Internet Business Blog

Over on the right-hand column, you might notice I’ve rearranged some of the content boxes and added a new one called, Share the Love.

This new content box allows you to buy links on this very blog for just $5! That’s $5 for traffic, link popularity, link juice, link love, whatever you want to call it.

Only a maximum number of 10 links will be shown at any one time so when link number 11 comes in, link 1 will be bumped off the list (FIFO).

Thanks to Gary for supplying the EZ Linkz script.

In response to Paul’s question about using Affiliate Link Tracker for links from different website, I’ve put together a brief demo video showing how you can use groups to organise links in meaningful ways.

With a single installation of Affiliate Link Tracker, you could redirect all of your links and refer to them wherever you like (the redirects will, of course, only on the domain you install the script on).

The 50% offer is still good. Visit here, place an order and during the checkout enter the coupon, IMFOOL, to claim your discount.

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.

The Chances are you already know what Camtasia Studio is. Just in case you don’t, it’s a screen recording, editing and production suite that lets you create multimedia presentations for a multitude of platforms.

Camtasia Studio is especially popular with Internet marketers who use it for everything from creating training videos to delivering sales pitches, but you don’t have to be one in order to benefit from using it. For example, screen recordings make it very easy to submit bug reports or ask for technical assistance. Instead of struggling trying to put the rights words together, just record what happens on your screen, upload the video and email a link to your support representative.

Bundled with December’s edition of PC Plus magazine (issue 262) is a free license for Camtasia Studio version 3. The latest version is 5, but version 3 is more than adequate for most needs.

If you intend to buy version 5 then you’ll be pleased to know that you can upgrade to it from this version 3 for less than the cost of buying version 5. So that’s v3 for free and v5 for about half-price!

Just a quick heads-up on a Ruby on Rails giveaway SitePoint are offering for a couple of months; it’s an ebook entitled, Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications. This isn’t just some cut-down freebie they’ve concocted in order to build a mailing list, but a full 447-page commercial (e)book.

Testament to just how popular the offer is, the large number of attempted downloads brought the SitePoint website down.

Even if you’re not currently developing with Ruby, it’s worth downloading the ebook now as you’ve only 56-days left to get it for free! If you prefer real books for this kind of thing then you can also get $10 off the cost of a hard copy.

Technorati Tags: Ruby on Rails