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Link Cloaking

What the heck is link cloaking? To be as plain as possible, cloaking affiliate links is the art of showing your visitors an internal link when they mouse over an affiliate link so that the visitor doesn’t think they are leaving your site.

For example, one of the websites we used to run was a site that provided leads to online universities. We used a third party affiliate company to gather the leads. So when someone came to our site and wanted to request information from University of Phoenix they had to click on the “request info” button.

When they would do that they would be taken off of our site and to the third party affiliate company where they could fill out the form to request info. The url would be something like http://www.affiliatesite.com/affid=1234?schoolid=366.

So in order to make a more user friendly experience we started cloaking affiliate links by creating a php redirect that when they hovered over the “request info” button it showed the url destination to be http://www.oursite.com/univeristyofphoenix.

This type of link cloaking created a less stressful user experience so they would be more likely to click on the link. They still ended up on the same affiliate page but we found out that more people would click through to the page with the affiliate links cloaked.

Link Cloaking To The Next Level

After awhile we saw that there was a disconnect between the design of our site and the design of the affiliate pages we were sending our visitors to. We really wanted to create consistency as much as possible so we wanted somehow to keep the same design of the site on the affiliate page.

Since we couldn’t control the affiliates website we went to the next best thing. We used an iframe to keep the form where they request information on our site. This creates a smoother user experience.

When you set up your affiliate pages using this link cloaking technology your website visitors don’t ever have to know that they are dealing with an outside website. Because the user experience stays completely seamless they will be more likely to fill out the form and thus we would make more money.

So if you are looking for a great way to cloak affiliate links, this has been one of the most successful ways that we have done it. The biggest thing to take away is that ultimately what we are doing is taking away any mental roadblocks our users might have before they get to the form. Good luck with your link cloaking strategies.

Well we got back on Monday from the System Seminar internet marketing conference put on by Ken McCarthy. Jesse and I went with a good friend and neighbor Mark Butler who is also making his name in the internet marketing world. The three of us are like minded so we had some long in depth internet marketing conversations.

I will give you my feelings towards the conference at the end of this post. But first, here are my 10 take-aways from the conference which by the way cost me $1000 just to get in.

1. It is very important to get to know your visitors. Find out what they want and what their needs are. If you know their objections, it is very easy to overcome them. Use feedback tools like Kampyle.com to get the voice of your visitors.
2. The most important thing you can do is develop a relationship with your visitors. You do this by providing a lot of value to them. If you do this properly you will gain a following. Once you have a following you can really make money online.
3. A good internet marketing strategy is to develop a sequence of products that you push to your visitors. A good example of someone who does this is Dave Ramsey. He has an entry level book you can buy. Then he has a home study course which is more expensive. After that he has financial coaching which is even more expensive etc. He just moves his customers through the sequence. Sure there is a drop off as the prices get higher but obviously you don’t need as many customers when the ticket price is high.
4. Use Google’s Website Optimizer to test. I know I have said this time and time again but let me reiterate this. You need to always be testing to increase conversions. A Google representative in charge of Optimizer came to the conference and was one of the speakers. He really renewed my desire to test, test, test. Surprisingly, when he asked the attendees how many people used Website Optimizer, there was only a handful of the 200+ people that did.
5. Pricing is relative. Always test your pricing. You can increase your revenue dramatically simply by increasing your price.
6. It’s all about the list. When I said before that you need to create a following the best way to do that is to build your email list. Do whatever you can to get more and more people to sign up for your email list. Provide them with real, valuable content that will keep them loyal to you. Make your email sign up prominent on your website. Make it as easy as possible.
7. Here are 4 books you should buy and read: My Life In Advertising, Tested Advertising Methods, Web Design for ROI, Landing Page Optimization
8. Be proud of your product. Don’t be afraid to tell people what you offer. If you provide value they will want to know what you offer.
9. Don’t discount your product. Make it a bargain by adding value to it with bonuses.
10. 90% of what we heard at this conference we already knew. There wasn’t a lot of specific information being given out so I really felt bad for the beginners. I would advise against attending this seminar in the future, especially if you are beginning.

The biggest benefit for us was the time in the hotel room in the evenings when Jesse, Mark and I would bounce ideas off of each other, give advice and strategize with each other on our own businesses. That time was way more valuable than the actual conference. I highly recommend that you find some like minded individuals that live near you and start meeting for lunch once a week. It really will help your business.

PS – We ate at Gibsons Stakehouse in Chicago (rated #1) and it was probably the best steak I have ever eaten.

Since I get questions all the time from Prosperly readers I have decided to put all of these questions and answers to your internet marketing queries into one place because if one person wants to know I am sure many of you would like to know.

Question:

Adam,

First off, love the prosperly.com website – great info!

I had a question regarding legal issues when purchasing a website. I’m in the market to buy 1-2 websites to start building my website portfolio, but I’ve never actually purchased a website yet. So needless to say, I want to make sure that I do it right the first time!

My question is, should I have the seller sign a purchase agreement/NDA/etc- to help protect my investment, or is it really not necessary when using a an escrow service like escrow.com? Do you use contracts with your purchases?

I’ve been thinking about buying the “reusable” website contract kit from Sitepoint for $97, see it here: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/webcontracts1/. Do you think that would be a smart investment, or a waste of $97?

If you could help me out, that would be awesome!

Thanks, and good luck to you.

Joe

Answer:

Joe, thanks for the great questions. I’m glad you like the site. In answer to your questions, we have made many purchases and we have never used a purchase agreement or NDA. It couldn’t hurt you to do so but we have found that just using Escrow.com has been enough for us.

I hope that helps.

Question:

Adam,
I have a great idea – I think. I have a couple questions though.
1. The domain name I want is taken, but not active. How do I get it?
2. I was looking to see if there are any sites that already provide the same service I plan to, and there is. Only one though, and it’s not big yet – and I don’t think they are doing it the right way. Is this a problem? Would it be a good idea to buy their site or start from scratch?
I’m completely green to this process, so your advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike

Answer:

Mike, thanks for the questions.
In order to get a domain name that is taken but not active you need to find out who the owner of the domain is and contact them to see if they will sell to you. You can do this by doing a WHOIS lookup. Go to whois.net and search the domain you want and it should return a contact email and phone number for the owner.

If you only have one competitor that is always a great thing. If they already have an established site and there are obvious things you can do to make their site better, then they are a perfect candidate to buy their website. If they refuse then hopefully it won’t be too hard to compete with them.

Question:

Adam,
I know that your preferred business model is affiliated sites, but are there some sites/vendors that are easier to establish affiliate relationships with?

Thanks again for your help.

–Richard

Answer:

Richard, A lot of companies already have affiliate programs up and running. Those are the ones we usually work with. If you have an insider relationship it usually works out to be more lucrative. For example, one of the affiliate sites we run we know the owner of the products and he actually created a product just for us and gives us a 50% cut for each sale of that product.

Question:

Hi Adam,

I am new to this whole web site ownership thing. I just bought a website from godaddy and have built my site. I am not ranking however in any search resuls. It has been about a month since the website started. Do you have something that talks about the best way for a brand new site to get noticed by google and the other search engines. When using Mozilla’s rank checker I am invisible to the major search engines. Even when I search for the name of my website I am still nowhere to be found.

Any ideas on how I can get noticed?

Thanks,

David

Answer:

David, thanks for emailing. Here is a good resource for you:

http://www.prosperly.com/2008/seo-101/

Hope that helps.

If you have your own questions please feel free to email them to me. I am glad to do as many posts like this one to get all of your internet marketing questions answered.

As I have worked as an SEO consultant over the last few years it always amazes me how caught up people get with their competitors. It seems that some times they spend more time looking at their competition to see what they are doing than they do building their own business.

What is the benefit of knowing what your competition is doing? Do you just believe that everything they do is the right way to do things and you want to copy them? You have absolutely no control over what they are doing.

Spend time worrying about what YOU are doing. Look at your own site. Ask yourself, what can I be testing to increase conversion? How can I increase traffic? What new product can I create? What article can I write to add good content to my site?

Go back and read my guide to SEO and make sure you are doing everything you need to be doing on your site to increase your rankings.

The focus needs to be on what YOU are doing to YOUR site. Don’t worry about your competitors. Do the right things and you will eventually beat out your competitors, or at least steal a large piece of the pie. Don’t worry, there is enough to go around.

Adam mentioned list building as one of the best things you can do to make money online.  I want to talk about that in much greater detail.  Basically I want to talk about why.

When you’re building your internet business, you focus a lot on traffic acquisition.  Without traffic, this whole venture becomes dull very quickly.  The problem with traffic though? It’s fleeting.  Your SERPs are fleeting.  They’ll fluctuate.  Google could change their algorithm…

This traffic is key toward business growth, but lasting growth comes from your list.

You’re standing on a beach and I’m Google.  I shovel a bunch of sand in your face, you squint, and hold a cup in the air.  Some sand lands in your cup.   That’s yours to keep.  It’s the beginning of your sandcastle.  I shovel more sand, you hold the cup in the air and catch some more.  You add that sand to your castle.  Eventually, you’re castle’s going to be HUGE and you don’t have to worry nearly as much about getting sand thrown in your face.  You have a castle!

You can monetize your one-time visitors with ads, or offers, but when they’re gone…they’re gone.  When you’re shooting for the list and building a quality list, you’re investing in your business for the long term.  You can call on that list when you have a new product launch, a new offer, etc.  As your list grows, your opportunities grow right in step with it.  Do you have a related product idea (or affiliate relationship) that your list would want?  Make it and sell it.

There’s quite a bit of this that goes on in the internet marketing industry.  A lot of times it feels like one big inter-linked JV.  You push Guru A’s product to your list and Guru A will push your product on his list…

Your list will soon become your goto resource for ideas, feedback, insight, etc.  If you’re launching a new product, why not ask your list what they would want to know?  Why not ask them what problems they’re facing?  Have them help you betatest a new software product…the opportunities, as I mentioned above, are limitless.

I’ll reiterate:  focus on that list.  Focus on email address acquisition and stay completely above the board with how you get the emails and how you treat the people on your list.  You have their permission, so don’t squander it (read Seth Godin’s book Permission Marketing) if you want more insight into that.

Let’s do a bit of math for kicks.  You first start out and you have 100 people on your list.  You send out a great, relevant, targeted offer and you get 5% to convert.  5 people pay you — for the sake of easy math — $20.  You made $100.  ($1 per person in your list per offer is not out of the question — it actually is eerie how much that appears to be the norm).

Six months down the road your list is now at 6,000 people.  You send out a targeted, relevant, great offer and 300 people pay you $20 each.  You made $6,000.

Six months later you look back and see you’ve busted your butt to build some great tool that’s going to help your list however you’re qualified to help them.  You made quite a push during the pre-launch and added another 10,000 people to your list (this isn’t at all out of the question by the way — gotta have some sand shoveled in your face though for sure!).  You’re up to 16,000 people and you’re likely to make $32,000 (why $2 per person on your list?  Because you made the tool yourself so your margin is a lot higher).

And 16,000 people is not a big list.

But do you see where the long-term value is coming from?  Suddenly you have a bit of leverage.  You can leverage your list for all sorts of cool things that will help you and help your list.  If you do it correctly, it truly is a win-win.

You should always be gathering email addresses.