If you use e-mail marketing, e-newsletter marketing or other internet marketing methods then here's a great way to increase your click through rate and sales. Standard shorturl services like tinyurl cloak your link with something generic like tinyurl.com/qtehuf BrainyURL.com has a free service that allows you to cloak your domains with premium subdomains such as: you.com-log.in you.com-vip.info They have other domains including adult domains like you.com-sex.me This method works to increase click-through for sure because people are more likely to click youproduct.com-log.in as oppose to a generic foreign link like tinyurl.com/qtehuf. Super Affiliates like Mike Filsaime use a similar tactic in his e-newsletters. Also, for those of you trying to rank high in the search engines for keywords you may want to register some free subdomains with your keyword such as keyword.com-vip.info
I don't think affiliates should rely on those URL shortener services. If the site goes down, you don't know it, you can't control it and none of your affiliate links work. The best option is to use an .htaccess redirect on your own domain. Then the links look like yoursite.com/productname or yoursite.com/keyword. Also if one of your merchants does not convert or goes out of business you can change the redirect in one place and all your links wherever they are change automatically.
thanks 5Star for your comment. but could you be more specific on how to do the .htacces? thanks again
Hi efex, Sorry, should have added more info. Here's a good article about how to hide affiliate links with .htaccess. http://www.clickconsultants.com/using-htaccess-to-hide-affiliate-links
That's quite interesting. I've never liked TinyURL because of the random letters, but ones that actually have readable text are much better.
Yes, it's free to register with any of the domains. You only pay a small fee if you want to remove the ads that appear in the top frame of the redirect.