTime กHitsก Into Repeat Visitors

Turn OneTime กHitsก Into Repeat Visitors

by: Jim Edwards

Every website owner faces the same challenge: How to get more traffic to their website.

กBuild it and they will comeก worked for Kevin Costner in กField of Dreams,ก but that approach leads to bankruptcy and a failed business when it comes to your website.

Any savvy website owner knows that it takes a lot of work, time, and money to bring a visitor to your site for the first time.

Smart marketers also know that it rates a lot easier and cheaper to get people to come back for a return visit than to attract them for the first time.

The following tips will help any website owner convert more onetime กlookersก into repeat visitors and customers.

** Surveys **

Hold an interactive poll or survey on your web site.

Ask your website visitors questions about a topic of intense interest to them.

Not only do people enjoy giving their opinion, but theyกll also want to read the results as you compile them and update them on your website over the next day or week.

One way to get their email address is to tell them youกll email the final numbers once the results are compiled.

My favorite survey tool is www.oneminutepoll.com.

** Free Prizes **

If appropriate, hold an ongoing prize drawing on your web site.

The prizes you give should fit with the interests of your target audience and enable you to showcase what you offer for sale from your website.

For example, if you sell computer cables, give away something like Velcro cord ties with your web address on them and avoid things like teddy bears or bumper stickers.

** Original / Hardtofind Content **

People go online first and foremost to get specific, relevant, timely information in areas that interest them.

For some that means news articles, for others sports scores, and for others it means current prices for things like stocks or commodities.

Whatever content they want, give it to people in a way they can’t find anywhere else (or at least not very easily) and make it easy for them to see that your site rates a bookmark in their browser so they can return often.

** Brain Teasers **

People love a challenge, especially in an area that holds great professional or special interest for them.

If you can provide a quiz, trivia questions, puzzles or some other กbrain teaserก for people, many will take up the challenge.

You get them to return to your website by posting the answers and making that the only way they can see if they got it right.

** Breaking News **

People crave uptotheminute news on subjects about which they feel very strongly.

Some investors, for example, spend hours combing the Web for nuggets of information to help them evaluate specific markets, companies, or stocks.

One way to make your site invaluable to your audience members is to simply post a news bite, tip, or current กnuggetก of relevant information on your site daily.

(Gee, kind of sounds like a BLOG doesn’t it?)

If the information you give makes people jump up and holler กMORE! MORE!ก then you can quickly build up a regular following.

** Resource Directories **

Few things keep people coming back to a website more than a constantly updated directory they can tap for industry specific resources any time they need them.

This technique works especially well if itกs hard to locate good resources related to your topic because people place a higher value on hardtofind information.

About The Author

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the coauthor of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? ‘turn Words Into Trafficก reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links… without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

This article was posted on September 09, 2004

by Jim Edwards