How to Setup an Affiliate Link That Looks Normal
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Have you ever hovered over a banner ad or link only to shy away from clicking on it because the link looked like code written by some pimply faced hacker?
Chances are the link was a tracking link used to record where you were when you clicked. This is how affiliate programs are tracked so the right people get credit for sending traffic and paid.
Here are two examples of typical affiliate links:
https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?ii=68188&c=ib&aff=18667&ev=af7a1c01e8
or like this if they’re trying their best to not scare you out of clicking :
They’ll work if and when people click on them. Here’s how you can setup affiliate links that are much cleaner looking and should help your overall results:
We love the ‘Revolution theme‘ our site is built on and they offer an affiliate program to help them find new customers. So the example below shows how we created a cleaner link. We also built in room to handle new links in the future as we find products worthy of our recommending them too.
With those two goals in mind we setup our redirect link for the Revolution Theme like this:
http://www.wahmbreakcafe.com/shop/revolution
To this we went into our hosting file manager and created a new FOLDER we named ’shop’ in our base hosting FOLDER (which is almost always ‘public_html’). We opened that new FOLDER and added another FOLDER and named it ‘revolution’. These folder names are what makeup the visible URL.
Next we created a FILE (selected html as type of file) and created a single blank page in that folder and name it ‘index.htm’. Then we opened the index.htm FILE and made sure it was empty. Then we cut and pasted the following code into that page:
<html> <head><meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;url=Your Unique Affiliate URL“> </head> <body> </body> </html>
Then we replaced the bold Your Unique Affiliate URL with the affiliate link we were given to work with. It’s always sandwiched between quotes “aff-link”
Once we finished that we entered: http://www.wahmbreakcafe.com/shop/revolutiontheme into the browser just to be sure we didn’t make a mistake. It works!
Yes, it takes about 10-15 minutes, but once it’s setup you can reuse it everywhere you want to market that program, product, or service using the easy-to-remember URL you created from scratch.
Alternative method many people prefer: If you would like your redirect link to look like this: http://www.wahmbreakcafe.com/revolution.htm
Create a FILE (single blank page) in your public_html FOLDER and
paste the following code in that page: (add your affiliate URL)
<html> <head><meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;url=Your Unique Affiliate URL“> </head> <body> </body> </html>
Earn 49 cents a day!!!
February 14, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
If that title got you this far I hope it’s curiosity at work and not excitement over earning 49 cents a day!
But, in the event you are looking for ways to earn a little extra like so many of us with websites here’s a little information about an advertising network that I really like:
They call themselves Project Wonderful 
and their system really is pretty wonderful. It’s the easiest ad network provider that I’ve ever used as a publisher (website owner) and it’s also the easiest from the advertisers perspective. It only takes a few minutes to get setup (adding their ad code to your site) and within minutes prospective advertisers will begin submitting their READY-TO-RUN banner ads to you for approval. If you’re ok with the ad you click a link and the ad will begin running almost immediately.
What’s really cool is the advertisers bid for placement on your site so as more advertisers line up the more they’ll bid. This competition is what I like the most about their business model. Of course it isn’t a get rich quick scheme, especially for those of us who have small websites, but as the sites grow in traffic and the ad network grows in popularity and numbers of registered advertisers, the bids will increase without the need to create a media kit, change pricing, or do anything other than tend to the site and approve ads.
It’s been a few days since I got started and the ads are generating 49 cents a day right now and rising all the time. It’s not much, but I really do believe in this and I’m already bringing in more then the Google ads were fetching for me.
You can find ad spots here on WAHM Blog and on these sites:
moms dot com and moms dot com directory
dads dot com and dads dot com directory
Check it out for yourself!
Using Thumbnails on Your Website
December 1, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
No, we’re not talking about scratching your website’s eyes out with your thumbnail… We’re talking about the small pictures of websites that you see on some sites like the Momz.com directory for example. Momz.com presents a thumbnail of every one of the 1,500 or so websites listed in the directory. This helps the visitor determine which sites are worth visiting with a quick glance.
These “thumbnails” help filter out foreign sites, offensive sites, and generally offer us a better surfing experience.
We use Thumbshots, a free tool to pull the thumbnail images from their database and present them when needed. All they ask for in return for this highly useful service is a link back to their site on your website.
To show you how easy it is I’ll explain what I did to add the thumbnails to this post:
- Register at Thumbshots
- Once registered they share the small piece of code needed to add the thumbs to any post or web page you want.
- Using Wordpress you just place your cursor where you want to insert the thumbnail and press the picture icon just as you would to insert any photograph.
- This time you’ll enter the code from Thumbshots and after the “=” equal sign simply type in the URL of the website and like magic their tool pulls the thumb of the website and places it where you wanted it.
- To move the thumbnail over to the left and have the text wrap around it using Wordpress you click on the
image, click on the LEFT justify icon or button and the picture is moved to left and text wraps around automatically.
Give it a try on your website. Post any questions in the comments area and we’ll try to help.
Landing Page Design and Conversion
August 1, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
During some routine surfing of some Webmaster resource sites I came across a useful article by a search engine expert and thought I’d share it with you since so many of you sell products. The article, ‘11 Ways to Improve Landing Pages‘ on Social Patterns was written some time ago, but the recommendations continue to be solid and worth a quick read if you want to increase your conversion rates and success in selling online.
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Google Checkout for WAHM Shop Owners
This news is old news for some of you, but I’ve seen so many online stores not participating that I thought I’d send out this reminder… Google is a major online force and whenever they announce a new product, service or tool intelligent netpreneurs pay close attention, as does Wall Street to see which poor companies are at risk of going extinct.
Awhile back Google announced the launch of their Google Checkout and WAHM shop owners should be taking advantage of this additional payment method that more and more online buyers are utilizing.
SEO 101
July 8, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
For those of you with Websites, but not a lot of experience as Webmasters you may have heard the terms SEO, search marketing, search engine marketing and SERPs, but never really understood what the heck they meant. I’ll attempt to answer some of those questions in this series, SEO 101:
What is Search Engine Marketing?
- Search engine marketing is the methodology we use to get our Websites more visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
- There are variety of methods that can be used to achieve better visibility in search engines, which include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), paid-inclusion and link building techniques.
- The ultimate goal of your search engine marketing campaigns should be to increase traffic from search engines listings. I’ve read that the value of first page results on Google searches can be valued into the multiple thousands of dollars. The more traffic you can drive to your site through search engines the less you’ll have to rely on paid advertising.
- In order to succeed at this, search engine marketing campaigns are usually focused on a users search query as a starting point. For example, if a potential customer enters “newborn baby clothes”, and you sell baby clothing from an online shop, you’ll want that prospect to find your site, or a subpage within your site, ahead of other online shops selling baby clothes. “newborn baby clothes” is an example of a keyword term.
- Keyword terms make search marketing a powerful advertising vehicle. It’s the most targeted form of marketing available bar none. What better time to be in front of a potential buyer then when they’re online searching for an online shop that sells “newborn baby clothes”?
- Once this mom arrives in your shop you have to try and turn her into a customer, if not now, in the future and hopefully for years to come. That’s another lesson….
- Determining which keyword terms your target audience are using for their searches is a key concept in search marketing.
I’ve added some links below to help you determine which search terms might generate enough volume to warrant your efforts in building a search engine marketing campaign:
I use Overture’s Keyword Tool to help spot keywords and search terms that generate loads of traffic. Overture is owned by Yahoo! so while it’s not Google it’ll give you a good idea of where to go looking for gold.
Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
July 2, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
For an excellent introduction to SEO I recommend a visit to a thread written by John Scott over at the v7n forums. Click here for the SEO Primer.
