I’ve been doing localized Google searches (web pages from Malaysia) and realized that not many websites have the term above in their URL. Also, this term in general is searched quite regularly according to Google’s keyword tool, so by assumption, there should be quite a lot of localized searches for it too.

Although the mighty Google bot can search through text and find out a lot of information, I doubt they will be able to read my intentions if I actually DO write an article about affiliate marketing on the Internet.

Well here goes:

What is Affiliate Marketing Anyway?

From Wikipedia:

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

From the point of view of the average Internet marketer, it is being paid comission by selling somebody elses products on behalf of them. For every sale that is made, you will typically get between 50% – 75% of the total sale price of the product.

From the point of view of the advanced Internet marketer, affiliate marketing is the process of building a strong affiliate marketing network, providing them with all the materials they need in order to make the most sales as possible.

For every sale that they make, you only take a small % of the total sale price, but you will most of the time require little to no advertising on your behalf, your affiliates are you arms and legs to the niche or market you are targeting.

Which Method Makes More Money Online?

Typically the product creator with a huge affiliate network working under him would make the most money, even though he or she may only be receiving 25% or less of the product price.

But put it this way, which is easier? You selling 5 items at 100% profit? OR a 1000 strong army of affiliates selling 1 item each at only 25% profit? You do the maths.

That being said, there are some super affiliates who make a KILLING with affiliate commissions. But I still think the product creator has a much bigger advantage than the affiliate.

Which Is Easier To Start?

Starting as an affiliate selling on behalf of the product creator is the easiest way to start. You get all the marketing materials provided for, you don’t have to create the product, basically you just drive traffic to them.

Clickbank.com and CJ.com are great places to start looking for products to push to your website’s viewers…

But in the long run, product creation is the best way to go, building your affiliate marketing base and get other Internet marketers to drive traffic for you rather than paying for it yourself.

Good luck,

-William Lee

However, affiliate marketing does suffer from two major drawbacks, a) people sometimes don’t like clicking a link which says: http://lwliang1.maverick66.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=10 because more and more people know what an affiliate link looks like now a days.

b) and even if they DO click, they can easily remove the ‘lwliang1’ in the above example, continue with the purchase of the product and rob you of your commission!

So what is a struggling Internet marketer going to do?

Well the simplest way is to mask your affiliate link and use that to send people to the affiliate site.

Masking With Tiny URL

This is by far the simplest way of masking your domain. Go to http://tinyurl.com or http://pinurl.com.

Type in your long URL that shows your affiliate ID and click ‘Make TinyURL’. It will result in something like this: http://tinyurl.com/bhtq54.

That looks alot better right? It increases the chance that people will click through on the link because they’re not sure if it’s an affiliate link or not.

However, there is still one drawback. When you click on the link, it will still show your affiliate ID in the address bar of your browser. People can still remove your ID, continue with their purchase and take your commission away from you!

So what’s the best way of masking and redirecting your visitors to an affiliate website and protect your affiliate ID?

I thought you’d never ask.

Domain Name Masking and Domain Name Redirects

With Cpanel

Some webhosts have this built in to their cpanel account for their users.

1) For those people with this lucky privilage, just create an empty folder on your server under the root directory and name it something suitable for the product you are selling.

E.g. http://onlinebusinessmalaysia.com/googleshadow (create a folder called ‘googleshadow’.

2) Login to cpanel on your webhost, select ‘redirects’ under domains, tell them to redirect ‘http://onlinebusinessmalaysia.com/googleshadow’ to your affiliate site by using the TinyURL address as described above.

3) Select the ‘masking’ tab (if there is one) and put the address of the website you’d like to display in the URL of the browser when being viewed on the affiliate website.

Without Cpanel – Coding

For those who don’t have the advantage of having domain masking in cpanel, it’s not that much harder.

1) Follow step 1 above, create a suitably named folder

2) Create a new file in the folder labelled index.php

3) Copy and paste the following code into that new file and change the details listed with your details.

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<base href=http://address_of_domain_you_want_to_display.com />

<meta name=”DESCRIPTION” content=”">

<TITLE></TITLE>

</HEAD>

<FRAMESET ROWS=”100%, *” frameborder=”no” framespacing=0 border=0>

<FRAME SRC=http://insert_your_affiliate_link_here.com NAME=”mainwindow” frameborder=”no” framespacing=”0″ marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″></FRAME><frame src=”UntitledFrame-2″></FRAMESET>

<NOFRAMES>

<CENTER>

<H2>

Your browser does not support frames.  We recommend upgrading your browser.

</H2>

<br><br>

Click <a href=”http://address_of_domain_you_want_to_display.com“>here</a> to enter the site.

</CENTER>

</NOFRAMES>

</HTML>

4) That’s it! You’re done!

I’ve done it for one of my affiliate links, check it out and see: http://onlinebusinessmalaysia.com/googleshadow

Thanks,

-William Lee

p.s. your affiliate ID will flash at the bottom of the web browser’s screen while it’s loading, so this doesn’t completely hide it. But it does a good enough job.