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How To Hide Your Affiliate Links In PDF Files by Nelson Tan
In this article by Satyajeet Hattangadi, you would have read about some ways to hide your affiliate links, but how do you hide them in a Word document or PDF files? It is not possible to use services like tinyurl.com that randomly generate encrypted links and put these links in a portable file. The virtual 'association' between an encrypted link and the actual affiliate link would have been broken, making this method ineffective. But there is one simple way: create a blank web page on your website that automatically redirects with your affiliate link. The steps go like this: 1) On your web server create a new directory for the product you are promoting. For this example let's name it 'google'. 2) Here is the exact HTML you would use to create the redirect page: <html> 3) Save the new redirect page in this new directory and call it 'index.htm'. That's it! The following link will automatically redirect you to Google's home page: http://www.yourwebsite.com/google, and this is the URL you can safely promote in any types of media, be they e-books, websites, e-mails etc. Note that the above codes use Google as an example. All google.com URLs are where you should place your affiliate links. Name your title tags and link labels where appropriate. Let's say you were promoting the Google Cash e-book. You would create a directory called 'googlecash' that would look like this when typed in http://www.yourwebsite.com/googlecash. Your redirect page for your Google Cash affiliate link would be saved as 'index.htm' and placed in your 'googlecash' directory. In a PDF file, your affiliate link cannot be revealed, and the redirect link is fail-safe regardless of where the PDF file may be. Just create a page like this for each affiliate program you want to link to. It won't take you long to set each link up once you get going. Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Create Your Online Profits with the RIGHT Products, Environment and Mindset!
Affiliate marketing is one tough business. Everyone online today is looking to make or save money in any way they can. In the good old days when Internet Marketing was in its infancy, most of the people who clicked on your affiliate links used to purchase without a second thought...but now as times are getting tougher, and visitors getting more cynical, you'll be amazed at the number who won't! Just one flaw in a system and you will find dozens of unscrupulous people waiting to exploit it. Same goes for affiliate commission tracker systems. People who know how to manipulate the system will replace your affiliate ID with theirs and 'hijack' your commissions. Most affiliate links are some form or the other of http://www.thesite.com/?YOURID. Where your affiliate ID is passed as a parameter. A thief has to simply change the "YOURID" part to "HISID" to put your money in his pocket. In other cases, there are visitors to your site who simply can't stand the thought of you 'making money off them' so they bypass you by simply chopping off the end of your affiliate link that contains your ID. Instead of buying from http://www.thesite.com/?YOURID, the bypasser will simply "chop off" the affiliate ID at the end and simply buy from the plain URL http://www.thesite.com/...without your affiliate ID attached! Bam! You just got cheated out of your rightful commission. Studies have shown that this phenomenon causes about 30% lost sales. By following some of these simple tips you will be able to, if not all, at least confuse most hijackers and, in many cases, often disarm them completely. You might notice I said most and not all. This is because if the hijacker is well versed at HTML and JavaScript he will be able to eventually get to your affiliate link. However, most hijackers are just opportunists who will only act if they see an easy buck. The simplest way to hide your affiliate links is using a JavaScript redirect page. This is where you hide your affiliate link in a page on your site using a simple JavaScript that redirects people to your affiliate link. This way your 'naked' affiliate link is not exposed in your actual e-mail messages and e-zine ads, and people still get redirected to the true affiliate link. One possible drawback of this method is that some affiliate programs, like ClickBank for example, expose the affiliate link along with your ID in the browser address bar. So if the viewer is eagle-eyed he will notice that he's been redirected through an affiliate link. A safer method to hide your affiliate links is using a zero-frame or 'invisible' frame that masks the affiliate link by making it appear you are sending people to a page on your website. In reality, you are actually sending them to your affiliate link. This technique is also used by many domain redirection service sites. Unfortunately the opportunist can view the source of the page. From there he can know that you've loaded an affiliate link. The solution is to use JavaScript encryption to scramble up the page code. Even though there isn't a 100% perfect solution to this problem, if you want to get paid more often through your affiliate links, make sure it's not obvious you're referring people to an affiliate link. As long as they can't see that it's an affiliate link, the possibility of you getting stiffed of your commission is lowered. If you are looking for a tool that lets you do all this plus earn affiliate commissions even from those folk who don't click your affiliate link, then do check out Covert Affiliate. Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center where you can download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts!
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