Hi folks, I just wanted to get your thoughts about the hole affiliate marketing, link stuff. There are all of these cloakers hiding affiliate links using redirecting to attach there affiliate id to a website. Now of days they are in all kind of form. some use there one hosting and others use sites like tinyurl. So my question is, have you developed the habit looking always down to the left and look where the link will actually take you?? I personally developed this habit along time ago and now I always look at the status bar just to be save I'm not going to a place I don't want to... and of course I'm always on the look out for a affiliate link... The strange thing is that I actually lose interest in the website if I see it's being promoted only to get you to click on it. and I think the product actually loses some credibility. What are your 2 cent's???
I always check where the link is going before clicking. For example here, this lamer just makes his praise of that company completely worthless by attaching it to an affiliate link.
Yeah I totally agree with you Vic, I hate when people do this.... and also I can't stand these mysite.com/recommend/productname.html links.. In my opinion if your going to have a affiliate link hosted on your server do a review about it and link to that.. and then have the affiliate link next to it. Try to earn your affiliate link click, as strange as that might sound
I always check the status bar. You mean you like http://www.affiliatesite.tld/?r=1337 than http://www.mysite.tld/go/bestproductever.php? I like the latter better...
When it comes to my personal view I actually like the first one better. The second one only tells you that the affiliate did some extra work to hide the affiliate ID only so people are more likely to click on it. Don't get me wrong, I know this has been a boost in conversion when it first came to the market... Now you can't fool people as easily when it comes to internet marking products. I think people should just give people a honest review of the product and then keep the old affiliate link in place, say you truly believe in the product. I know people won't agree with me on this, this is just my personal view on this matter. And also the people using the mysite.com/recommend/product.html, my advice is have the middle page in place. use the recommend folder also for content for your site.. don't just use one folder for all the affiliate links. Be creative... For example if you have a website about internet marketing use one sub folders for each category. Let's say I have two affiliate links I want to promote. one is for affiliate market and the other one for adsense. Make people go to mysite.com/adsense/factproduct.html and give them some information about it and why your talking about it, don't rely only on the affiliate sales page to sell the product. make mini sales page version about the product and why your using it. then when it comes time to link to the product have it mysite.com/adsense/greatproduct.html This is more likely to fool your visitors if your seeking for that, because they are already in the adsense sub folder and they'll think it's just another site hosted on your server. and then do the same for affiliate marketing : affiliatemark/producttalk.html then affiliatemark/bestproduct.html. This will not only increase clicks on the affiliate link but it will also bring traffic to your site, you get pages indexed into search engine for better ranking which turns into seo traffic and more clicks on the affiliate link. Again these are just my thoughts... People won't agree with me and that's perfectly fine, I actually value when people say NO your wrong and then tell me there site of the story... I'm always open for more information and you should too, that's the only way to grow big in this business. And just to cover all my statements I want to include that using the old recommend/product.html for other niches where people are not as used to the affiliate links is a great idea, it's going to increase the clicks... Best regards,