This week’s making money online “Quick Tip” can help give you a much higher conversion rate when promoting affiliate products.
If you read my 2 previous posts on how to “Cloak” affiliate links (The Ultimate WP Affiliate Sales Tool and Simple Affiliate Cloaking Method) you know I am a big fan of cloaking affiliate links as you get a much higher conversion rate than leaving those big ugly URL’s that have your affiliate ID code displayed in them.
What works even better than those two methods at converting sales is registering a domain name for the sole purpose of promoting one particular affiliate product and forwarding the domain to your affiliate link.
Here is how it basically works. Let’s use one of my own domains for example. There is a product for making money online called Camera Dollars that has a really good conversion rate, and pays a whopping 75% commission. You earn $26.98 on each sale. They claim that 1 out of 10 people that visit their site purchases the course… which is incredible! The product is a course on how to make money with your camera by taking pictures and selling them online. You can imagine how popular this is nowadays with practically everyone owning a digital camera. Even though I have not tried selling any photos yet, I have purchased the course and it is really good. Someday I am sure I will try and sell some photos… but I am getting off track on what this post is actually about.
Since CameraDollars is a Clickbank product… it has a typical affiliate link (Hoplink) which takes visitors to the merchant site while tracking your affiliate id. Here is the hoplink for Camera Dollars:
http://YourClickBankNickName.camera.hop.clickbank.net.
So if I were promoting that particular product (which I am) I have a few options:
- I could just use my hoplink which would be http://dotspro.camera.hop.clickbank.net. It is not the prettiest link in the world, but it works.
- I could cloak the URL using one of the methods at the beginning of this post and it would end up looking something like: www.MakingMoneyOnline.com/cameradollars/ which is much nicer looking URL.
- But an even better way would be to register a domain and redirect it to my affiliate link (hoplink). So what I did was register the domain PhotoRiches.com and redirected the domain to my affiliate hoplink. So anytime someone goes to www.photoriches.com they are taken directly to my affiliate link, and if they make a purchase I make $26.98.
Now of the 3 methods above, the 3rd would obviously be the most expensive to implement, as you would have to register a new domain, as well pay for hosting for that domain. Now if you followed one of my earlier posts on “Never Pay for Premium Hosting Again” and implemented those strategies you would not worry about having to pay for hosting each time you register a new domain name. Also, as I mentioned before… this method definitely has a higher conversion rate than the other two and one sale would actually pay for the domain and hosting for year on a lot of sites.
Another cool thing about this method is it is much easier from a marketing standpoint online and off. Checkout this simple banner I just created to the right. A lot of affiliate banners that merchant’s offer for promotions have the merchants URL displayed right on the banner. Instead of clicking the banner, I know many people just type in the URL and they bypass the affiliate link resulting in no referral fee if they end up purchasing the product. With this banner… if a visitor clicks on it they will be taken to my affiliate link destination, as well as if they type in the URL. There is really no way to bypass my affiliate link as they do not know what the merchants URL actually is.
Imagine how great this will work for offline promotions as well. I could easily run inexpensive ads in newspapers, magazines, fliers, etc… that are extremely short and to the point. Here are just a couple examples of some simple ads:
————————————————————
Get Rich Taking Photos!
www.PhotoRiches.com
————————————————————
Got a Digital Camera? Learn How to
Make Money Taking Simple Photos!
www.PhotoRiches.com
————————————————————
I think you get the point. Those same ads could be run online in places like; Craigslist, Free Online Classifieds, etc…, as well as in your signature file on forums, in your emails, etc…. The more places you display it, the more chances you have of making money.
Now this post wasn’t designed to promote CameraDollars (even though it is a great product), it is to teach you another way to promote affiliate programs in general, and hopefully get much better conversions.
There are lots of big Internet Marketers that use this method and I notice most of them when registering a domain name usually choose something that is close to the merchants actual URL. An example would be if the merchant’s URL for their particular product is MagicalCashDonkey.com (which is a totally made up name)… you might want to register one of the following domains or something similar:
MagicalCashDonkey.net/org/biz/info/etc…
TheMagicalCashDonkey.com
GetMagicalCashDonkey.com
MagicalCashDonkeys.com
As you can see… they are all very close to what the original URL is, so when a potential customer uses one of those links, they probably wouldn’t even notice that the URL is slightly different than the one they are redirected to.
As for my domain PhotoRiches.com, it is actually quite a bit different than the product I am marketing, but the sales page is so good… it doesn’t really seem to make a difference to people.
So if there is an affiliate product (or several) out there that you really want to promote the heck out of… you might want to consider registering a domain specifically for promoting each product and redirect each domain to your affiliate link(s).
It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Sending traffic direcly to your...
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Extreme John on Tue, 15th Sep 2009 6:20 pm
I really hope everyone reads the third paragraph about 10 times, one of the biggest tip giveaways ever.
You can see your experience in this one brother.
Extreme John´s last blog ..Facebook Fan Page Mayhem
Doug Dillard on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 1:32 am
Thanks John! It definitely works… as it has made me a ton of money over the years. I am sure with your large domain collection, you probably have some domains sitting around that would work well to promote certain affiliate products too!
Samjien on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 6:55 pm
I agree with John. It really pays to be in your blog Doug. I learn a lot of new ideas. I never thought that would be possible. You rock Doug. And yeah, it may be expensive but the cut is worthed since you still get the high profit. Thanks for the tutorial on how to cloak affiliate links.It will really help a lot.
Samjien´s last blog ..Good Content and Traffic Makes A Blog Make Money
Paul Hancox on Fri, 18th Sep 2009 5:31 am
@John, are you referring to the bit where he actually BOUGHT the product? I always think it helps to own the product you’re promoting – you can talk about it with more authority.
@Doug, the domain thing is a great tip. Thanks!
Paul Hancox, copySnips´s last blog ..How To Eliminate Objections Using Headlines…
Sahil Kotak on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 3:48 am
Hey Doug,
Thanks for explaining it perfectly. I also agree affiliate link cloaking is very much important because some of the viewer just takes up the domain name not our referral ID.
I also use one wp plugin for it.
Sahil Kotak´s last blog ..Find Best Paying Affiliates Programs
Doug Dillard on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 8:08 am
Thanks Sahil… I am glad it makes sense, as I always worry when I write explanations on how things work in posts… if everyone is going to understand.
Yes, cloaking affiliate links definitely helps!
Thanks for stopping by and commenting too! I hope we see more of you around here
Sahil Kotak on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 10:40 am
Yeah Doug,
Affiliate cloaking is important, Which Plugin you use for cloaking your links? Is it Ninja Affiliates? Or any other.
BTW: I will be here only for posting comments and sharing.
Thanks
Sahil Kotak´s last blog ..How To Increase Your Alexa Rankings
Doug Dillard on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 10:53 am
We use Ninja Affiliate and Max Banner Ads Pro to cloak links on this site and our other Wordpress sites… and a simple PHP redirect code on our non-blog sites.
Isaac | GoBlogger on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 6:29 am
Truly great post Doug. But it made me think. Online marketers hide / cloak their affiliate links because visitors tend to avoid affiliate links. I don’t know, both sides doesn’t sound right.
I also don’t like that 75% commission because it’s not too good for the buyers. What if we buy a car at the price of $10,000 yet the $7,500 is not for the car but only for the person selling it. $2,500 is enough for the car actually. It doesn’t feel right.
But I know that happy visitors don’t avoid our affiliate links.
Isaac | GoBlogger´s last blog ..What We Can Learn from Inaccurate Titles
Doug Dillard on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 9:07 am
Thanks Issac. There are a bunch of reasons to cloak affiliate links, but the main reason is it just looks much better. I believe most “Internet Marketers” try and bypass affiliate links is because they want to see if there is a way to save themselves some money. I know lots of marketers that try and see if they are able to sign themselves up first as an affiliate and then try buy the product through their own link. Most affiliate programs frown on this… but people find ways to get around it.
But for the average Internet user, most have no clue what an affiliate link is, but they might get nervous seeing some long ugly affiliate link… because they have no idea where that will take them. But is they see a nice pretty domain name, for example… PhotoRiches.com… there is a much more likely chance they will visit that link. Plus, as in my example… it works SO MUCH BETTER when trying to market products offline.
As for a merchant paying 75% commission (which really isn’t what this post is about) being a bad thing… I don’t see that at all. Your car example is actually not a very good comparison, as the markup does not need to be as high because the product is so much more expensive. Plus dealers make a lot of their money from deals (bonuses and things) they have in place with the manufacturers, so again they don’t have to have as large of margins… as well as the addons and financing of the car brings in a lot of additional revenue for the car dealership… and don’t forget the service and parts departments.
There are tons of things we purchase everyday where the manufacture gets way less than 25% of the products selling price.
The reason many online merchants can pay such high commissions on digital products is because there are no middlemen at all. Before you purchase most products offline… there are many people that have to be paid before the product actually gets to you from the original manufacturer.
With online digital products it’s just the manufacturer (the product creator), you (the affiliate) and the customer. Now the product creator has the choice of what percentage of commissions they want to give away. Paying a 75% commission encourages more affiliates to want and promote their products as affiliates ultimate goal is to make as much money as possible. So if an affiliate were faced with 2 or more similar products (in quality and sales material), but one paid 50% commission and the other 75%… the affiliate would probably choose the one that paid more.
One of the major goals of product creators is actually to build a list of buyers, where they can sell them more products year after year… so making a smaller percentage by giving away large amount of the profits to affiliates on that first product is not a big deal at all. I actually have see many Internet Marketers giving away 100% commissions on products, as their main goal was just to get a subscriber list of paying customers.
I do agree that online digital products are probably priced a little high, but people keep buying them, so I don’t see any reason for the creators to lower their prices, as most smart marketers test different prices to see at what price products will sell for.
Sorry for the long comment Issac. I probably should have made this a post
Isaac | GoBlogger on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 9:16 pm
You don’t have to apologize to me Doug, this is your own post
I appreciate you write long response for me. It is a gray area where many opinions may exist.
Isaac | GoBlogger´s last blog ..What We Can Learn from Inaccurate Titles
Lee Ka Hoong on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 7:42 am
Doug these tips really teach me something new, cloaking affiliate links can really increase the click through rates and sales. The 3rd method would be great and I see your photoriches redirects very well, I clicked it and I thought that’s your site, until I see the URL of the page. lol!
Anyway, that’s a great tips for me today! Thanks Doug!
Regards,
Lee
Doug Dillard on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 9:10 am
Thanks Lee! I am glad I could teach you something new
Asswass on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 9:04 am
Hey Doug, definitely those are some great tips. I guess that any affiliate marketer could learn a lot from this post. BTW the banner is an awesome idea.
Asswass´s last blog ..Rule #8 of Radical Marketing: Be Careful with your Marketing Mix
Doug Dillard on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 9:22 am
Thanks Alfredo. This method is definitely one of my favorites
As for the banner… I hate it when merchants that run affiliate programs display their URL on their banners and other promotional material, as I think many merchants are hoping people will just type in the web address and bypass the affiliate so they can make more money. With this method… it is really hard to bypass the affiliate… who deserves to earn a commission if the customer finds out about the product from them and end up purchasing it. That is why they have affiliate programs in the first place!
JIm Hardin on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 5:17 pm
Awesome tip Doug! I haven’t actually purchased a domain name to promote a product but it sounds like the a great idea. I can see where it is a better way to promote a product cause you can actually get a domain name that has to do with the product. Quite honestly you can pick up domain names pretty cheap so thats not really an issue.
JIm Hardin´s last blog ..How to get the Most Out of your Plugins
Doug Dillard on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 10:31 am
Thanks Jim. Yes… domains are so cheap, it really isn’t an issue for most.
JIm Hardin on Wed, 23rd Sep 2009 9:59 am
Yeah I have to say for fun I bought a domain name for $0.89 cents. Sure its a .info domain, but I thought what have I got to loose. But it is really pretty cheap way to try things out and see if they work. I think I paid more for a candy bar at the vending machine at work.
JIm Hardin´s last blog ..5 Free Ways to Drive Traffic to your Blog
earningstep on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 6:12 pm
yeah… this is what i experienced by myself… and absolutely true. cloaking the link just did well .. this is really nice tips from doug
earningstep´s last blog ..Make money with Awesome CPA network – Directleads CPA network
Blake @ Props Blog on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 9:25 am
Great tips about cloaking affiliate links. I see cloaking as a two way street. I think it is a useful for making the link look pretty and keep people from skipping over your commission.
On the flip side, I think cloaking to trick someone into clicking a link is unethical and deceptive. As long as you make it clear the link they are clicking is affiliate related, I have no problems with it.
Blake @ Props Blog´s last blog ..3 Reasons Why You Should Love Free Anonymous Proxy Servers
Doug Dillard on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 10:25 am
Hi Blake… thanks for stopping by and visiting, as well as leaving a comment… we do appreciate it!
I hear a lot of people say that not telling people a link is an “Affiliate Link” is being unethical and deceptive. I do not feel that way at all.
I think it is unethical and deceptive to recommend an affiliate product that you have not purchased yourself… and then market it like you have.
I think it is unethical and deceptive to recommend an affiliate product that you have purchased and really don’t like, but tell your readers it is great just so you can make a few bucks!
But if you really like a product and would have no problem recommending it to your family and friends… I see absolutely no problem at all cloaking your affiliate link, and I can see no reason to let readers know it is an affiliate link.
There is only ONE thing that can come from mentioning that a link is an affiliate link (other then them purchasing the product). Well a couple of things… but with the same result.
- If you mention the link is an affiliate link it might cause the person to think this guy is only trying to make money from me and not even look at the product, so you “earn no referral fee”, and they miss out on a great product.
- If you mention the link is an affiliate link it might cause the person to skip your link and go straight to the website and purchase the product directly, so you “earn no referral fee”.
The people that have the problems with you not mentioning a link is an affiliate link are usually the people that would never purchase a product through your affiliate link anyway.
I have no problem with sites that mention in their “About Us” page or “Disclaimer” page (or somewhere on the site) that many of the links on their site might contain affiliate links… and I actually think we will do that on this site.
But my main point here is:
It is unethical and deceptive to recommend products to just make a few bucks… with no regards to your readers.
But if you are recommending something that you really believe in… I see no reason to tell someone that this product is awesome and I really think you should buy it… and by the way, if you do I will make $50 too!
Ricky Buchanan on Fri, 25th Sep 2009 4:00 am
I disagree very much that revealing a link is an affiliate can only lead to less sales. I started putting a note on each post on ATMac which contains an affiliate link and both clicks and sales have increased by several hundred percent.
I don’t think cloaking disclosed links is inherently bad, although I don’t bother doing it, but I have a problem with not disclosing. No matter how impartial we try to be, earning comisions does change how you treat a product.
I am interested in the domains as redirections idea – it sounds useful – do you just use 301/302 redirections, or something fancier?
Ricky Buchanan´s last blog ..Unusually Creative Stands for iPhone/iPod Touch
Jared P Little on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 10:07 am
Doug, very great advice and as far as the commission go… it seems pretty much everything online for information products starts at 50 percent then goes up depending on who is offering it. So when your everyone is offering 50 percent and some offers you 75% that helps you attract more people to market it.
Some will even do 100% just to get people promoting it and to build their list. I wouldn’t feel guilty about it unless it was not a great product.
Jared P Little´s last blog ..My 1st Phone Interview – A Real Life Success Story
Deneil Merritt on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 12:09 pm
Redirecting the domain to a product is one of my favorite ways to cloak an affiliate link. Like you said, there’s no way around going through the affiliate link.
Deneil Merritt´s last blog ..Membership Site Update
Sire on Thu, 17th Sep 2009 9:05 pm
Hey Doug, interesting post mate. I’m pretty sure that I may have mentioned on your other post that I don’t hide my affiliate links, or though I did on one particular, now defunct campaign.
I just wrap it in html code so the only way you can see the link is if you hover your mouse over it. I know that webmasters and such do this to see if it’s an affiliate link, but am wondering if the average Joe does, especially as it’s the average Joe who is the one that is more likely to purchase the product. Depending on what the product is I suppose.
Sire´s last blog ..WassupBlog Alive And Kicking After Transfering To BlueHost