Archive for September, 2010
Bizzare Toilet Related Injuries and Deaths
Found this gem of an info-graphic today and felt obligated to share it with the world. Enjoy!
Via: Medical Insurance
How Engineers View Women
(photo courtesy of picchore.com)
If it weren’t for that ability to “greatly aid relaxation” we’d have all the power fellas…
How to Hide Your Affiliate Links and Increase Clickthrough
Every so often I will peruse a new person’s blog. Everything will be fine until I see them reference a third party tool. Inevitably, this tool is shown as a hyperlink – and as I move my mouse cursor over the link to learn more about the product, I’ll casually notice in the status bar where the link directs me to.
And there is no bigger turnoff, than seeing this in my status bar…
http://db7505vyu7vytmexobs7sd3k4w.hop.clickbank.net/
The first thought that runs through my mind is usually, “this guy’s redirecting me to some shady affiliate site!”
Then it’s usually followed by, “even if the product is good, why should I let him make any money off of me!”
And sometimes if I’m feeling particularly difficult, I’ll even go through the trouble of locating the root URL and typing this manually into my web browser rather than click that link to find out what the interesting product is.
I am sure that the majority of blog owners out there despise people like me. But what can I say…thus is human nature.
But recently I’ve noticed that some really successful bloggers out there have discovered a workaround to my cleverness, and their tactics have done a pretty good job tricking me into clicking their affiliate links. Actually “tricking” may not be the right word, “enticing” would work better. In these situations, I’ll see the link in the status bar, but I won’t notice anything particularly weird about it. I’ll actually click the link and get redirected to that third party site. It usually doesn’t take me too long to discover that I’ve been bounced to an affiliate site, but by then its too late.
I suppose I could clear the cookie history in my web browser…but anything that takes more than 5 seconds of work is too much, so this is usually more trouble than I’m willing to go through.
So how exactly are these people hiding their links?
How to Hide Your Affiliate Links
The two easiest ways I’ve found to do hide your affiliate links are through a plugin called Pretty Link and bit.ly
I use Pretty Link to sneakily disguise affiliate links on this site so that links showing up in the status bar actually look like they are part of my root domain. Unbeknownst to my site visitors, this link is actually sending them to an affiliate site!
How to Hide Affiliate Links on Your WordPress Site
The Pretty Link plugin is super easy to use. I feel like whoever coded this plugin is a genius. You just install the plugin into your wordpress site and enter your affiliate link. The plugin generates a shortened link that begins with your root URL. Alternatively, it also lets you choose a unique link that still makes the redirect look like it is part of your root domain.
For example…my bluehost web hosting affiliate link in the resources section is cleverly disguised as www.imamoneygrubber.com/bluehost.
To the untrained eye, this may look like a blog post or even a category tag but it is actually an affiliate link and I’m making a commission everytime someone buys through that link!
How to Hide Affiliate Links EVERYWHERE!
But there are other sites where you might want to enter affiliate links, which do not provide you with sufficient control to install a cool plugin like Pretty Links. In these cases, I’ll just use bit.ly to shorten my affiliate URLS.
For example if I’m trying to insert an affiliate link into an infobarrel article or if I’m trying to recommend a product through twitter, I’ll usually cloak my link through bit.ly. I find that not only does this make it easier on my victim’s eyes (hey even money grubbers have feelings) but these types of links often have a much higher click through rate.
These are two little hacks I’ve learned this past week to improve my click-through rate. How are you improving the click-through rate on YOUR passive income projects?
