Affiliate marketers; please offer me your advice, help & experience

[JustaWizard]

I’ve never done any affiliate marketing so if you’d please read my situation below and offer your “best practices”, I’d appreciate it:

Here’s my situation: soon I’ll be publishing an audio book that will be an information-rich product.

I wish to recommend several vendors including Aweber and 1shoppingcart and BlueHost and my desire is to do so in a way that the purchaser of the audio book will go through my affiliate links and so I get credit for their purchase.

I figure that the best thing to do is put up a unique URL that has all the affiliate links on it, and a PDF download as well, which I would then mention in my audio book.

So far so good, but a number of issues have come up in my mind, and since I’ve never done anything like this, I’d really appreciate your advice and help based on your actual experience:

I’m not sure how to best phrase my question, but here goes: how do I “protect” my affiliate link? In other words, if someone goes to the website, clicks though to Aweber, but decides to buy later and they either bookmark or just go back to Aweber later, I get no affiliate commission, correct?

So, what’s the best strategy you all recommend so that I can maximize the likelihood of getting the most affiliate commissions via my audio book?—should I do something similar to the above, something completely different – please help!

Thanks!
David Portney

[dmarzean]

The best way that I have found with ebooks, audio books and video is to have a link on your site redirect to the sales page.

So, you would have something like this, www.yoursite.com/aweber, that would then redirect to your affiliate link.

As for the problem of them purchasing later? It all depends on the cookie life. Some are good for 30 days some more some less. As long as it falls within that time frame and they do not click on another affiliate link you should be OK.

I always offer a transcript of my audio books with resources listed. Same for videos. This gives them something to print out or refer to later.

Hope this answered some of your questions,

Doug

[JustaWizard]

Hi Doug - so let me see if I'm clear - you recommend having a separate URL for each vendor, e.g., mysite.com/aweber, anothermysite.com/bluehost, yetanothermysite.com/1shopping cart?

And, that each of those sites have a clickable icon / link that "carries" my affiliate link along as they wind up on the vendor site?

THANKS!
David

[dmarzean]

No...

Just one domain. So mysite.com/aweber mysite.com/bluehost mysite.com/whatever

These redirects are easy to set up in cpanel. By doing this, you don't have a bunch of affiliate links throughout your product. These are all links on your site that redirect to the sales page with your affiliate link.

Don't use a icon use a text link....

Doug

[JustaWizard]

Ah. Thanks again, and I hope you don't mind another question:

So you're saying:

1. I'd set up specific separate pages for each vendor on a single site as you noted, mysite.com/aweber, mysite.com/whatever - and that after the forward slash is NOT my affiliate ID, just the name of a page that will be for each vendor.

2. Each of page those pages will be a page that they will actually land upon, and then click though to the vendor site via my text link.

3. My confusion: if they land on a separate vendor page, mysite.com/aweber for example and then click through to the vendor site carrying my affiliate code/cookie, why do I need to set up a redirect in Cpanel (I use bluehost, by the way...)

THANKS! :-)
David

[dmarzean]

they will not land on a page on your site. They will go directly to the sales page via a 301 (permanent) redirect.

The purpose of the redirect is to hide that it is an affiliate link, and to make it easier for your customer to remember where to go.

So, instead of something like

www.aweber.com/index.php?aff=1234

you have

www.yoursite.com/aweber

They both are going to land on

Email Marketing Software, Email Newsletters and Autoresponders by AWeber

Doug

[Dan C. Rinnert]

If you don't have cpanel, you can also do it with a PHP redirect.

Then, you'd have a separate page for each vendor, such as:

www .sitename .dom/aweber.php
www .sitename .dom/1shoppingcart.php

Or, you could do a resources folder:

www .sitename .dom/resources/aweber.php
www .sitename .dom/resources/1shoppingcart.php

And so on.

Then, each PHP file is just a simple redirect:

<?
header("Location: http://your.affiliate.link.here");
?>

[JustaWizard]

Doug, thanks for your patience, I'm almost there:

So in my audio book, when promoting each vendor, I'll say:

"Go to mysite.com/aweber"
"Go to mysite.com/bluehost"

But how will the affiliate tracking code "carry forward"?

THANKS!
David

And I'll set up the redirect in bluehost which takes them to the vendor

[JustaWizard]

Hi Dan, thanks! I do have cpanel via bluehost... David

[dmarzean]

1. Login to your cpanel
2. Go to the domains section and select redirects
3. You will have some options do this:

type: (permanent) 301
http://(www.)?: select the domain / enter the redirect page so "aweber"
(note: this does not need to exist on your site)
redirects to: enter your affiliate link
select: redirects with or without www
click add

then test it to see if you land on the sales page of aweber

Doug

[JustaWizard]

Aha! Eureka!

Final question (I think! :-) - So then verbally on my audio book, I'll say "go to mysite.com/aweber (or anything I want after the backslash, right? like mysite.com/bestemail so it's a no-brainer for the listener?) and THAT URL will redirect immediately to Aweber carrying my affliate link as you noted?

Gosh, Doug, thanks for your patience! I'm pretty tech savvy, but new to this aspect so your kindness and hand-holding is really appreciate, I hope I haven't "overstayed my welcome"! :-)

David

[dmarzean]

Yes sir, it is that simple.

I am glad I could help. If you need anything else don't hesitate to ask or IM me...

Doug

[JustaWizard]

Wow, that's really cool and will save me a ton of time setting up different URL's and/or pages - I can set it up MUCH more easily than I had anticipated.

Hey, as I was typing, I just had this thought/question:

In your opinion, since you've obviously promoted vendors in the way I intend to do so, do you feel that I'd actually get *better results* by setting up redirects as you noted, but via separate stand-alone URL's instead of different iterations of mysite.com/something?

In other words, as I'm going along talking in the audio, do you think I'd "lose people" by saying "...go to mysite dot com forward slash easyemail..." rather than "...go to easyemail.com" ??

Just curious about if you think you lose commissions (or I would) if people don't know the difference between a forward or back slash and just give up...

Thanks again!
David

David

[Mike Adams]

If you are worried about people bookmarking the affiliate page, get: Affiliate Profit Guard - keep your affiliate profits safe it is a program that cloaks your affiliate link and creates a static .html page that you upload to our site. The way it works is you copy/ paste yout affiliate link, custom title, description and keywords, and it gives you code. You paste that code into your blank html editor. Its advantage is it can be bookmarked, the title description is fully customizable and the page can be indexed by the search engines.
It will look like mysite.com/whatever.htm or what some do , like me, is create a folder called "whatever" and upload it. Inside it put your cloaked affiliate page and call it index.htm. Now your affiliate link looks like mysite.com/whatever/ much cleaner without the .html extention.

[JustaWizard]

Hey black book project - I THINK I get all of that, but I'm not 100% sure about what you mean "copy the code to a blank html editor" -do you mean the link box such as in DreamWeaver? Is there no redirecting necessary as Doug was talking about? Are you saying that the page can stand alone as if it were an index.htm page eventhough technically it's actually a mysite.com/pagename page??

Thanks!
David

[affiliatemom]

Hi Warriors,

With all of the affiliate training resources out there, which would you say could show David, ie. with videos, the whole "affiliate link" process from a product creator's standpoint?

[dmarzean]

David,

The software that Black Book is referring to opens the affiliate site inside a frame on your page instead of redirecting. So the actual url is yoursite.com/aweber but you will see the affiliate page within a frame on that page.

There are several ways to do what you are trying to accomplish. Besides what I have offered you have been shown a software that will do this for you using frames. And you have been given a php code that will redirect to the affiliate page.

All in all, you are accomplishing the same goal. It is up to you as to which you choose.

What I offered was what I thought would be the most straight forward and easiest to maintain. With the cpanel option you can go in and change the redirect link anytime you like pretty quickly and easily.

Hope you are not to confused by all of the info that has been presented.

Doug

[JustaWizard]

Hey Doug,

I'm not TOO confused ;-) and I do appreciate your follow up. I'm all for simple/easy/straightforward, frankly... why take more steps than necessary?

I did go into bluehost and on the main page there's a "redirects" option that looks pretty simple, fill in the blanks just like you outlined.

BTW - my post above that started with "wow, that's really cool" was intended as a response to you - should have mentioned your name... anyway, if you have a chance to look at the question there and give me your input, I'd sure appreciate it!

Best,
David

[dmarzean]

David,

I personally would just have the one domain. For one, it will cost you 10 bucks or so per domain.

Just make sure you have some kind of transcript of your audio that they can refer to and add a resources page to the pdf with all of the links.

Mention that they can find the links to all of the resources that you mention easily located in the resource section of the pdf.

You want to keeps things as simple as possible. For both you and the end user.

[Mike Adams]

Right, no redirect. You paste the code Affiliate Profit Guard gives you into say dreamwever and save it just like any other .html page. You can make your affiliate link look like: Unblockable Exit Popup. Visit that link and you will see that it appears to be hosted on your site and can be book marked.