http://joannasbonusandreviews.com/blogeasyredirect
Further to my post on url shorteners no longer supporting Clickbank affiliate links, I began searching for a paid tool that would sort out this rather pressing problem.
All my links were turning to dust and I was being forced to leave the uncloaked link out in the open where people could see it was an affiliate and also leaving it vulnerable to internet miscreants.
So when I got an email that talked about three reasons why marketers should never use free url shorteners and offered a cloaking redirect device, I was all ears.
1) A lot of ISPs block them because they often collect your data and share it with other sites. ISPs don’t like that!
2) You don’t control the service, so if they go out of business all your links quit working overnight – as had been the case for me.
3) Those URLs you shorten are impossible to remember and/or edit later. Now that’s something I hadn’t really thought of but is very true.
But there was more! With mobile being the in thing for 2012, I was making sure that all my affiliate sites were accessible from smartphones. The problem was that the sales letters were definitely not mobile friendly, so I was building my own sales pages and then linking to the Clickbank order form which is mobile ready. Unfortunately, in so doing, my affiliate link was being scraped off, leaving the whole thing a pointless exercise on my part.
So the second sales letter I got asked if I had ever wanted to promote something but NOT send traffic to the sale page of the product you’d like to promote?
When they talked about the new script that would allow me to create ‘stealth’ redirects that would retain my affiliate link, I really started to take notice.
Because there was more! The script could make QR codes showing the new link and there was also a way to do promo redirects. Hence the little advert you saw before this post loaded.
When I went to the site, I liked that there was no sales letter, it just did what it said on the tin. My only beef is that when I uploaded the plugin via ftp, the instructional video missed off one vital instruction. Your hosting has to be set up so that files are on a 777 permission not 755 – they have to be read and write permissible for the ersadmin script to work.
Here’s a video that explains how the Easy Redirect Script works very simply.
Check it out and see what you think!
Tags: affiliate url cloak
I’ve been looking at WordPress Mobile Website Designs for a while. I had a great one which came as a plug in but it fought all the time with my theme.
WordPress Mobile Themes
So I was very excited when I watched the webinar for WPMobile Pro.
These are WordPress Mobile Themes that you can load up onto any WordPress installation to create a beautiful mobile friendly website.
I watched them produce three mobile sites during a 20 minute slot in their webinar. It really was click and drag stuff with graphics provided to customise the basic templates and the option to create your own which could be resized by the theme to fit nicely into the new websites.
It allows you to go out to business owners, show them how their current site looks on mobile and build them a credible, aesthetically pleasing mobile site in minutes on the dot mobi version of their domain. If they don’t yet have a website, then it can be built on the domain of their choice.
The guys in the webinar seemed to think that an initial set up payment and then a monthly rental was the way to go in terms of payment, turning this into a nice little earner because you could get your money back with just one customer.
If you’re looking for easy to use templates that produce fabulous looking WordPress mobile themes, check out WPMobile Pro.
I have been using Link Vehicle on various blog sites for some months now and the last two months has seen me bank over $100 each month in return.
It’s an SEO Advertising company which finds suitable websites upon which to place back links for their advertisers so that they can increase their ranking on the organic listings. The advertising companies pay LinkVehicle to find such synergistic places and they, in turn, pay the owners of the websites upon which those anchor text link ads are placed.
As a blogger, the idea is that you register your website with Link Vehicle and advise where you will be happy to show the text links ads – front page, every page, specifically named pages. Your site will then be rated and you will be told what value they place on a link on your site. It tends to be the case that sites which have earned a Page Rank of 1 are worth $10, PR2 equates to $20, PR3 =$30 and so on up the scale.
You can set it up so that the links are placed automatically but I’ve not been able to get that system to work myself on WordPress and I don’t know anyone else who has using that format either. This means that Link Vehicle notify me whenever there is a link waiting to be uploaded, I decide whether I want to have it on my site and put it into the sidebar as either a widget or use the link widget to make a categorised link. They will supply you with the anchor text that they want to show on the site and the link to which it should forward when clicked.
My main observation is that there do seem to be an awful lot of porn sites using it but that is a very lucrative market.
If an advertiser decides they want to remove their ad, LinkVehicle notify you so you can remove the link from your site.
Payments are made monthly. It started slow but has been building nicely across several sites that I own.
If you want to make a nice little earner that only requires you to maintain the ranking on your own website – which you are probably doing anyway, visit LinkVehicle
Tags: link-vehicle
After the shock of my discovery that Shrink My Link had closed without any notification whatsoever, I scrabbled around frantically trying to find another url shortener to fill the breach.
My usual port of call these days is always bitly but every time I tried to set up a link, I got this message:
And it was the same on goo.gl
It’s going to make affiliate marketing somewhat tougher if you can’t use these shorteners and you want to cloak your link for protection from those who might steal it.
Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve been on here – I’ve just been so busy!
And it’s all thanks to a fabulous package that I bought called Mobile Local Fusion.
MLF gives you the ability to make the most of the huge number of opportunities within your own neighbourhood through Google Places and Mobile Marketing.
Local business owners are scared of the internet and are still relying on ever dwindling returns from traditional methods of advertising like the Yellow Pages.
They are like rabbits in the headlights when on the receiving end of calls from the online versions of these local directories and are quickly persuaded to part with thousands of dollars worth of cash for an online ad that relies on a potential customer clicking through from the search engine results page to the local listing directory and from there to your website.
That’s at least one click too many.
MLF helps you to get those business owners’ websites ahead of the local listing directories in the SERPs and gives you the skills to market both yourself and those new clients for markets based on PCs and mobile. You can show them better visible results quickly and for far less expenditure.
Mobile marketing is the future. Smart phones are about to become much cheaper because of the opportunities for the network providers to get in as affiliates for the ‘pay on your phone’ apps. It won’t be long before they’re almost giving the things away just to get people signed up to their service.
When I first realised that mobile and local were where it was happening, I looked at a couple of products, both of which were around the $500 mark but then I saw Ryan Deiss advertising Mobile Local Fusion. Laura Betterly is brilliant. She over-delivers on so many levels for a product that is under $100. The basic pack comes with 10 modules of easy to understand instruction and four weekly coaching calls which can go on for several hours until everyone’s questions are answered. Then you join her Insider’s Club for a monthly payment if you want additional access to Laura.
Local SEO is where it’s at and there are plenty of customers to go around. Combine it with Kate Buck’s Let’s Get Social and you have the perfect complement to give an all-round internet service that will stay in vogue for the foreseeable future. Social Share is what underpins your local search engine optimisation and mobile marketing. Kate is also from Ryan Deiss’s stable and her program gave me the confidence to start talking to local business owners in the first place. It was how I made my first checks.
Sure, I don’t make the proverbial six-figure salary yet but my customer base is growing every month and those customers come by referral because Kate and Laura have given me the skills to do a good job and build a lasting business.
What are you waiting for? Go watch the explantory video and sign up now!
Well, I wasn’t too impressed to click on one of my affiliate links and find this. Click on the image to reveal the full text.
Fortunately, in this case I only needed to change the link that was forwarding from my site to the landing page of the product but I am sure there are links scattered over the internet through my article marketing campaigns which are now going to a page like this and have now stopped making me money.
Not impressed!
Really loving this new SmallBiz theme from Expand2Web
Click here to visit Expand2Web LLC.
Tags: smallbiz-wordpress-theme
I had an interesting situation with Commission Junction recently.
I set up my account with them at the beginning of the year and got a couple of sales. However, the minimum amount for withdrawal was $25 and I had not reached that so I was unable to withdraw.
With my other affiliate sites, this is not a problem, I just wait until I have made enough commissions to reach the threshold for withdrawal. Sometimes this can take up to a year with long spells without sales.
So, I continued to send traffic to my links – as evidenced by the summaries on CJ’s site even though there were no actual sales – and, in October, I got a big gig with one of my suppliers. Logging into my account to sort out some more banners, I discovered that my account had been discontinued without any notification to me.
But worse, any monies I had made were now forfeit as fees.
It would seem that in the small print of their contract, CJ reserve the right to close accounts and charge a fee if there have been no sales for six months. If there is still money in the account after the first month’s fees, they can then charge you again the next month until whatever monies are in the account are depleted.
When I complained, they said that I should have withdrawn my money when it became apparent that I would have no sales over a six month period. However, it quite clearly stated that there was a minimum amount before withdrawal was allowed so, with these conflicting instructions and the fact that I had not even been notified that action by them was imminent, they have agreed to reopen my account and give me the opportunity to withdraw the money or try to get some more sales to reach the threshhold.
To be fair, once I had made the complaint, the enquiry was handled efficiently and speedily in my favour.
What really galls is that, in the meantime, I do not know how much money I lost in commissions from the big gig with my supplier because my account was no longer active.
Is it really worth the time and effort to set up all the new banners for the continuation of the big gig now that the big push has gone?
This is one of the reasons that I do not like being an affiliate marketer. Completely in the hands of some of these big boys.
Anyway, I just thought other marketers should be aware of this possibility. If it looks as if you are going to have gone four or five months without a sale, withdraw your money and close your Commission Junction account.
Tags: commission-junction
It took nearly three months for us to regain the website url that we originally set up with Opportunity Avenue and Blackwire.
Again, it did not help that we were not totally familiar with the process of transferring a domain from one registrar to another but the Blackwire customer service was, as usual, pretty poor.
Even though I put the transfer in the hands of GoDaddy, our domain ended up being stuck with Blackwire for a further 60 days because their systems did not match up to the instructions we were given.
Fortunately for us, GoDaddy are silghtly more organised than Blackwire and agreed to refund the cost of the original transfer so that we could try again after the 60 day lock-down had elapsed.
Tags: blackwire, Opportunity Avenue
CNN is now reporting that Facebook traffic had passed Google and in a hurry!
My friend Ryan Deiss predicted this in January and man was he ever right.
Now, Ryan has massed the largest panel of Facebook experts alive today for a live Facebook Bootcamp this Friday.
Click here to see all the details:
You can grab your share of millions of clicks from Facebook in 2011 by hopping on this Bootcamp.
I’ll be there, I hope you’ll join me. It’s actually going to get me out of going shopping on Friday HA!
Join me. Register here:
Have a great Holiday,
- Joanna Cake
Tags: facebook-webinar