fbpx

FletcherBlog.com

Pro Affiliate Marketing Since 2012

General Affiliate Marketing Tips

Success Mindset: Why Others Have Success With Affiliate Marketing But You Don’t

by Leave a Comment

I recently listened to a podcast by Doberman Dans “Off The Chain” Podcast.

If you’re even remotely interested in getting ahead in business and in life, I highly recommend you give it a listen, because it’s great.

In one particular episode of his podcast, he talks about how he found success in the “Resistance”, the things he usually shyed away from, or things that he found difficult.

The things he just flat out didn’t want to do.

For some people it might be they find resistance in making Youtube Video’s because they don’t want to be on camera (I’m one of these people btw).

For others it might be blogging, because they find difficulty in writing or coming up with ideas for Blog posts.

For some it might be Networking with others via Social media because they might consider themselves to be introverted.

Whatever it may be, EVERYONE who isn’t finding the success they feel they should be having, is 99% of the time, shying away from the ONE thing that might lead them there.

This train of thought coincided with another Podcast I listened by Dan Henry.

Dan was saying how he lost over 20 pounds in 5 months by not doing things the EASY way like everybody does, but by doing things the HARD way.

For him it was calorie counting.

That was his “Resistance”.

He told himself it would be “too hard to calorie count” and that he would never see it through.

This brings me to that famous quote by Henry Ford:

Success is the sum of our mindset.

What Dan found, was that no matter what diet he followed, none of them worked because they were all nothing more than a “simulation of the hard way”.

This is a fantastic Video Dan put together explaining what he found and how that translates to life and business:

In other words, most diet programs and this is also true of most Affiliate marketing Programs, are a simulation of what works.

So what actually works?

What actually works, is in almost all cases, the things everybody else aren’t willing to do.

These things are usually buried in the “resistance”, the hard things.

Nobody wants to roll their sleeves up and do the heavy lifting.

Which is good news for you…

Because if you do the things everybody else aren’t willing to do, AKA the tough stuff, that’s going to put you light years ahead of your competition right off the bat.

In fact, what I’ve found, is the HARD way, actually isn’t really that hard.

I just made myself think it was.

Again, it’s mindset.

I love this quote from the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger aswell:

Most People’s mindset get in the way of them ever seeing affiliate marketing success.

It’s why some people see results quicker than others.

Take a few minutes and have a think about what are certain areas in your affiliate marketing business, that you’re finding resistance in?

Make it your goal to tackle it head on TODAY.

In most cases, doing things the hard way, is often the FASTEST way to reaching your goals!

If you enjoyed this blog post, you’ll love my Affiliate Marketing Case Study click here.

Share and Enjoy !

What Is A Good Affiliate Marketing Course For Beginners?

by Leave a Comment

If you’re a beginner, don’t start (or buy) an affiliate marketing course until you’ve read this…

If you’re looking for an affiliate marketing course, chances are you’re a beginner and you’re looking for an affiliate marketing course suitable for beginners.

Well the good news is, there’s a lot of them to choose from.

The bad news is most affiliate marketing courses are useless for beginners and it’s extremely difficult to identify a good one.

how to choose the best affiliate marketing course if you are a beginner

I’ve been through this merry-go-round myself and spent thousands of dollars on affiliate marketing courses that looked great on the surface, but turned out to be trash.

In this article, I’m going to show you step by step how to find a good affiliate marketing course for beginners.

Like you, I was a beginner once.

I bought lots of courses, most of them were a waste of my hard earned cash.

Back then I was a car mechanic and earning peanuts. You can read all about my backstory here.

Anyway, I got burned a whole bunch of times buying Affiliate Marketing Courses, money I’ll never get back and time I won’t get back either.

As someone who’s bought well over a dozen courses before I found one that worked, I’m well placed to show you what to look for in a good affiliate marketing program, I’m also well placed to show you what to look for in a bad one aswell.

My pain and financial loss is your gain. 🙂

So let’s jump in..

1. The person behind the course has to be legit and have done whatever they’re teaching themselves.

Affiliate Marketing Course for beginners

Thanks to social media, finding this out is pretty easy.

Simply search for the creators name on Twitter or Facebook, they’ll be prominent on at least one of them.

If they’re not, that’s probably a red flag right there.

If they are, a quick scan of their profile and page will tell you a lot about their Methods.

Another way you can find this out is with a quick Google search.

Type in the name of the affiliate marketing course you’re thinking of investing in followed by “review”.

So you’d type in something like “product name review”.

That will bring back a lot of reviews written by people who have actually used the course and will give you a pretty good idea of what’s inside it.

Asking around on Internet marketing forums is also a really good way of find out if the Affiliate Marketing course for beginners, you’re interested in is actually worth your hard earned cash investment or not.

I find people on forums are usually really blunt and say what they truly think about something.

They tend to be more anonymous, which is great because…

If something’s really good they’ll say.

If something’s really bad they’ll say.

There’s nothing really inbetween.

There’s no blow-back on themselves, so they tend to be really open about it.

Of course you’ll get the odd troll in between all that, but what you’re looking for are the detailed comments.

Forums are actually my #1 way of researching a product and it’s creator.

It almost never let’s me down.

2. The sales letter or video isn’t open and transparent.

Here’s what I mean..

Let’s suppose you’re considering an Affiliate Marketing course for beginners and for simplicity we’ll call it “Beginners Course A”.

You’ve probably seen this yourself, sometimes you’ll read a sales letter or watch a VSL (Video Sales Letter) and you have no real idea what it’s about.

These types of sales letters are easy to spot.

They’re usually stuffed full of money screenshots, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, beaches and not much else.

They’re selling you the dream, not the steps to actually get it.

These are what I call “shove it down your throat” or “Empty box” tactics.

You need to avoid these types of programs especially if they don’t really tell you much about the program itself.

This is usually because it’s built on something wafer thin or outdated.

9 times out of 10, you’ll end up buying an empty box.

3. Avoid anything that uses words like “loopholes” or “hacks”.

Now here’s the thing, sometimes, it’s rare, but sometimes it’s a genuine loophole or hack.

And that’s fine, I still don’t like them.

And here’s why…

This is the definition of a loophole:

A loophole or loop hole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the purpose, implied or explicitly stated, of the system.

And loopholes tend to stop working as soon as they’re discovered.

So, if “Mr Super duper marketer” is selling a course (and you’ll see a lot of these) with the headline: “The secret loophole I discovered that makes $10,000 a day on complete autopilot” and he’s openly telling everyone about it, guess what…

The loophole isn’t a secret anymore and eventually stops working!!

And guess what that means?…yup. Your money has just gone straight the F down a blackhole never to be seen again.

I’ll give you an example.

Back in about 2011, somebody discovered a GENUINE loophole in the Google Adwords system. (it’s now called Google Ads).

This was something Google had genuinely missed, this will probably never happen again, and it was real.

What the loophole meant, was that Advertisers could get clicks for literally $0.10c for any keyword they chose, once you knew what setting to switch on, which, of course, was the loophole.

I’m talking really competitive terms with loads of competition.

Keywords like “Lose Weight Fast” or “Make Money Online”.

It ACTUALLY worked.

A smart dude, figured it out and instead of being low-key about it, he went and told EVERYONE.

He started selling a training system on how to exploit this loophole and he sold it cheap as dirt for like $50 bucks.

And because it was so cheap and it actually worked, EVERYBODY bought it.

What that meant was, everybody now knew about it, including -ahem- Google.

The loophole worked for about 2 months and then Google fixed the Loophole they’d now been made aware of and started shutting down 1,000’s of accounts.

I really do mean literally THOUSANDS.

It was a bloodbath.

Affiliates were waking up to their Google Adwords campaigns shut down and locked out of their accounts.

I mean…completely BANNED from Google.

My point is, if you buy into any system that’s built on a loophole, it rarely ever lasts and usually ends badly.

Not to mention, loopholes are usually a result of a terms of service breach in whatever ‘thing’ they are trying to ‘teach’ you and that is only ever going to end one way….and rarely a good way.

So, avoid anything that’s built on short term strategies.

It never ever lasts. EVER.

What to Look For In A Good Affiliate Marketing Course Best For Beginners

So now you know what to avoid.

How can you tell if what the best Affiliate Marketing course for beginners looks like?

  1. The course creator is reachable.

What I like to do is find the course creators contact page and just send a quick and to the point email asking them about the course.

Now of course, they’re not going to say anything bad about their own Affiliate marketing course, but that’s not the point here, we can find all that stuff out ourselves like I’ll show you just a second.

The point here, is you just want to make sure the affiliate program creator a) actually exists and B) is contactable and helpful.

It’s a good idea to just very briefly explain to them that you’re a beginner with a very brief outline of what you do and do not know about Affiliate Marketing.

You’ll find most course creators will give you an honest answer about whether their course would be a good fit for you or not.

If it isn’t a good fit, they’ll tell you.

It’s not in their interests to lie to you, ok they may get the initial sale, but if the course doesn’t suit you, you’re going to refund it anyway.

This usually sets the tone for everything that follows further down the line.

2. Has a social media presence

This by itself isn’t going to tell you if the course is any good or not, but what it does do, is confirms it’s not just phantom guy behind it.

I’m not saying stalk anyone, just have a quick look and make sure they’re around.

3. Once you’ve established they are a real person, it’s probably a good idea to make sure they have walked the walk.

This is when forums come into play and also facebook groups, you can do a quick search on the persons name and you’ll find lots of conversations going about the person, read through the comments and see what people are actually saying.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about…

I once paid $697 for a paid traffic course that was focussed on PPC.

I discovered a few weeks later, the guy didn’t actually use paid traffic in his business himself, he just “teaches” it.

The only way I found that out, was via a post by somebody else that he’d replied to on facebook.

I wish I’d seen that earlier and before I spent close to $700 bucks!

Ouch!

4. The sales letter or VSL (Video Sales Letter) gives you enough information to make a judgement.

You need to make sure you have enough information to make an informed decision about investing or not.

Here’s a quick tip for beginners looking for an Affiliate Marketing course…

Do they use a lot of jargon on their sales letter without explaining it?

If they use a lot of Jargon on their sales letters without explaining it, that usually means you are NOT their target audience.

eg: if I start talking to you about “Launch Jacking” or “link cloaking” or “CPA offers” without explaining what those things are, I’m kind of assuming you already know what those things are, when if you’re a complete beginner, you probably don’t.

That’s usually the tell-tell sign of an affiliate marketing course that’s beyond the scope of beginner level.

If they’re using those kinds of terms on their sales letter, you’re probably going to have a hard time following the course, even if they do explain it inside.

5. There is some sort of coaching or further support that comes with the course.

a good affiliate program will have coaching and support

I’ll tell you straight out, for most people, I’m talking 90%+, just buying the course isn’t going to be enough.

You need a mentor or at least some kind of coaching to stear you through it.

Back when I first started, almost 10 years ago, Affiliate Marketing Courses aren’t like they are now.

It was rare to find anything with even videos.

There was rarely ever a coaching element.

It was usually a PDF and away you go, to figure it out on my own.

Which is what I had to do.

These days it’s a LOT different.

Most courses are online with lot’s of video tutorials and other resources.

But the one thing that’s going to give you the cutting edge in todays world is having a mentor or some kind of coaching that goes along with it.

Having a mentor can be literally the difference between success and failure.

What puts most people off buying Affiliate marketing courses that have a coaching element is that they’re usually expensive.

But it’s worth the investment, especially if you’re a beginner just starting out.

And anyway, the kind of people with that mindset, find themselves bouncing around, investing in course after course spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars, spinning their wheels and getting nowhere.

When all they needed was a bit of guidance along the way.

This has been quite a long blog post, so I’m going to wrap it up here with an Affiliate Marketing course for beginners I highly recommend…

And guess what?…this training is 100% FREE.

This is the Affiliate Marketing Course I highly recommend if you’re a complete beginner:

best affiliate affiliate marketing course

It’s created by a very successful affiliate marketer and friend of mine called Mark Ling.

mark ling affiliate marketing program

He’s spent the last 14 years figuring out the very BEST Affiliate Marketing Strategies and he now has over 6 Affiliate marketing websites and 90 staff.

He’ll walk you through step by step how you can get started as an Affiliate Marketer. Just go here.

And don’t forget my free Affiliate Marketing case study for how to make $25,000-$100,000 per year from Affiliate Marketing, even if you’re a beginner, click here.

Share and Enjoy !

What You Need To Know About Domain Names And The Best Places To Buy Them From

by Leave a Comment

What Is A Domain Name? How Much Do They cost and Where Should You Buy One From?

what is a domain name and where to buy a domain name

So you want to get online and you’ve got an idea for your website and you’ve got an idea for a domain name…

… But you’re not quite sure of the next steps?

You’re not sure what a Domain name actually is, you have pretty much no idea what a domain name costs and you definitely don’t know where you should buy one from…

Don’t worry, if what I’ve just described sounds like you, I was there once myself.

The first website I ever put online was an affiliate website for a job interview training course.

I had a few ideas for a domain name, but I didn’t have the faintest clue what the next steps were.

Fast forward to TODAY, I’ve been online for nearly 9 years and I currently have over a dozen websites.

I also have well over 150 Domain names in my portfolio, so I can definitely help you take the next steps.

And really, it’s not that hard or difficult to do.

So first things first…

What exactly is a domain name and why do you need one?…

Think of a domain name as your home address.

How does the mail man or a company like Amazon, for example, know where to deliver your letter or package?

The only way your delivery finds its way to you and YOUR house, is by the way of the address on it.

Your domain name is exactly the same.

Simply put, a domain name is the web address where your website lives.

There are lot of technical functions of a domain name but that is way out of the general scope of this blog post.

So that’s a very simplistic overview of what a domain name is..

The next question is now: why do you need a domain name?

People will find your website by typing in your domain.

Now, just to point something out here…

A domain name and a web host is not the same thing.

Sure, a lot of Domain companies offer webhosting aswell, but webhosting and domain names are not the same thing.

A Web host, is where your website is housed, but the domain name is how people find it.

One other thing I’d like to point out to you here, is that you don’t actually NEED to buy a domain name in order to have a website.

There are lots of solutions out there that will host your website on their domain name, known as a subdomain. 

To name but a few of them:

  • Weebly
  • Wix
  • Blogger (by Google)

Think of these companies like a great big house that rents out multiple rooms in the house and all they’re doing is renting you ONE of them.

You don’t own the domain, you don’t even own the website, they’re just renting you the space and they can turn it on or off at will, also, god forbid, your website gets hacked, you’re relying on these companies to sort it out.

That means, your website is at their mercy until they do.

So I don’t recommend you go down that route.

I’m not saying any of those companies are necessarily bad companies.

My point is this:

You should always have full control over your website and Domain name.

After all, it’s your business and it’s a bad mix to put your business in the hands of another platform that you have no control over.

It might be cheaper, but in the long run it just isn’t worth it.

What Are The Best Domain Extensions To Buy For SEO?

If SEO, Search engine Optimisation is going to be part of your gameplan, then the domain name extension you choose is going to be critical.

Wherever possible, always try to register the .com version.

If the .com isn’t available, go for a .net.

However, as a general rule, if the domain name is for your brand and if the .com isn’t available, I’d choose an alternative name altogether.

For 3 reasons:

  1. Most people type in the .com first.
  2. Avoid running into issues with whoever has the .com version.
  3. Search engine optimisation benefits.

However, if your business is based in a certain country and most of your visitors are local (in that same country) then go for the country specific domain extension.

Eg: if your business is in the UK and your business targets Brits, then go for the .co.uk extension.

On the subject of brand building, the shorter and easier to remember, the better.

You want a domain name that’s super easy to remember, you want repeat visitors to your website, and also, a short domain that’s easy to remember, means it’s easy for people to share it, especially via word of mouth.

Think Amazon, Tesco, Walmart, Yahoo, Microsoft.

All those brands are easy to remember and those companies were grown through both product quality and word of mouth.

For any basic affiliate site, any version of .com, .net is fine.

Always try to stick with those 2 extensions where possible.

Another TLD (Top level domain) you could choose is .org.

But .org domains tend to not work too well, unless you are actually an organisation or a charity.

There are SEO (Search engine optimisation) benefits of .com & .net that you don’t get with a .org domain extension.

I’ve found that whenever I’ve used the .com domain, from an SEO perspective, it ranks a lot better than a .net.

And I’ve also found, search engines don’t show a great deal of SEO ‘love’ to the .org extension.

I’ve found .org domain extensions damn near impossible to rank in the search engines, I’m not particularly sure why that is, but just be aware, that if you’re going to rely on Google search traffic for your website a .org extension is probably the wrong Domain extension to choose.

I’m not saying you CAN’T rank .org domain extensions in Search Engines like Google, I’m just saying that in my experience, I’ve found it very difficult to do.

So in order of preference, this would how I would approach it.

  1. The .com. always try to get this.
  2. .net. it’s not the .com version, but it’s the next best thing.
  3. .org I would only select this if all else fails or I was an organisation or charity.

So How Much Do domain Names Cost and Where Can You Buy Them?

Buying domains are fairly inexpensive.

Different companies have different pricing structure’s.

Generally, .com, .net, .co.uk cost around $10/year.

Smaller domain companies, sell them for as much as $20/year.

When buying domain names, pricing is similar to what you see in real life.

For example, buying a loaf of bread in Wal-Mart might cost you $1.

Buying that same loaf of bread in your local convenience store, might cost you $1.50.

Wal-Mart are a BIG mammoth company, they buy in bulk and they sell in bulk too, so they can lower their prices.

Your local convenience store is the opposite, they’re usually owned & run by 1 individual and doesn’t sell anywhere near the numbers Wal-Mart do, so they have to sell higher to make a profit.

The same goes for domain names.

Buying your domain name from a bigger company, usually means you’re going to pay less for it.

The companies I mention below are domain name companies that I personally use right now, or have used in the past.

One thing I’d like to point out here, is that you don’t have to purchase your domain name from any of the companies I recommend, you’re welcome to do your own research.

Just simply do a Google search for “Buy Domain name” or “where to buy domain name” and you’ll see dozens and dozens of domain name companies to buy from.

However, the ones I’m listing here are probably unbeatable in price and are also strong reputable companies that have been selling domain names for years.

You’ll see Domain Companies referred to as Domain name registrars.

A Domain Name Registrar and a Domain Name Company is the same thing.

Both terms mean the same thing, a company you use to register your domain name.

With that being said, let’s jump straight in.

Namecheap

Namecheap have been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth and they are my #1 place I go to to buy domain names.

what is a domain name

I’ve got well over 100 domains that I’ve purchased directly from Namecheap.

Anybody can purchase an available domain name from Namecheap, all you need to do is create a free account and search for your ideal domain name.

Namecheap will tell you straight away if it’s available or not like this:

buy a domain name for your website

If it’s available, you can register it.

All you need to do is follow the steps outlined here.

Namecheap Domain Prices: Typically around $9 per year.

Dynadot

Dynadot, like Namecheap, have also been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth, I have several domain names registered with Dynadot and their pricing is similar to Namecheap’s.

where to buy a domain name

To buy an available domain name from Dynadot will cost you about $8-$9 bucks a year.

Like Namecheap, just simply create a free account and away you go.

Crazy Domains

Crazy Domains are usefull for country specific domain names.

how much does a domain name cost

I buy all my .UK domain names from Crazy domains.

Simply because, for .UK domains, they’ll let you register it for 2 years for almost the same price as 1 year. So it’s a massive win.

However, for regualr domains like .com they’re a bit more expensice than the other companies I’ve already mentioned.

A .com domain name from CrazyDomains is about $12 bucks a year.

And Finally…

One to AVOID…

There is one company I recommend that you avoid, at all costs.

I need to be careful what I say here. (as I don’t fancy being lawsuited).

HOWEVER…

I have heard nightmare stories from people who have used 1&1 domains, who now call themselves Ionos.

(in my experience, when a company has a poor reputation and they change names that’s never a good sign).

Anyhow, I’ve heard reports of several people having real issues moving their domains from them.

1&1 domains do a LOT of advertising on TV and other media outlets and they boast of being able to register a domain for less than $5 bucks, which is TRUE by the way..

BUT there seems to be a massive ‘gotcha’.

Once you buy one of their cheap domains, they’ll ‘hard sell’ you on all their other services (allegedly) and once you have your domain with them, it’s almost impossible to control what you do with it.

As your business grows, you might want to move your domain, I’ve heard people having real trouble when trying to do this with 1&1.

Also, buy 1&1 effectively “locking your domain” they’re forcing you to constantly pay their renewal fee’s, unless you cancel your own domain.

So be careful.

This may well have changed by now, so I may well be well wide of the mark here, I’m basing this entirely on what I’ve been told by people who have used them and the issues they faced.

So to quickly recap what we’ve discovered in this blog post, you now have a good understand of what a domain name is, why you need a domain name, the best extensions for search Engine Optimization (SEO).

I also gave you 3 places to buy domain names from.

Here they are again (in order of preference):

  1. Namecheap.com
  2. Dynadot.com
  3. CrazyDomains.com (for country specific domain extensions)

Don’t forget to grab my free Affiliate Marketing Mini-Course that teaches step by step how to start an affiliate marketing business for extra income, click here.

Share and Enjoy !

How To Change Ugly Affiliate Links on Your Website

by Leave a Comment

What Is The Best Way To Shorten or Hide (Cloak / Mask) Your Affiliate Links, So That you Get More clicks?

So you’ve chosen a product to promote as an affiliate, you’ve generated your affiliate link but there’s one problem…. it’s ugly as hell.

It looks something like this:

So, what do you do?

Glad you asked.

The answer is simple…

You shorten the link.

Pretty it up a bit.

Make it look a bit more attractive.

The “what” is easy, the “how” is where the secret is.

So HOW do you shorten your butt ugly affiliate links?

Well, there’s a few ways to do it…

You could use a service called Bitly, but spammers use that, so we’ll give that one a miss.

You could use Google’s own free link shortener, but unless you’re absolutely fine with Google shutting down your links without any notice, then I’d avoid that one aswell.

In fact there’s a whole bunch of link shorteners or link cloaking solutions that you could use, but use a bad one and you’ll wish you hadn’t.

There are several terms for hiding your links.

You might have heard of 1 or 2 of them.

The most common terms are:

  • Affiliate Link Cloaking
  • Affiliate Link Masking

There’s 3 services (and only 3) for this that I recommend you use and one of them is free.

They are:

  • Pretty links (free)
  • Joturl (paid)
  • Clickmagick (paid).

Besides being affiliate link shorteners, they’re so much more than just shorteners.

They’re brilliant tools for tracking your affiliate marketing effectiveness aswell.

But I’ll cover that in a separate blog post.

For the purpose of THIS blog post, I’m going to focus on the free Pretty Links WordPress plugin and the paid Joturl solution.

So you’ve got 2 options, one is free, the other is paid.

And a special mention of clickmagick a little later in this blog post.

The paid solution Joturl is very inexpensive and that’s the one I’m going to show you now:

Joturl has one specific feature that most other link tracking tools completely miss.

And if your link cloaker doesn’t have this feature, you’re going to lose money…

When looking for a link cloaker, there’s one thing that almost always get’s overlooked by affiliate marketers.

Most affiliates use a cloaking tool to make their links look better to get more people clicking their affiliate links and that’s where most stop.

They create their link, make it look good and post it somewhere and forgot about it.

Which makes sense, because in our world, the more clicks you get, the more money you’ll make….all things being equal…right?

Not really.

In actual fact, it could actually cost you money unless you implement the one thing I’m about to tell you..

Any link cloaker you choose, MUST have the ability to monitor links AFTER they have been created.

And by ‘monitor’, I mean, it has the ability to constantly and consistently check that you’re links are still pointing to active webpages.

When linking out to other websites, you don’t have any control over what the owner of that website does in the future.

If he decides to change the URL or move the page, or move to a new domain altogether, guess what, your link stops working.

And you’ll have no way of knowing, unless one of your visitors who clicked it, tells you it’s not working….which almost never happens.

Thankfully, Joturl has a way to check this built directly into their affiliate link tracking tool.

Here’s how to set it up inside Joturl:

Once you’ve created your link (instructions further down this blog post)

1. Go to “link options”:

how to track affiliate links

2. Select the “security” feature:

broken affiliate link checker

3. Select “ping” and then click “Save”:

in content affiliate link checker

And that’s it!

Now, you can post your links with confidence.

Because if the content your linking to, ever disappears, Joturl will send you an alert straight away.

This feature alone is what makes Joturl a must-have link cloaking tool for any affiliate marketer.

Joturl’s Pricing is very cost affective, with plans starting at just $9 bucks a month.

https://www.joturl.com/pricing/

They have a 14 day free trial aswell.

They have a lot of other cool features like:

  • Click tracking
  • Retargeting Pixel Tracking
  • Custom Domains

And a lot more.

But at this point all we’re interested in is the ability to hide our affiliate or at the very least, make our ugly affiliate links look better and mask it’s appearance.

If you’re wondering what “masking” is?

Masking is just a term for hiding your naked affiliate link from view.

In Affiliate marketing it’s known as Affiliate link masking or URL cloaking.

And in this blog post you’re going to learn how to mask affiliate links quickly and easily.

It’s perfectly legal and ethical to mask affiliate links, in fact it’s something you should, for all the reasons I’m about to tell you below.

Using Joturl, I am going to make this link:

how to hide an affiliate link

Look like this:

https://jo.my/your-product

As you can see it will look a lot shorter and a lot cleaner.

Think about your own browsing habits, which link are you more likely to click?

The long ugly one or the nicer shorter one?

The short one right? Every. Single. Time.

And do you know how many affiliate marketers are doing this?

Almost NONE.

And the ones who are bothering to do this, are making a lot of cash because they’re getting their nice short affiliate links clicked on a lot more than all the other affiliates out there.

And more clicks = more cash.

So it’s worth learning this and doing it yourself and that’s what I’m going to show you now…

But before I show you HOW to hide your affiliate links, it’s worth keeping in mind why it’s so important hide your affiliate links and make them look better…

  1. Ugly links don’t get clicks.

They don’t.

Think about your own browsing.

Are you more likely to click a 20 character string link or a simple, clear one like this:

Simple & clear wins everytime.

And as an affiliate marketer, your success, meaning, money in the bank, depends on the amount of clicks you get on your links.

So hiding ugly links, doesn’t just look better, it’s just good business sense.

2. Stops your affiliate links being hijacked.

Yes it happens.

And it happens a lot.

The right person, who knows what they’re doing, could literally steal your affiliate commission’s if they can work out what your naked affiliate link is.

Affiliate links are made up of a string of unique characters that are unique to you, this how affiliate networks know to pay the right person.

If a rogue person was to figure this out, it’s very easy for your affiliate commission’s to be hijacked and your hard earned commission’s stolen.

And finally, Reason #3:

If email marketing is going to be part of your affiliate marketing strategy (and I highly recommend it is for all the reasons I mention here) then you’ll definitely want to change your affiliate link and shorten it.

Most of the popular email service providers like Gmail and Hotmail treat long ugly affiliate links as spam and can send your email to your subscribers spam folder.

Or in some cases even outright block your email from ever being sent.

That’s obviously bad news because there’s a high chance your subscribers will never see your emails.

By shortening your affiliate links before adding them to your email, means it’ll likely be flagged as ‘safe’ and delivered to your subscribers inbox correctly.

And here’s how to easily do it with Joturl.

Once you’ve created an account with Joturl, you’re dashboard will look like this:

affiliate link tracking and masking

Simply click “Add Tracking Link” and that will bring you to a screen that looks like this:

how to create affiliate tracking links

As you can see, all we do here is enter in our ugly clickbank affiliate tracking link and then click “save”…

And that’s it.

You’ll then be given a tracking link that looks like this:

shortned and masking affiliate tracking link

See how much better that looks?

NOTE: in order to use Clickbank tracking links with Joturl, you will need to set up a custom domain name.

See this video:

So as you can see, in a few simple steps we are able to make our affiliate links look much shorter.

It also keeps our affiliate tracking links it hidden to stop our affiliate commissions being stolen and also to prevent any links we use in email marketing being marked as spam.

The Free Option…

The other option I wanted to give you (if $9 bucks a month is a stretch) is a free option.

Which is Pretty links. (Actual name). (website here)

And it’s a wordpress plugin, so although it’s free you need will need WordPress. 

Joturl is a cloud based solution that doesn’t require wordpress to work, however, pretty links does.

Although the pretty links plugin itself is free (they do have a paid version) there will be a time investment involved and a cost.

  1. You’re going to have to set up a wordpress website.
  2. And for WordPress you’re going to need sufficient hosting.
  3. A Domain Name

Pretty links will use the domain name as your tracking link, so make sure whatever domain name you choose, it’s short.

Or it kind of defeats the point of what we’re doing here.

So just keep in mind, although pretty links is free there’s still a cost and time investment involved.

The free version of Pretty links does everything you’ll need to get started and as your affiliate marketing business grows, I recommend you either upgrade to their paid plan or move to Joturl.

Now, a word of warning…

As your affiliate business grows online, you’re going to have a lot of links and I’ll tell you outright, moving tracking solutions when you have a lot of links can will be a nightmare.

That’s why the solutions I mention in this blog post are solid solutions and will still be useful as you grow.

So choose one with the intention of sticking with it forever.

With that being said, let’s take a look at the pretty links plugin…

In the quick video I made below, I’m using the free version of the Pretty Links plugin.

Pretty Links do have a paid option but their pricing is relatively inexpensive starting at $49/year for one website.

https://prettylinks.com/pricing/plans/

At this point, for the benefit of shortening our affiliate links and making them look better and more ‘clickable’ you only need the free version.

How to Install and Use The Pretty Links WordPress Plugin

Note: I recommend the domain you choose is SHORT. The pretty links plugin will you use that domain for your links. The domain I’m using in this video is just an example.

So as you can see, using the Pretty Links plugin is relatively straightforward.

If you don’t yet have a wordpress website setup, there a couple of ways you can do it.

  1. Set up a simple WordPress installation by following the steps outlined here: https://wordpress.org/support/article/how-to-install-wordpress/.
  2. Use your hosting ‘1 click WordPress install’. Most hosting providers have this included. Here are a few web host’s that offer this.

Clickmagick

The last option I wanted to give you is an affiliate link tracking solution called Clickmagick.

clickmagick all in one click tracking and affiliate link tracking tool

Unlike Pretty Links, Clickmagick is a cloud tool.

This means you don’t need to install WordPress to use it, it works straight out of the box.

If I wasn’t curently using Joturl, Clickmagick would have been at the top of this blog post and would have my highest recommendation.

Clickmagick is an all-in-one marketing and affiliate link tracking tool.

And as such, it’s not free and it’s not the cheapest around.

The plans on Clickmagick start at $27.

It used to be cheaper than that when I was using it.

But even at Clickmagick’s current pricing it is still good value.

The features of clickmagick are extensive and for most of you, might be a bit too feature-rich.

But the upside of that is, it’s extremely robust, you’ll probably never need a different tool.

The only reason I stopped using it, is because the interface is a little bit dated.

Joturl displays data a little bit better than Clickmagick does.

But make no mistake, if joturl didn’t exist, I’d still be using Clickmagick now.

If you want to know more about Clickmagick, here’s a letter from the founder, Patrick Kelly:

https://www.clickmagick.com/magick/

ClickMagick also has a free trial.

So that wraps up my top 3 Affiliate link and Tracking tools.

As with everything on my blog, you don’t need to choose my recommendations, there’s a lot of solutions out there, some are good, some are bad.

It’s up to you if you want to find one yourself, but these that I’ve mentioned on this page are the best that I’ve used and tried myself.

And finally…

If you enjoyed this blog post, don’t forget to access my ‘Affiliate Marketing On Crack‘ Mini-course. It’s free and you can get it here.

Share and Enjoy !