My tip for today is something amazingly simple, yet overlooked by the average online affiliate marketer. I know many of you reading this are making money, or trying to make money, by promoting some product or another for a company by using their affiliate link address, which is usually quite long and unappealing. I've seen some REALLY long and cumbersome URL names out there being promoted!
To address this issue of long addresses (I couldn't resist the pun!) there are MANY places that have sprung up all over the net offering to "cloak" your URL or make it shorter. Horror stories of Clickbank commissions being stolen by other affiliates have created cloaking as the method of choice for many affiliates to protect their sales potential.
I, however, would suggest you consider a MUCH better alternative. For less then 20 bucks you can have your very own domain name that can be forwarded and masked (cloaked) to your affiliate website address. This address becomes YOURS and, being unique, is much more search engine friendly than competing with many similar affiliate URL's. Plus, when you own a domain name you get your own professional looking email address with it as well.
Yes, you could use a popular free service like Tinyurl to cloak your long link name, but I urge you to see the reality of that. There are tinyurl links all over the net now, to the point where you are competing with others with similar tinyurl names just as much as you would with the original affiliate url. A tinyurl or similar service url will never be found on its own unless you pay to list it through your keywords on a service like Adwords on Google.
I want to mention a tip here too, since there is much debate over the "proper" way to do URL forwarding or redirection so as not to be penalized by Google. The fact is that it's really a case by case basis, depending on your situation. You should "mask" your forwarded domain if you really don't want surfers to know the destination, as your own domain will stay in the address bar that way. However, keep in mind that your masked keywords used will be ignored by Google and, recently, Google (yet again) changed its algorithm so that it will even remove your domain from the search listings if it appears to be a phishing attempt, so be careful!
If you don't want to cloak or hide your affiliate link, but you just want an easier to remember name then use forwarding without masking the URL, but make sure to pick the "301" permanent redirect option or the search engines will ignore you again, or all sorts of other problems can arise down the road. This works great if you're on a free host as well, since you can just forward your professional sounding domain name to their subdomain or sub-directory URL they give you when you sign up.
The flexibility of having your own domain name and its benefits are enormous. It makes you stand out from the crowd, showing you are unique, which will increase your SALES dramatically. URL forwarding is very easy to set up through your domain registrar, so don't be scared off by thinking it's a difficult task. Look at it this way...which domain name do YOU think a potential buyer to your product would be more likely to click on, your own address at http://www.youruniquesiteaddress.com/ (for example) or an affiliate id at some place that sounds like www.affiliatetrackersalessite.com/id-3576901/saleshop??
My own address here at http://www.adegreeofsuccess.com/ is just forwarded to Blogspot.com, as A Degree Of Success is simply easier to remember and more to the point than http://adegreeofsuccess.blogspot.com/ , don't you agree? Getting your own domain name is a VERY worthwhile low cost investment, which you'll get back quickly with increased sales!
Click the link to increase your sales and make more money today by getting your own domain name now! You'll be glad you did!
No comments:
Post a Comment