Promoting your affiliate website to earn commissions can be depressing and frustrating because your commissions are small in comparison to the traffic your generating for your site. Beware the unethical people out there may be stealing your referral links and replacing it with their id which is very devious. Or the main website may be getting your customers because it is a short URL and more presentable that the long complicated referral URL.

Implementing measures to prevent commission theft from the unethical thieves is important. It is an important to cloak or mask your affiliate links to protect your income. Cloaking disguises you’re affiliate link with another shorter and more effective website address. Your potential customers see a shortened more appealing masked website link only so customers don’t know the parent company website and the internet pirates are prevented from stealing your commissions.

The Good:Short readable affiliate links are generated automatically with the Viral URL program. Your free memberships enables you to cloak your affiliate links. It is worth upgrading your membership to receive the extra advertising credits and bonuses. The resources available are plentiful in the members area which allows you to easily jump start promoting. Building mailing lists,tracking statistics and earning ad credits is included with this program. Access to text, banner and email ads to promote your affiliate products is included in the members area to generate traffic using you cloaked link.

Website link cloaking is simple and easy with the instructions given. A tutorial video is available for the advanced cloaking methods. Viral URL affiliate program also allows you the opportunity to promote and earn commissions. Everything you require to promote Viral URL is included with your membership. With the upgraded membership the bonus area is full of useful extras. The member’s area would be good for the newbie because it is easy to understand and implement the techniques given.

The Viral URL system keeps the internet pirates away from stealing your commissions with cloaking referral links, gives you the opportunity to become an affiliate and offers 3 different avenues to generate traffic to your affiliate websites. Upgrading your membership offers a lot more potential for supplementing your income by promoting affiliate products. A ticket submission system is available to assist the customer with a prompt reply.

The Bad:Live support seems to offline a lot of the time and the drop down menu bars can be difficult to use. Dull and strange color scheme is very unattractive. The long introduction essay given for the benefits of promoting viral URL is a little boring and a little repetitive. Improving usability by reducing the padding up of explanation. I wasn’t really interested in reading all the information.

The Verdict:Definitely Recommend.Free membership and upgraded memberships are available. Free the membership still gives you a lot of benefits. Cloaking your referral links preventing the theft of your commissions with the added options of banner email and text ads to increase traffic. Promoting viral URL as an affiliate is easy as all the promotional tools are provided.

If you are serious about affiliate marketing and keeping your commissions this program is perfect for you.

A good question that puzzles many new website owners suffering this fate is, “how does it happen”? The answer is straight forward; thieves view the source code of your web page and easily obtain the URL of the affiliate links along with relevant details. They replace Your affiliate ID with their own ID and create a new affiliate link. Then they use this new link to purchase the product. The result is, you lose a commission and the thief gets a discount. Most affiliate marketers are not even aware that they were robbed.

So how do you protect yourself against these thieves? The best way to protect your affiliate profits is to cloak your links. A good cloaking system hides your affiliate ID from these dishonest individuals. There are several cloaking techniques that you can use to protect your profits.

The first and easiest is to use is Tinyurl. This web service is free and is very easy to use. You simply go to the website and enter your affiliate URL into the text box. They’ll provide you with an alternate URL for that link. The new link that they provide effectively hides your affiliate ID. There are many other companies that provide the same type service but this is among the most well known.         

There is also software available that will cloak your links. Some of the software is quite expensive but inexpensive options also exist. So, stop those affiliate thieves in their tracks. Take back the 30% that they’ve been stealing and protect your profits with affiliate links.

Check out my newest ebook for some great ways to cloak your affiliate links.

You can use Google Adwords to send traffic to your affiliate opt-in page. You can create a blog at Blogger.com. And you can write articles and submit them to article directories.

Before you do any of these marketing tactics you need to check your marketing system to make sure everything is in place.

You need to fix any grammar errors and misspellings. Check your web pages in both of the browsers, which are Netscape and Internet Explorer.

Do yourself a favor and double check all your autoresponder messages for grammar and misspellings.

Check the sequence of your autoresponder.

You need to test your autoresponder by subscribing to your own opt-in list with your personal email address.

Also try to unsubscribe from your own list.

It is very important to check your list to make sure your email address is added when you subscribed and removed when you un-subscribed.

Check if your affiliate link is properly working in the email messages that will be sent to your own email address.

Once this is done you can start to promote your affiliate squeeze page. Here I will cover article marketing, as this is the easiest, surest and most viral affiliate marketing available on the Internet. And it’s absolutely free!

Let’s say you have chosen 4 affiliate programs. Start writing articles for these affiliate programs by using two affiliate links per article for the resource box when you submit. That way you only have to write 2 articles a day for each affiliate link set. This will add up to 4 articles a day.

Do this every single day. Put two of your affiliate links in the resource box of two of your articles and the other two affiliate links in the resource box of the other two articles.

When submitting your articles make sure to read the article directory rules very carefully because some of them may not accept affiliate links.

If that is the case you need to re-direct your affiliate links to a blog created especially for the specific affiliate program or to a domain name you have buy including the hosting, if asked for it.

Writing articles is not as difficult as it sounds. Google search for some useful content related to your affiliate programs and write about 250-300 words about it.

Write in a ‘telling the secrets’ style without revealing it all. Leave enough to wonder about so your prospects will want to click on your affiliate links.

If you do this you will soon see real money making results. This is viral, once it starts it never stops!

Safeguarding your commission: it is important to know how to safeguard your commission. You can do this in several ways.

Checking out the companies:

It is critical to your success that you check out the company that you are proposing to join. Be sure they are reliable and are an established business. You do not want the company to fold before you can get paid your commissions. Also you do not want to work for unreliable unscrupulous companies.

Cloaking your affiliate link: There are many people who wil literally steal your sales commission from you. They will either cut out your code from the link and buy direct from the company or replace your code with theirs. Either way you lose your commission. In order to prevent this you will need to use software to disguise the link or have a link that redirects your visitor to the sponsor’s sales page.

Checking that your links work: This is something that many affiliates forget to do. It is no good sending traffic to a broken link. There can be a number of reasons for broken links. Sometimes it is temporary other times it is permanent. If you find your link to your sponsor’s site is not working it is very likely one of 2 things. Your sponsor may be having some web site issues, which will be temporary, or if you are using a redirect service for that link, it may have broken and you will have to remake it or use another company.

I have found this site very useful.  You will learn the real secrets from a super affiliate who has been making a nice living from affiliate programs for several years.  To learn more about taking care of your commissions www.secretaffiliatescout.com

Tip #1: Don’t Expect Immediate Results

Wouldn’t it be great if you got into affiliate marketing today and earned $100? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Affiliate marketing, much like any business on the internet, takes time to build up. You probably won’t be making $100 within a day or two of becoming an affiliate marketer. In fact, you’ll be lucky if you make $100 within a week of becoming an affiliate marketer. But you can make that much or more a day if you simply stick with affiliate marketing. This is the biggest thing that people seem to have trouble with when it comes to novice affiliate marketing: simply staying with it even when things are slow in the beginning.

Tip #2: Don’t Pay Hundreds of Dollars for a Program!

Just like those ads you’ve seen, there are also hundreds—if not thousands—of novice affiliate marketing programs out there that claim to teach you how to make lots of money with affiliate marketing. And while some will do just this, the majority of them won’t earn you squat. That’s why it’s a good idea to avoid affiliate marketing programs that charge a lot of money, as more often than not, they’ll end up costing you more money than you ever pull in with them.

Tip #3: Find a Mentor

Affiliate marketing is not an incredibly easy business to break into, which is why so many people decide to try it, but often stop trying within a couple weeks of giving it a shot. The fact is, most people who fail at affiliate marketing have overlooked a crucial step of the process of becoming a successful affiliate marketer: finding a mentor. A mentor is someone who is already successful with affiliate marketing, and can help you with starting out. Many successful affiliate marketers are willing to give advice to newbies, either for free or for a price. Whether you have to pay or not, finding a mentor is essential.

Tip #4: Copywriting

Since you are going to be marketing products to others, having copywriting is very important. If you’re not a copywriter already, you might consider taking the time to learn how to write articles and other content to promote the products you’re marketing. Bum-marketing, an often used and very successful form of affiliate marketing, relies on copywriting by the affiliate marketer. If you’re certain that you can’t write articles on the products by yourself, you might consider hiring a good copywriter. Having good copywriting will allow you to become successful at novice affiliate marketing.

Tip #5: Learn the New Trends

One thing that often makes affiliate marketing difficult for newbies is the fact that it is constantly changing. A method that works today may not work tomorrow. You have to be willing to “change with the times,” or else your affiliate marketing career is destined to fail. However, if you are willing to adapt to whatever is thrown at you in affiliate marketing, you’ll do extremely well with it—in time.

http://mynsp.com/goodchoice/Opportunity/Overview.aspx

Once you have your affiliate link, you’re ready to go!

All you have to do, as we’ve discussed earlier, is to pre-sell
your affiliate’s products by marketing the same through your
affiliate link. An affiliate link leads the would-be buyer to
the affiliate merchant’s payment processing page. Once you have
managed to do that, your job is done, and the affiliate merchant
will take care of the rest. This system makes affiliate
marketing a very convenient home based business for anyone!

Pre-selling, however, should be carried out through effective
marketing strategies to make this venture really profitable for
you. These marketing strategies should be able to ensure a high
conversion rate, or the power to convert the people who would be
exposed to your affiliate link into successful sales.

Here are some of the more popular types of marketing campaigns
being used as promotional tools in this home based business:

* Promoting your affiliate links through viral marketing. Viral
marketing is a very powerful strategy that would rapidly expose
your business message, or your affiliate links in this case, in
just a short period of time. Viral marketing tools usually
involve eBooks, special reports and other information products.
We will discuss this effective promotional tactic for your home
based business in the succeeding lesson.

* Marketing your affiliate links through forums. As we’ve
discussed in a previous articles, promotion in online
communities is an affordable and efficient way in spreading the
word about your products or website, including your affiliate
links. You could try to be active in these forums, befriend
other members if you have to, and before you know it, you’ll
have more traffic for your site and more referrals that could
rake in some good commissions for your home based business.

* Article marketing. As we’ve likewise discussed in a prior
article, writing articles and submitting them in various venues,
with your resource box firmly attached at the end of each piece,
is a magnificent way of promotions. People would scour the
Internet for information, and if you write something about what
they’re looking for, you’ll win their favor and expose your
affiliate links to them aswel. This could only redound to the
benefit of your home based business.

* Search engine optimization. As we’ve mentioned earlier in
these lessons, having your own website would help a lot in
marketing your affiliate links. If your website carries your
affiliate links, you could always optimize the same for the
search engines and drive a humongous amount of traffic to your
pages. Every visitor you’ll have would always carry with him the
chance of clicking on your affiliate links.

* Create your own mailing list. With a mailing list in place for
your home business, you won’t have to lose any visitors. You
could always “capture” them, warm them up for an offer later on,
or present to them new packages that they might be interested
with in the future. Most successful affiliates make a killing
with their mailing lists alone! We will discuss this in detail
in one of the the forthcoming lessons.

These are but some of the ways by which you could market your
affiliate links. If done well, they could assure for you a very
successful business that can be easy to sustain as well.