Build Professional Looking Affiliate Links For Your E-zine
| Category: E-zines | Date: 2003-05-07 |
If you're a member of an affiliate program promoting other people's products and services, you'll be familiar with the practice of posting a URL link back to their site, which carries details linking the visitor using to you.
Typically, these URLs tend to be rather long and complicated, appearing ugly on the page. Research
demonstrates that clickthrough rates are smaller when these URLs are presented when compared to those for
short, "clean" URLs.
One of the reasons for this is a practical one - the code sometimes gets broken up when it appears in a 65
character text newsletter and e-zine, but the other is that it produces skepticism - visitors are
sophisticated enough to recognize an affiliate URL and will opt for a "clean" link rather than for one where they sense they are being encouraged to buy something by someone who stands to profit.
If you promote an affiliate product or service on your website, you can usually get around this by "hiding" the URL in your HTML code. For example;
href="http://www.nodomainzone.com/welcome.asp?R=7895898
>Click Here in your code will appear simply as
"Click Here" on your web page.
However, if you're publishing a text-based e- zine, this isn't an option. You're going to have to do something else.
If you want to produce neat-looking affiliate links in your e-zine, you can use the option favored by super-
affiliates like Allan Gardyne of AssociatePrograms.com and Corey Rudl of The Internet Marketing Center. You'll see top affiliates like these using a file from their own domains to link to an affiliate site. Take a
look at this example where use my own domain name to send visitors to Corey's Rudl's "Secrets To Their
Success" website which does in-depth interviews with successful webmasters;
http://www.dailyinternetmarketingtips/secrets.html
What I've done is built a new page "/secrets.html" and placed a piece of code which includes the affiliate
link on it. This code seamlessly re-directs the visitor who clicks on my link to Corey's site.
Here's the code you need to use if you want use this method (to be placed between your tags):
HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="2; URL=http://the URL of the affiliate page you're re-directing to">
2 = the length of time taken to re-direct. You can alter this figure if you want to increase or decrease this time, but I've found "2" offers a seamless transition.
N.B You should NOT use this code on pages which you intend to submit to search engines, whose robots hate
re-directs and will simply ignore your page, leaving it out of their index. Instead, build a page exclusively for the purpose of linking to your affiliate site.
Copyright Erika Lawal 2003
About the author.
Erika Lawal writes Daily Internet Marketing Tips for webmasters in search of cutting edge site optimization
and marketing advice that produces results.
Get a FREE series of our Tips by visiting;
dailyinternetmarketingtips.net
affiliatelinks@demandmail.com
http://www.dailyinternetmarketingtips.net
Typically, these URLs tend to be rather long and complicated, appearing ugly on the page. Research
demonstrates that clickthrough rates are smaller when these URLs are presented when compared to those for
short, "clean" URLs.
One of the reasons for this is a practical one - the code sometimes gets broken up when it appears in a 65
character text newsletter and e-zine, but the other is that it produces skepticism - visitors are
sophisticated enough to recognize an affiliate URL and will opt for a "clean" link rather than for one where they sense they are being encouraged to buy something by someone who stands to profit.
If you promote an affiliate product or service on your website, you can usually get around this by "hiding" the URL in your HTML code. For example;
>Click Here in your code will appear simply as
"Click Here" on your web page.
However, if you're publishing a text-based e- zine, this isn't an option. You're going to have to do something else.
If you want to produce neat-looking affiliate links in your e-zine, you can use the option favored by super-
affiliates like Allan Gardyne of AssociatePrograms.com and Corey Rudl of The Internet Marketing Center. You'll see top affiliates like these using a file from their own domains to link to an affiliate site. Take a
look at this example where use my own domain name to send visitors to Corey's Rudl's "Secrets To Their
Success" website which does in-depth interviews with successful webmasters;
http://www.dailyinternetmarketingtips/secrets.html
What I've done is built a new page "/secrets.html" and placed a piece of code which includes the affiliate
link on it. This code seamlessly re-directs the visitor who clicks on my link to Corey's site.
Here's the code you need to use if you want use this method (to be placed between your tags):
HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="2; URL=http://the URL of the affiliate page you're re-directing to">
2 = the length of time taken to re-direct. You can alter this figure if you want to increase or decrease this time, but I've found "2" offers a seamless transition.
N.B You should NOT use this code on pages which you intend to submit to search engines, whose robots hate
re-directs and will simply ignore your page, leaving it out of their index. Instead, build a page exclusively for the purpose of linking to your affiliate site.
Copyright Erika Lawal 2003
About the author.
Erika Lawal writes Daily Internet Marketing Tips for webmasters in search of cutting edge site optimization
and marketing advice that produces results.
Get a FREE series of our Tips by visiting;
dailyinternetmarketingtips.net
affiliatelinks@demandmail.com
http://www.dailyinternetmarketingtips.net
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