You know already that it’s probably a good idea to cloak your affiliate links. The more savvy surfers become about affiliate marketing and the links that represent your “paycheck,” the greater the likelihood that someone unsavory is going to hijack your affiliate ID and substitute it for their own. If they’re truly bloodyminded, they could choose to bypass it altogether and simply cut you out of your hard earned commission.

So a variety of solutions have appeared over the years to make it harder for the bad guys to win. There are a number of free services that will cloak your link for you, like TinyURL, KlasLink, and others (some of which are paid services), which serve the dual purpose of hiding your ID and shortening a very long link into a tidy bit of more manageable code. While handy, surfers are becoming more familiar with them, and jump to the instant (and understandable) conclusion that clicking on one of these links is going to take them directly to a sales page. Unless their credit cards are already out of their wallets and poised for service, most people are going to choose to forego the sales pitch, and your persuasive copy will never have a chance to work its magic. 

There are also several small software programs that will cloak your link – of variable usefulness and stability. Although you can download them for free, you’re left with the same problem of not being able to customize the code to de-emphasize the fact that the link is a sales tool.

The best solution I’ve found is a bit of php code that will give you everything you want, with a single initial setup and no cost involved. You don’t even have to know anything about php coding. As long as you know how to upload a file, you’re gold. Here’s how to do it:

Begin by logging in to your host account. Create a directory/folder under your main domain name and call it “recommends” (or any variation you prefer; “likes,” “suggests,” etc.). Whatever you call this directory will be viewable by your visitors, so pick something pithy and upbeat.

Let’s say your domain name is http://marketersdream.com. In your FTP program or on your cpanel, whichever you’re using to access your site files, right click on marketersdream and select ‘create folder,’ then give it the name you’ve decided on. Let’s say you name it “recommends.”

Now you have a path that looks like this: http://marketersdream.com/recommends.

Let’s say you now want to promote a product called “winzip.” You create a directory under the recommends directory and call it “winzip.” Now you have a path like this: http://marketersdream.com/recommends/winzip.

Nearly done! Now all you need is an index.php file that redirects the user to your affiliate link. Here’s how you do that:

In Notepad, make a file and name it “index.php.” Here is all that should be in that file:

header(“Location: YOURCOMPLETEAFFILIATELINK”);
exit();
?>

Whatever the affiliate program you joined gave you as your unique affiliate link, just paste it over the capital letters above, making sure it includes the http:// part. If you wish to take the cloaking one step further, you can cloak your affiliate link with something like TinyURL, then paste THAT code over the capital letters. That way you ensure that your affiliate ID can’t be seen at any step during the redirection process.

So, in our example, you would paste your complete affiliate link for the “winzip” product over the capital letters in the code, save the file as index.php, then upload it into the http://marketersdream.com/recommends/winzip directory that you just created.

You’re finished. Now, whenever anyone clicks on the link http://marketersdream.com/recommends/winzip, they will be redirected to your affiliate page at Winzip. In future, with each new product you’re promoting, simply create a new folder under “recommends,” name it after the affiliate product, and upload the index.php file with the new affiliate link. Quick setup, easy solution, no cost. Just like it says on the box!

Work At Home Resources

1. Open a Clickbank affiliate account. Do a similar exercise with other such services. Commission Junction is another place where one can have an affiliate account. (Both these sites offer free affiliate registration.)

2. Choose a product that will sell. You do not need a website in this case. (You can also create your product – an e-book or software. Then you need to develop an one-page website about it. Ofcourse, you will have to write a sales copy for your product. Your sales copy will have to be keyword rich. Your desired keyword should appear: in the title of your page, in the page description, in the keyword metatag, in the headline of your page, in the first 90 words of your sales copy, in the beginning of every major paragraph or section of your sales copy. This process is called Search Engine Optimization of your web-page. It is important for search engines to find your page, even though you have not marketed it. Then register for a Paypal account – once again free. Put a Paypal button on your webpage.)

The above steps are basic before you can start marketing your affiliate product or your own product.

3. Post ads for your product on Classified Ads websites. There are hundreds of them. You can get them by searching for them on Google. Make sure you include the affiliate link to your product in the ad. Post to each of the sites. Do this everyday. This step is labor intensive, but it is free publicity for your product. These classified sites are on an average visited by 10,000,000 people per month. Potentially that would be the kind of traffic you can expect for your product, if you are consistent.

4. Register for a Opt-in email service for a lifetime price of $40. Through this service you can market your product through e-mail to millions of interested recipients every day of the month. Potentially you will be marketing to tens of millions of people every month and you will not be accused of spamming.

5. Posting to blogs is the next step in the free method of Internet Marketing. The question you have to answer is which blogs to post too. A free software available to Internet Marketers for this purpose is Comment Kahuna. This software brings up – based on your keywords – hundreds of blogs on your topic to which you can post to. The idea is to place your affiliate or website link in your signature which the software takes care of for you. Make your comments genuine. Do not just focus on placing your link. Add value to the blog.

6. The next step is to do a similar exercise with forums related to your keyword. Always follow posting rules. Add value to the forums.

7.Do article marketing through the numerous free article sites. You will get hordes of them if you search for them on Google. Follow the rules for writing as mentioned in their guidelines.
Place your textual links as often as you are allowed to in the article and in the resource box. Clearly, the article should be on the keyword which relates to your affiliate product. Make sure your article is sprinkled adequately with your keyword – in the title, in the body – at least five to six times, in the resource box, and in the keywords box. This will ensure that your article appears in search engine results, when that particular keyword is searched for. If your article is content rich, you will have repeat visitors.

These steps will bring you massive traffic, and if you are consistent, you will be able to convert this traffic into sales.

All the best to you in your affiliate/Internet marketing endeavor.

Having said all that let me assure you there are some easy tricks to make money on the internet. Each of these tricks will require that you know exactly what you are looking for and that you have some skills to pull them off. There are certain skills you need to make these tricks work for you. 

Just recently Ebay changed its policy so you can no longer sell digital products via their service. This put a lot of people out of business overnight. Some top Ebay marketers used a great trick to keep using this service by offering their products as physical products in the form of cd’s and dvd’s. To save even more time with this trick you can use a product fulfillment service to take care of everything for you.

This is great now because the change they made means there is a lot less competition than there used to be, thus giving you a much higher conversion rate. Just add a shipping and handling fee to your auctions and your all set.

Moving on, here is a neat trick to make money on the internet through the clickbank marketplace. Find a product that is selling well, this is one with a high gravity. Go grab yourself a domain name that has the name of the product and review it and install a wordpress blog on that domain. Hire someone to write 10 articles for you and add them to your blog embedded with your affiliate links. This is common practice for affiliate marketing, but here is a neat trick. Re-write those articles at least 50% and then submit them to article directories, include a bio box which sends people back to your website. You will find you can make money very quickly this way.

One last trick to make money on the internet is to join a CPA (cost per acquisition) program. Go ahead and signup for one and create an ebook full of relevant information about the CPA offer you want to promote. Add your ebook to as many free ebook directories as you can find. Inside your ebook have a statement saying that the book can be distributed or sold by anyone. This will create a viral effect and your ebook will be floating around all over the internet bringing you CPA cash for years to come.

What is involved here is to become an affiliate, or promoter, of an already existing product(s) and earn commissions from your work as the affiliate/promoter. The simplest way to do this is to write up a product review about a particular item, include a link, this would be your specific affiliate link, forwarding your potential customers to purchase this product, and earn your commission payments.

To select a good product you will need to take into consideration a couple of things:

1. Does the product fit your specific subject matter or ‘niche’?

2. Is the affiliate commission payout at least 50% for you?

3. How long will it take for you to receive your commission payment?

4. How are the affiliate commissions paid out(i.e. – by check, PayPal, etc.)?

A terrific place to begin your product affiliation search is through ClickBank. And, since CB also offers payments made via PayPal, it is a much more favorable choice among product creators. If you do not already have a ClickBank account for the purposes of being an affiliate, or ‘promoting their products’, then simply sign up for a free account from ClickBank .

Afterwards, begin searching through the ClickBank Marketplace to see which products you are interested in promoting. Don’t worry about where you will be promoting them, that will come later. For now, simply select a few products to get you started.

A good rule of thumb is to write up one product review at a time and add them to your list of product reviews day after day. This will give you better search engine ranking because you will be adding new content on a regular basis, and give your personal web site, or blog, wonderful, and helpful new content to your visitors daily. If, however, you cannot do this on a daily basis, then aim for every other day, or every 3 to 4 days to add a new product review.

Notice in the last paragraph I gave you the ‘wheres’ to list your product reviews? No? The answer is simple. . .On your own personal or business web site or online Blog. Your site does not have to consist only of product reviews, unless you have elected to set it up in this manner, but you should have at the very least a separate section created just for product reviews. And, it should be done for both ‘normal’ web sites and blogs.

Another great way to ’show off’ your product reviews is through your own online forum. Most cPanel web hosts offer ‘push button’ type forum set ups, so this should be easily done without incurring any additional costs.

Plus, if you don’t have your own web site that you can set up your own forums on, you can always find a forum that offers you a chance to post up your free product reviews on.

Now that you have the ‘whats’ and ‘wheres’ down, we’re left with the ‘hows’.

In order to write up an effective product review, you need to know what you’re talking about. Otherwise, no one will believe you and consider your reviews as ’sales pitches’. Of course, this IS what they are, but part of being a successful marketer is knowing how to finesse your audience. It’s not that you AREN’T being truthful, it’s that you need to write FOR your audience and THEIR needs.

Okay, so where can you find information for your product review at? Well, if the product creator has an affiliate program and they have taken the time, they will have pre-written materials you can use to help serve up an informative review. If not, go back to the main source, or the sales page and start scanning it for ideas you can incorporate into your product reviews.

This way, you still don’t have to pay out anything to get your hands on a copy of the product to write up a review about it and offer it to your visitors for free. It’s free to write, free to read, and free to be forwarded on to more detailed information(i.e. – the sales page). And, hopefully, you will be able to generate a sale or two from your product review!

Is this the ONLY way to use a product review? Nope! You can also create a ’special report’ consisting of just a few pages giving your personal opinions and praises to a particular product. Remember, the most effective product reviews are those that cater to the ‘WIIFM(What’s In It For Me)’ factor of your prospective customers.

Creating a ’special report’ is actually a really simple process. You write up your product review, pointing out the most important ‘why should I buy this?’ factors to your readers, using NotePad, WordPad, Open Office Writer, or any other word processing tool, convert it, once completed including your affiliate link(arguably the most important piece of the report ), into a PDF file and give it away to everyone who wants it. Now you have a ‘viral’ product review that will be spreading around as fast as people can give it away! And, a wonderful place to begin giving these away if you don’t have your own web site or online blog is through forums. Although, you will need a place to store your report for downloading. TradeBit offers a free account, as do MediaMax and File Lodge. Again, all the services mentioned above are free to use. So you still have paid nothing out of your pocket, and still don’t have to have your own web site. Pretty good, eh?

Here’s another idea. If you have your own ezine or newsletter, why not try sending out a product review to your subscribers every once in a while? You should try to avoid ’selling’ to them and instead ‘informing’ them of why this product is a great purchase in your opinion. If you are their ‘respected authority’ on the subject matter, then they will more than likely take the time to at least ponder your opinion and might even decide to purchase a copy of the product you are reviewing. And, if you happen to throw in some type of ’subscribers only’ bonus or discount, all the better for them. And, the more receptive they will be to your reviews. It happens all the time my friend. Believe it!

There are plenty of inventive ways to use the free product review to earn yourself some easy profits. Take some time to brainstorm and see what you can come up with.