Link masking is a great way to protect your affiliate commissions from being hijacked. In today’s post I want to share with you a really cool WordPress Plugin that will allow you to mask your links in no time at all, and right within your WordPress admin area.

Before we get to the good stuff I just want to quickly say that masking your links is what is often referred to as cloaking but they are two different things. Masking is preventing people from viewing your affiliate link to help decrease affiliate link hijacking and to also increase click-through rates, some people really don’t like to click on those affiliate links.

Cloaking your links is a way of gaming the search engines by presenting the search robots with one page while showing people a different page. You can read more about link cloacking and what Google have to say by reading this article.

You’ll want to head on over and grab the GoCodes Redirection WordPress plugin. Then use your FTP client to upload the plugin to your plugins directory and then return to your admin area to activate GoCodes.

To mask your first link you will need to click on the GoCodes link under tools (in your admin area).

Now you’ll want to decide on the name of the redirection.

1. Your custom redirect will be www.yourdomain.com/go/. By choosing your redirection key, in this case, Keyword Elite, my masked link is now

http://www.foxleymarketingsolutions.com/go/KeywordElite.

2. Now you will need input the URL you are masking. In this example I am using a ClickBank affiliate link for a product by Brad Callen called Keyword Elite. If keyword research is your thing then this a serious piece of software. You can also grab a free keyword research report by visiting here.

3. Lastly you will want to select whether or not you want GoCodes to track your clicks, I enable this for a quick reference point.

Now click the ‘Add Redirect‘ button to create your first masked link.

That’s it, you’ve created your first redirect and masked your link. If you would like to change the redirection folder from /go/ to something that you would prefer then you will need to click on the GoCodes button under the ‘settings‘ tab in your WordPress Admin area.

The most common file name people use is ‘recommends‘ but you can use whatever word you like.

GoCodes is a great plugin and I have had no issues since I started using it. The guys who created the plugin do mention one known issue:

There seems to be a conflict with the WP Super Cache plugin where a redirect will only work once before the cache is cleared. There is a workaround, though. All you have to do is add “index.php” on a new line in the “Rejected URLs” field of the WP Super Cache options page. This will disable cacheing of the page yourdomain.com/index.php. Generally, this shouldn’t be too big of an issue, as visitors will rarely add the /index.php when they visit your blog.

As you can see, this work around makes the problem a very minor issue. What are you waiting for, go and check out GoCodes now!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Be sure to check out Keyword Elite version 2.0 and put your keyword research on steroids.

P.s.s. An alternative plugin to GoCodes Redirect is Affiliate Mask I haven’t used this one myself so you will have to test it for yourself.

Link Masking Software: PHP Link Cloaker, Powerlink Generator, Easy Link Manager

photo credit: Gret@Lorenz

The answer is a resounding YES!

Just imagine having a member of your team promoting your products 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Here are just a few of the benefits to having a website:

• a website will take payments while you sleep…
• a website will work on bank holidays, school holidays, public holidays and won’t need a day off…
• a website will NOT cost much money to set up and maintain…
• a website can answer your customer’s questions without you ever having to pick up the phone or answer an email…
• a website will (when done correctly) increase your profits and returning customers…
• a website can help you build long-lasting relationships with prospects and customers…
• and much more…

You don’t need much to get started. You don’t even have to pay a professional design team as you can have optimised sites created on the fly using specially designed software.

What you will need:

• A domain name – this will be what people type in to find your website. You can purchase a domain for next-to-nothing from GoDaddy.com. If possible purchase a .com and a .co.uk (if you are in the UK) and redirect the .com to your .co.uk URL.
• A hosting account – this will be where you host your newly designed website. I highly recommend Host Monster for the simple reason they have great customer support and CPanel in the admin area (I’ll cover CPanel in a future post but you really need a hosting provider that uses CPanel).
• A website design software. X Site Pro allows you to design websites on the fly that are totally customisable. Don’t pay for over-the-top content management systems when you can do it all yourself using X Site Pro. Visit the site and watch the video to see if the software is the best fit for you (it doesn’t cost much in comparison to the CMS systems being promoted by website design companies. X Site Pro can is as easy to edit as a Word document.
• Another essential must is to get an account with a dedicated email service provider. You can visit iContact and sign-up to receive a free mini-course all about email marketing. Briefly, you need an ESP so you can put opt-in forms on your website to capture the names and email addresses of your prospects and customers. This will allow you to build relationships through newsletters, updates, tips etc, and you’ll easily increase your profits with a successful email campaign.

You’ll find plenty of step-by-step information on the websites mentioned above making it easy to get started. The only thing you’ll need to know once you’ve got your website online is how to market your business for constant streams of visitors. You can get as head-start by signing up to our mini-course, Website Promo Success, and by optimising your website with our ‘tailored to your business’ SEO.

Be sure to get your website online as this is certainly one way of ensuring your business is adapting to current trends. You’ll be amazed how easy it is to get going.

To your online success,

Karl Foxley

Creating email marketing campaigns for your business should be a creative process. Sit down with your marketing team (if you have one) and work through the following checklist.

1. What are you marketing?

Are you promoting new product line, an existing product line, a new service, a special offer, or an affiliate product?

You need to be clear from the outset what your intend marketing message will be.

2. What is your desired outcome?

Do you want your email recipients to click-through to a promotion to purchase directly from you, do you want them to print out a voucher and visit your business to redeem the voucher, do you want them to forward your email to their friends and family, do you want them to be aware of a new feature on your site?

Your message must be clear. Never let your email recipients ‘guess’ what you intend for them to do, state it clearly every step of the way.

Example:

‘We have just launched a new section on our site especially for our upgraded members and we want you to click the link below and give us your feedback’.

====> Email link here to section

The section features “list features here” and the benefits to you are “list benefits”.’

3. Email Segmentation – Who Should Receive Your Message

Email segmentation is the ability to send your emails to only those that will benefit from your message. If you have multiple email subscriber lists you may wish to ‘include’ certain list and ‘exclude’ other lists.

You may need to send out a message only to subscribers that have arrived in the last 30 days. This can be very difficult to implement if you are managing your own email subscriber lists whereas if you use a dedicated email service provider this can be done with a few clicks of your mouse.

AWeber has a powerful built in email segmentation facility that is intuitive to use. If you have an account with AWeber then just take a look in your admin area for the options.

Click here to take AWeber for a Test Drive

4. Tracking

Are your email marketing campaigns successful?

You and your marketing team need to decide what are the requirements of a successful campaign. For starters I would suggest that you aim for a ‘open-rate’ percentage and ‘click-through’ percentage. Again, if you don’t know how to track this then think about switching to a dedicated email service provider (ESP) such as AWeber who give clear statistics for nearly everything your email marketing campaigns will ever need.

5. Test, Test, Test

You can never test enough and, again, this is where email segmentation becomes very powerful. If you have a decent sized email subscriber list then I recommend sending out test emails to see which ones convert the best. Use the winning email to send out to the rest of your email subscribers.

Be sure to have a clear plan for all of your email marketing campaigns. Stick to the plan, test, track and tweak for increased email marketing success.

To your email marketing success,

Karl Foxley