How To Create Affiliate Links To
Merchant Sites
A very popular way to monetize a website or blog is to become an affiliate for a merchant or series of merchants. There are several different types of programs, the most common being pay per sale programs.
With this type of program, a webmaster, or affiliate, presells a visitor on a merchant product persuading them to click on an affiliate link that they have embedded somewhere on their site or blog.
Clicking on an affilate link takes the visitor to the merchant's website where they will hopefully complete a sale.
If a sale occurs, the webmaster earns a commission. The key to getting credit for this type of sale is to properly embed affiliate links on your webpages.
Read more about affiliate marketing and gain access to Free Affiliate Videos here.
Components of an Affiliate Link
Most merchants are part of a network like Commission Junction or Linkshare. These networks have very user-friendly interfaces to help affiliates create links in text with their unique code already embedded in the link.
You have to first become a member of the network and then you have to be approved for each merchant individually. Once you have done both, you can go into the network's interface and start creating links.
Some of the links in text are very difficult to decipher but they are basically all the same. Part of the link will contain your affiliate ID which is how you will get credit for the sale, then you will find the url to the page you want to send your visitors to, the text link verbiage and finally the tracking code which is also necessary for you to get credit.
This image is an example of an affiliate link that you might see from a Linkshare merchant with each component broken down.
If you are going to go to all the trouble of getting signed up with a merchant, writing content to presell your visitors and then embedding the links, make sure you use proper format so that you get credit for all of your hard work!
Hide Affiliate Links To Merchant Sites
You probably know that when you hover over a link, the url for that link appears in the status bar located in the bottom left corner of your screen.
There are many reasons why you may not want your visitors to be able to see an affiliate link url:
- Affiliate links can be really long and ugly
- An unscrupulous fellow webmaster may replace your affiliate code with their own and hijack your commissions
- A visitor may just copy and paste the merchant's url excluding the affiliate portion which means you lose commission
To hide or cloak affiliate links, use this handy little tool when creating your links. Just input your link information to generate the code then paste it into your page as usual:
Link Cloaker Tool - bit.lyOther Free Website Tutorials
Hyperlink to a Specific Point on a Webpage
When you want to link your visitors to a specific point on a webpage, you use what are called anchor tags or anchor links (aka Quick Jump Links). These types of HTML text links are most useful in long documents with multiple sections because they help your visitors navigate quickly to exactly what they are looking for.
Click here to learn how to create an anchor tag.
Create Image Links
Rather than create simple links in text, you may want to create image links. Any time an image is used on a webpage, it draws your visitor's attention and adds interest to your page.
Visit our How To Create Image Links webpage to learn more.
