Internet Business Blog

Affiliate Link Tracker is one of my newest developments and as the name suggests, it’s a tool that affiliate marketers will find very useful as it answers that perennial question, “How can I secure affiliate links?”

If you aren’t already using redirects in order to protect your affiliate links then, well, this post isn’t here to try and convince you by selling the benefits such as:

• Easier to remember URLs.
• Friendlier looking URLs.
• Hides your raw affiliate link from those who would not let you have your deserved commission.

All I can say is that from my own experience as both an affiliate and a consumer, purposeful-looking URLs that redirect to the destination page are more effective at attracting clicks.

One of the most commonly used methods for creating redirects is to either use a HTML or JavaScript redirect that effectively load one page in order to trigger the redirect to another, but these aren’t ideal as web browsers without JavaScript enabled won’t be able to redirect to the destination URL and will instead potentially leave the user facing a blank page.

Another commonly used method of hiding affiliate links is to use a third party service such as TinyURL, but the obvious downside is that you then become dependent upon them providing that service. If anything should happen to that service then you could be left up the creek without a paddle.

Other, better methods that allow you to retain control involve setting a redirect through htaccess or using PHP to send HTML headers to the carry out the redirect. These work well for a small number of links, but because there’s no management system in place, managing a large number of links can become unwieldy. Having to upload or edit files on your server might also become a bit of a chore.

Here’s where Affiliate Link Tracker steps in to provide a better solution for creating, managing and tracking redirected links.

Affiliate Link Tracker:

• is hosted on your own domain to provide you with full control.
• It removes the need to upload files for every new redirect.
• Protects your referral income by hiding your raw affiliate links from commission thieves.
• Reports on which links are being clicked, when they’re clicked, which web pages they’re being clicked on and by whom.
• Allows you to easily find and edit existing redirects - handy if merchants change their link structure.

Here’s a short video demonstrating just how easy it is to create a new redirect and quickly change it to be a framed redirect to hide the destination URL.

Get Your Copy

Visit the Affiliate Link Tracker website to download your copy. For a short period of time, you can claim a 50% discount using the coupon code, IMFOOL.

If you haven’t yet gotten control of your affiliate links then you’re leaving yourself open to lost time, money and opportunity.

If you’re using the likes of TinyURL to cloak your affiliate links then your income from those links is genuinely in the hands of a third party whom you have no control. If they decide to shut up shop or start charging for their service then you can either pay up or go back, change every instance of those links and that’s a tough thing to do when they’re in a PDF on someone’s computer.

Perhaps you’re already using redirects. That’s good, but are you tracking how they’re used? Do you know which of your links attracts the most clicks? Do you know if your affiliate links work best in certain emails or in certain positions on your web page layout?

The point I’m getting at is that I’m looking for beta testers for a new tool I’ve developed, which will allow you to become a much more effective and profitable affiliate. Participants in the beta test will receive a time-limited version of the product to install and test. Active participants will get free lifetime licenses.

Requirements are:

• You must have a website with PHP and MySQL available
• You agree to provide me with some constructive feedback! Seems obvious, but too many people sign up for testing and don’t feed back.

If you’re interested in taking part and getting something that could increase your affiliate income for free then get in touch.

No more volunteer beta testers, thanks, but if you’re thinking about a publishing a review or offering a special deal for your mailing list then get in touch.

Text Link Ads have quietly switched from using TinyURLs as affiliate links with a JavaScript-based solution that obfuscates your raw affiliate URLs. I say quietly because I’ve not yet received any communication about it from Text Link Ads informing me about the changeover, but they’re right there in the TLA control panel as graphical banners, text links and RSS buttons.

To an affiliate, obfuscation can be a useful tool as it disguises raw affiliate links and prevents hijacking (when people remove or replace your referral ID before making a purchase meaning you don’t get any credit for the sale), but this particular implementation seems pointless as the raw affiliate URL is displayed in plain text in the web browser’s status bar when you hover over one of these new links.

Up until a few days ago, your TLA affiliate links were presented to you as TinyURLs. Now, logging into your Text Link Ads affiliate section, you’ll be presented with a variety of different options for where your affiliate links actually lead to. Choices include the TLA home page, $100 promotion page or the package details page of one of your own inventory websites.

Whilst this might seem like an improvement, the format of the links restrict them to being displayed in web pages only. I can’t figure out why an option for a plain text link allowing the affiliate some modicum of control has been omitted. This new JavaScript-based system isn’t email friendly, has to be displayed on a web page, doesn’t prevent hijacking and obviously isn’t going to work very well in a non-JavaScript environment.

Here’s the code for a typical, new-styled TLA affiliate link:

<script type="text/javascript">
function affiliateLink(str){ str = unescape(str); var r = '';
for(var i = 0; i < str.length; i++) r +=
String.fromCharCode(7^str.charCodeAt(i));document.write(r);}
affiliateLink('%3Bf%27ouba%3A%25ossw%3D%28%28ppp%29sb%7Fs*
knil*fct%29dhj%28tsfusbuXlns%29wow8uba%3A40127%259%23677%27
ni%27AUBB%27Knilt%3B%28f9');
</script>

I would have used one of my new TLA affiliate links in this post, but they don’t appear to display properly in WordPress either however, I did manage to extract the link by right-clicking on the above when it’s displayed in a browser and copying the link.

If you fancy $100 of free text link advertising, give Text Link Ads a try.

If you had to update all of your old style TLA links on your WordPress blog to the TinyURL format using SQL then it’s time to start controlling your own links with your own redirects rather than relying on third party services.

Technorati Tags: Text Link Ads, TLA, Affiliate Marketing

Adblock Plus is currently the one of a number of Firefox add-on recommended by mozilla.org and it’s not difficult to see why. As well as being faced with potentially thousands of advertisements in their daily lives, website visitors also face an increasing amount of distraction from core content as more websites become monetised.

Using some form of ad blocking software can make for a more pleasant browsing experience, but there are those who take issue with having the ads on their websites being blocked whilst their content is freely consumed. Whilst I’ve participated in discussions about visitors viewing ads as recompense for the webmaster’s efforts, I hadn’t seen anyone actually take action to discourage it until now.

Danny Carlton has taken a very active stance against ads on his websites being blocked by users of the Adblock Plus plugin. In fact, Danny has taken it even further than just blocking these users and blocked all Firefox users completely from his websites.

If you’re an Adblock Plus user, how would you feel about being blocked from a website that opposed your blocking of their ads?

Try www.articlewagon.com in your Adblocking Firefox browser and you’ll be presented with the following instead of the regular website content.

This page cannot be displayed because ad blocking software has been detected.

I can appreciate the argument against ad blockers, but I also appreciate how much they can improve user experience. I’ll admit that I use the Adblock Plus Firefox add-on. Not only do I find it improves my general browsing experience by removing the more annoying ads, but it also prevents me from accidentally clicking on my own ads. There are even a few websites for which if it wasn’t for Adblock Plus I wouldn’t be able to bear them at all.

As an ad publisher, does it bother me that people might be evading ads shown on my websites? No, because I don’t rely on ads being seen in any way. I am a Google AdSense publisher, but I’m not dependent upon the income it brings in.

Let’s not forget that there are other forms of advertising that aren’t as intrusive, aren’t as easily blocked and aren’t rendered useless if they were to be blocked. Take Text Link Ads for example, the ‘ads’ are simply text-based links with no reference made to any central website (such as the TLA website itself) so they can’t be blocked by looking for a common denominator unless all links are blocked. Even if they were able to be blocked, they would still be visible to search engine spiders and still provide value to the advertisers in the form of link popularity.

Since the AdBlock detection process relies on JavaScript, simply disabling JavaScript using the Web Developer add-on for Firefox renders the blocking harmless and allows the visitor to view any pages that use such countermeasures.

So is ad blocking akin to stealing? Are people whose browsers are unable to render adverts (e.g. they use a screen reader because they’re disabled in some way) thieves because they consume content without ads?

I understand the concept of going into a shop and paying for goods, but if a website doesn’t make it clear that the non-blocking of ads is a requirement for usage then what’s a visitor to do? If visitors aren’t first made to agree to view ads as compensation for content consumption, are they really stealing when they don’t?

Personally, I think that preventing people who use adblocking software from visiting a website is short-sighted. Webmasters should be looking to diversify their website monetisation methods so that they withstand the shortcomings of each individual method and bolster each other.

Do you use an ad blocker? How do you feel about stealing from people? If you’re an advertiser or an ad publisher, how do you feel about people deliberately blocking your ads?

Technorati Tags: Danny Carlton, Adblock Plus, Google AdSense, personal crusade

A couple of days ago, I started developing a new website that’s covering a topic where there’s plenty of money being spent and lots of interest. It’s a popular industry, but this particular segment of the market isn’t too saturated with existing competition. I’m thinking it’ll be relatively easy to obtain good search engine rankings for as this type of site is always popular and very linkable.

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