It is always better to have a web site if you are promoting an affiliate product or if you are in to selling anything online.
But if you are promoting hundreds of products it will be very difficult to create complete web sites for each and every product. With the great offers you find in affiliate networks these days sometimes you got to do it somehow.
Now day’s people are more rational than they used to be, when it comes to purchase something online they take many things in to consideration. If your readers get the idea that you are trying to make money out of them most probably it will turn them off. That’s why we also have to play smart.
Affiliate links look really bad compared to normal .com addresses. I will show you a cool way I am hiding my affiliate links in my “product review web sites”. This is no way a ground breaking finding, but even the people who know this system underestimate the power of it.
First think of a domain name relating the product you are going to promote. Let’s say you are promoting a click bank product in the “Health & Fitness” category. To be precise let’s say you decided to promote “Fat loss 4 idiots” e book. Purchase a domain name relating to that product. To continue our example, we will take the domain name “lossfat2day.com”. By the way, if you are planning to make serious money, this is one of the best category you should look in to.
When purchasing a domain always try to buy a “.com” name. info domains might be cheap but it looks cheap too. Now what we are going to do is hiding our affiliate link with the domain name we just bought. In other words,
“http://theking.4idiots.hop.clickbank.net/” to simple “lossfat2day.com”.
Even when your reader is in the affiliate web site the address bar will show your domain name instead of the actual web address. How cool is that? With the magic of domain forwarding and domain masking we can very easily do this.
I will show you how to do this in godaddy since most people buy their domain names from them and host else where. And I bet the procedure is similar with other domain providers too. Once you buy the domain name go to the domain control center. From there, go to the domain forwarding section.
1. Enable the domain forwarding button.
2. Put your affiliate link in the “Forward to” field.
3. Make sure to select the “302 Moved Temporarily” option.
Domain forwarding part is over now. Let’s mask it to get the best conversions. By doing this, your domain name will stay on the address bar instead of the real web address while still allowing customers to access the content.
This is also a very simple task. In the same domain control panel select the “masking” tab which can be found right next to the “forwarding” tab.
1. Enable the masking button.
2. In the “masked title” field type the domain name you just bought.
3. Click the “ok” button.
All done. Now wait 30 minutes for the process to be completed and visit the domain name you own. It will be nicely redirected to the affiliate web site leaving your web site name on the address bar. Sweet..
By doing this, it appears that you aren’t an affiliate and makes people more likely to buy from the link you just suggested. Of course the more sophisticated users will know the trick instantly. But you can forget the 10% of them and make money out of the rest 90%.
Is this ethical? I would say yes. If they are buying something from the link you suggested, you are entitled a commission for your time and effort. But do not promote crappy products as you will lose all your credibility. Besides, you will end up with nothing when customers get their refunds done.
What’s next? you have a nicely set up affiliate link geared up to serve for you. Now create a free mini blog or create a squidoo page with a good review. Do not use your main blog or your main web site since you are only required to create one page with few paragraphs. At the end of the review insert your masked domain name as the link. When users come near the link it will not show an ugly affiliate link in the status bar. You just tripled your chances of making a sale.
Now, send a traffic bomb to the review page you just developed. This is the most important thing when it comes to selling stuff online.
No traffic= No sales= No money
In my case, I use PPC as it has been a winner for me in the past 4 years. I use Adwords. But if you are bit tight on your budget, use second tier ad networks to buy some cheap traffic. Do not use “Adbrite”. They suck big time and will charge your credit card fraudulently. I had to cancel my credit card yesterday because of “Adbrite’s” strange behavior. So when choosing a ad network be careful. You will have to pay a premium price for Adwords but they are simply the best.
Do not forget to read,
Spy your competitors to become successful.
