You know you want to invent more affiliate sales on your site. You know what products you’ll be promoting. You’re ready to place the hyperlinks. But wait! Before you place an affiliate link on your site, consider a few things first.
Problems with Typical Affiliate Links
The typical affiliate link comes with its share of problems in most cases, so let’s take a look at what some of those problems might be.
- An affiliate link is often expanded and ugly, which makes it difficult to share on social networks.
- Some society routinely avoid clicking on an affiliate link when they see one.
- Some public replace your affiliate id with their own.
- It can be difficult to track the conversion rate of the link, with no tracking mechanism in place.
- It can be difficult to determine whether your affiliate company or network is honestly reporting the number of referrals you send, with no tracking mechanism in place.
- Some affiliate urls may cause you to be fingerprinted as a thin affiliate by search engines, even whether you aren’t.
- Affiliate offers very often are temporary and need to be updated or replaced with new offers. It can be difficult to update those hyperlinks across many pages of your site(s).
Blueprint: How To Avoid Ugly Affiliate Links
There are numerous ways to solve some or all of the problems listed above, but the most common method is to do a simple URL redirect. Some folks use URL shorteners (such as tinyurl or bit.ly), but those urls can sometimes build public wary of clicking, since they have an in-built distrust of commonly known shortened hyperlinks. I often use my own custom URL shortener script that I placed on my own domain, which resolves that problem to some extent. Most society use some profile of jump script that first sends the go to a script on your own site (often in a folder called “go” or “jump” or “recommends”), and thereupon sends them on to the final destination. So, a typical jump script link would look something like that: “http://www.yoursite.com/go/coolproduct” .
There are lots of ways to handle redirects, including via .htaccess or php cipher, but while the concept isn’t all that difficult (especially for anyone who is code-comfortable), it can be very tedious, and may only solve some but not all of the problems listed above. Let’s face it; whether you have a blog with 1000 posts and you want to go back and convert every “cool product” phrase with a jumpscripted affiliate link to that cool product, the task will take a while. Multiply that task by the number of products you’re promoting, and that tedious task suddenly feels impossible to do. And soon after what happens when you need to change every link that promotes a product that no longer exists?
Of course, that is where the right tool comes in handy. There are tools, scripts, and plugins to handle that kind of thing auto-magically. Some do just that one thing and do it well. Others include that feature as part of a larger set of features. Which tool someone uses is dependent upon the individual need, but I like to recommend tools that will likely be the most useful to the most citizens in the most situations. I may even recommend one tool one day and another tool on another day, considering both are good for different situations.
Using .htaccess to Redirect Affiliate Links
Pros:
- Free
Cons:
- Scary for non-techy folks.
- Can be dangerous – whether done incorrectly, a messed-up htaccess file can construct your site inaccessible or not work the way it used to.
- Not all hosting accounts allow editing of htaccess files.
- Doesn’t give you stats to track clicks.
If you want to use .htaccess to handle that, here’s how:
First, back up your current .htaccess file!
Next, edit the file and add the following lines:
# start affiliate redirects
Redirect 302 /shortname1 http://affiliate-link-example1.com/?id=12345
Redirect 302 /shortname2 http://affiliate-link-example2.com/?id=34567
# End of affiliate redirects
Now replace /shortname with whatever short name you want to give each affiliate link, and replace http://example.com/?id=12345 with the actual affiliate link you want to send your visitors to when they go the link. Add as many of these as you need to handle all your hyperlinks.
How To Turn Affiliate urls into Ninja hyperlinks (WordPress Plugin only)
If you use WordPress, and you’d rather use a tool that isn’t scary, that handles ALL of the problems associated with affiliate urls, thereupon I’d recommend using an excellent tool called Ninja Affiliate. Why?
Pros:
- See all the Pros listed below.
Cons:
- Not free
- For self-hosted WordPress blogs only (although you can use the shortened urls anywhere, such as Twitter, emails, newsletter, forums, etc)
Reasons Why Ninja Affiliate Will Solve All Your Affiliate Link Issues
- Short Memorable Links – You can easily give each affiliate link a short url with a memorable name.
- You and your users can more easily share the urls via e mail or Twitter.
- Users won’t automatically disregard the hyperlinks.
- Users won’t steal your commissions by switching their affiliate ID for yours.
- Flexible Link Formats – Different affiliate companies and networks use different link formats, which can be a real pain to handle in some other products (sometimes impossible). But Ninja Affiliate can handle them all.
- Organize urls Into Groups – I love that. Organize all your affiliate hyperlinks into whatever groups you want, so you can more easily manage them.
- Easily choose urls From WP Post Editor – When writing a new blog post in WordPress, add an affiliate link on the fly by selecting from a drop-down list right there within the WP editor.
- Automatically convert Keywords to Links – This is special. Choose words or phrases all through your blog to be automatically linked to an affiliate product. Even better: You can limit it to autolink just a few phrases on each page, so you don’t turn your blog into a spamfest.
- Option To “No-Follow” The Links – I always try to remember to add nofollow to affilate urls (though sometimes I forget), so that Google has nothing to complain about. that plugin can automatically add nofollow so you won’t forget.
What To Look For In An Affiliate Link Management Tool
- Ability to shorten and redirect distant, ugly affiliate hyperlinks and create short, memorable, easily-sharable urls like http://www.yoursite.com/coolproduct.
- Group and manage all your affiliate urls in one central place.
- Easily change an old affiliate offer to a new, updated offer, or replace one affilate product for another, by simply changing one thing, but affecting all the urls you’ve placed everywhere.
- Be able to track go stats so you can determine which offers work best, and from where (blogs, forums, Twitter, etc.).
- Be able to track impressions and clicks so you can form certain your affiliate networks are being honest with you.
- Prevent users from blindly and routinely avoiding clicking on affiliate hyperlinks.
- Stop users from stealing your commissions by not giving them the opportunity to swap their affiliate ID for yours.
- Automatically convert keywords all through your blog (yes, even all your old blog posts) into affiliate urls – AND limit how many get converted so you don’t turn your blog into a spammy mess.
- Avoid giving search engines the wrong impression that you are a thin affiliate, when you aren’t!
- Free upgrades
What To Do whether You Aren’t Using A WordPress Blog
I don’t know of any one product that is as comprehensive as Ninja Affiliate for non-WP sites. I can propose some less than perfect solutions, however.
- Use a 3rd-party URL Shortener such as bit.ly. As I mentioned earlier, 3rd-party shorteners aren’t always trusted by users. In addition, a 3rd-party shortener could go out of business one day, leaving you with a bazillion affiliate urls that no longer work. (It’s happened several times in the recent past, in fact, and I was bitten by that problem once. I’ll never let that happen again).
- Roll your own URL Shortener with a script such as Shorty (free). Shorty is a decent script, but it’s lost a lot of features, so it’s only going to solve some of the issues you’ll face with affiliate hyperlinks.
- Code your own comprehensive system, or hire someone to cipher it for you. In other words, spend the date and money to clone Ninja Affiliate for non-WordPress blogs.
Related Posts:
Monetizing A Site via Affiliate Sales – An Introduction | DazzlinDonna
Disclosure: Affiliate urls may be used within that post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.
© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. |
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Original post by Donna
