Hi everyone. I am new and just trying to get a few extra bucks to supplement my income. I make a good living as it is but would love an extra $50-200/day. I'm trying to get to the point where by using only free services (posting, etc) I'll be able to start purchasing some advanced programs. I have found an affiliate that I like and believe in and hope to make it work. Here's my problem: When I post on other forums, my signature shows up like .WWW..xyzc?=CLICKBANKID for example and I know that if anyone is savvy they will simply bypass my clickbank ID and I won't get the credit. I found a service at LinkCloaker that works great for word documents and emails but not for signatures - they just show up as text and not anything you can "click" on. Can someone please direct me to a free service that I can enter my affiliate and click bank ID onto that will show up as a professional looking link? Thanks, any other advice for a new guy willing to spend the time but not the money? (I once spent nearly $1000 on internet marketing services a few years ago, made nothing and got frustrated and gave up but I know the business can be profitable, I'm willing to start slowly using free services for now). I really appreciate it, especially the cloaking information. Take care, FreddyKaboot
If you want to cloak it to make it look "professional" than just buy a domain for it, or put it in a subdirectory of a domain name. You could put "mysuperdooperniche.com" in your sig and have it automatically forward to your affiliate link. or if you're using your domain, Superdooperdomain.com/awesome-affiliate-product/ and have that forward to your affiliate link.
You can read about cloaking here http://www.clickbankbusinessguide.com/2008/03/clickbank-faq-affiliate-tools.html
Use Tinyurl.com to start with . Later on you can cloak yourself with php and other methods. Basically whatever method you use a person who knows about affiliate marketing can find the id from the bottom of the sale page and can by pass it. The net is not full of tech savvy people and that saves many.
affiliatenewbie EXACTLY. The only reason why to cloak the links is to make them more "clickable". For example I would rather click on "http://www.yourwebsite.com/digitalpoint" than "http://affiliate.publisher.hop.clickbank.net"
I also cloak them because I can later change them. If you have 1000 html pages with a link on it, that needs to be a changed, it's a lot of work to go back and change them all.
I found a great way to get around this by using a FREE site called offto.net that will cloak your ID. Try it toady and keep your hard earned commissions. FB ________________________________________