Hi guys, i've been reading this section of the forum for hours and hours over the last few days. Some of the info is brilliant but i just need to clear up a few really basic things i don't understand and want to clarify before i dive in and start. 1. i'm looking to use bum marketing to start off with. not because i don't have any money for PPC etc, just because writing articles is something i can do all day and people on here seem to think it works. what i want to know is if anyone knows of any good articles/posts/blog posts that have information on how to write good articles from an affiliates point of view. for example i've been reading getting key words in is important and getting the title right etc. 2. the whole point in writing these articles is to give either a teaser or some good information regarding the ebook you are trying to promote yeah? then at the end of the article adding your link to the sellers sales page. am i right in thinking that all i have to do is go to clickbank, create a hoplink for the product i choose, then have it cloaked with tinyurl.com or similar and include this in an article. then if someone clicks on this link in the article, they will be taken to the sales page and if they buy i am then given the sale comission as its all tracked via my hop link? 3. another thing i want to clarify for sure is that simply using one of these url cloaking services is adequate protection. is it common practise for affiliates just to cloak their hoplink with tinyurl.com (or similar site) and thats it, or is that not enough? in another thread people said that you can do php redirects and other things but i'm not really that advanced. 4. i've been reading about bum marketing and have come accross many different ways people try it, article marketing, social networking, squidoo etc. could anyone give me a good list of all the standard bum marketing techniques so that i can then go and read about in more detail how to execute these techniques. sorry, bit of a long one but i'd really appreciate it if you guys could give me some feedback. cheers in advance.
read this forum and you will find the answers to all of these questions. I know I did and I started making money within days
any takers? question 3. is the one i really want to make sure i don't get wrong. once i know the answer to that i can crack on and experiment with the other stuff.
Nah you can't slap up affiliate links in the articles. It's against almost all article directories' rules except GoArticles. And yeah, I guess that'd be enough. I do PHP redirects, and it's really really simple as long as you have a hosting account and a domain. Basically, get in your FTP and create a folder called "recommends" or something. Then for every product you want to promote create a new folder for each product, within the recommends directory. Then you load up notepad or something and paste this in: <? Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ); Header( "Location: [I][url]http://www.URL.com[/url][/I]" ); ?> Code (markup): Just make sure you replace the url with your hoplink. Save this on your computer as productname.php though that's entirely for organization purposes, you'll rename it again later. Upload this php file to the new directory you just made (public_html/recommends/productname/). Rename the productname.php to index.php and you're done. Now you should have something like: http://lemonarian.com/likes/wholovesmoney
cheers lemonarian, thats just what i was after. i've got a spare domain i don't use. if i were to implement this php redirect on it and have it redirect to the sales/squeeze page of the product i'm promoting, that means i could just put this domain name on all the articles and have them accepted yeah? somebody also mentioned on here that some article sites only accept top level domains, like a xxxwww.whatever.com as opposed to a xxxwww.whatever.com/somethingelse. would using this php redirect technique mean i have to use a different domain for each product i promote? it's not a problem if i do but i'm just trying to make sense of it all. cheers for that code too mate, thats perfect.
Yeah that means a new domain for every product you promote. I don't do this, I write my own pre-sells. Not only does this increase the conversion rate (if you do a good one) but I don't have to make a new one for every domain. You can even use free squidoo lenses or blogger blogs as your landing page, that would make everything free. Though, some people just buy a new domain for everything and they still make a killing. Up to you man, no affiliate links in the articles though, whether they're redirected or not it's still an affiliate link.
right i see. so i assume from what your saying that a pre-sell is your own website which is basically bigging up the product before the customer gets to the actual sales page? you can then put this website url in an article and the customer will then read your pre-sell site, then on that site somewhere you'll have the affiliate link to the real sales page? in your last line you say even using a redirect you still cant have that link in an article which will redirect to the sales page. so i take it that redirecting your url is purely for security and not to get your articles accepted on the sly? like your blog by the way, some good clickbank posts.
Thanks mate. And yes, it's basically just to make your link look prettier, the http://yourname.vendor.hop.clickbank.net isn't too nice looking. And yes, you're correct about the pre-sell, I've found that an "unbiased" review of the product works best as a pre-sell, it's called soft selling, as an honest recommendation from someone in the same seat as they are and not some pushy sales pages filled with "this product is so amazing and unless you enjoy your 9-5 dead end job you need to buy this". And oh shit, I just realized that my redirect for the Who Loves Money book is fudged up. *fixes. Who loves money is a great ebook by the way, in case you give a shit.
I cloak and I do so with a landing page then a meta refresh. Why? Because sometimes webservers wont record an "early" refresh...which makes it tough to quantify results of campaigns.