How To: Using .htaccess to Cloak Affiliate Links

In August of last year I explained how to hide your affiliate links, which received some good feedback.   That post is my preferred method, as it uses PHP redirects to cloak the affiliate link and allows me to upload a single file to multiple websites.

The drawback of this method is that these can still sometimes look like affiliate links.   If you’d prefer to have better looking affiliate links (though it requires extra work to setup), this method is probably better for you.

Here are the steps that you need to cloak your affiliate links using your .htaccess file:

  1. Access your .htaccess file.
  2. Type the following:
  3. redirect 301 /french-toast http://YourFrenchToastAffiliateUrl

That is it!  On this site, this would take the URL of slickaffiliate.com/french-toast and redirect the user to http://YourFrenchToastAffiliateURL.

How To: Doing a Trademark Search

Okay, so I promised to explain how to do a trademark search in my last post, so here it is as promised.  However, first I want to ramble a bit about when or why you would need to do a trademark search.

Doing a trademark search is a process that is very important for domainers, as investing in trademarked domains can be both risky and very costly.   An example would be purchasing something like FacebookApplications.com.   Because the term Facebook is trademarked, if someone that isn’t Facebook purchases a domain like this, it can easily be demonstrated that they are trying to make money off the Facebook name.  In other words, if Facebook goes after it, the courts will turn this domain over to Facebook.

If you hand registered the name trademark risk probably isn’t a huge deal, but domainers will often spend $100,000.00+ for individual domain names, so they need to know their investment is safe.   This is why generic domains are so valuable, because they are terms that can’t be trademarked (an example would be the term restaurant, instead of the term McDonalds).

Anyway, I digress.  For affiliate marketers or anyone that builds a lot of different smaller websites, a trademark search can also be important.  If you are starting a company with the name or plan to invest many years into a website, you’ll want to know someone can’t just come and easily take it from you.

In order to do a trademark search, you just need to do the following:

  1. Visit the US government’s sitesearch page.
  2. Click Search at the top of the right menu.
  3. Click New User Form Search (Basic).
  4. In the Search Term field, you’ll want to enter your domain name.
  5. Click Submit Query.

When doing your search, you’ll want to make sure to search for your term with and without spaces.  An example would be if you were looking for Slick Affiliate, you would try both “slick affiliate” and “slickaffiliate”.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying trademarks, both in how they work and how people lose trademark battles.  I’m also married to an attorney, which helps as well.  Any other questions about trademarks or trademark searches?  Please let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to elaborate!

How To: Finding a Good Business Name

Since Monday’s post about starting your own business, I’ve received a lot of positive response as well as a few questions.   My friend Mark of MeAndMyDrum wrote a great followup post about what you might not know about DBAs and also asked the question about how I came up with the name for my new DBA business, Apricot Media:

How far did you go to ensure the name you picked, Apricot Media, was unique? All I’ve been doing is coming up with interesting names, then running the ideas by GoDaddy. If the URL is available, then I feel that I’m 95 percent certain it’s a viable option. But it’s that remaining 5 percent that I’m worried about. I figured the next step is to Google the name, but any other places I should consider?

I left Mark a detailed follow up comment, but figured this would also make for a great post here.    So, how do you go about finding a good business name?

In the old days, people would create a business, pick a name, then go attempt to register their domain name.   It is now the 21st century and things don’t work like they used to.   Now if you are going to start a business, and in particular an internet-based business, you need to find a good dot com domain, THEN name your business based upon what you find.    There are some people that still go the other route and end up with long and awful domains for their business, a non-dot com domain, or they spend $10,000+ for their dot com business name. 

In my situation, with the name of the business on hold, I went in search of a business good domain name.  It has become quite the trend for businesses to have the word “Media” in their domain, and I decided for me personally that I also wanted the Media suffix in my domain name (just personal preference).  It was with that mindset that I went out and began my search.    Here are some other things you need to consider with your search:

  • Brandable – This is by far the most important.   If you plan to allow room for your business to grow, you’ll want to avoid using anything personal or that you are attached to in your domain name/business name.   This includes using your first name and/or last name, etc.   Think long term!   What if I want to sell this business someday or hand it down to my kids when I retire?  A brandable domain name also has a resale value, where as a personal one probably won’t. 
  • Spelling – Ideally you’ll want to find a name that does not have alternate spellings or pronunciations.   If someone hears your business name via word of mouth and goes to type it into the browser, will they know how to spell it?  Is it memorable? 
  • Length – I personally focus on domains under 12 total letters/numbers, but the general rule is 15 and under.   In my case I wanted media at the end, so I needed 1-2 words that were under 10 total letters.  
  • No Trademark – I know about I said above that Brandability is the most important, but technically I lied.   Legally speaking, this is my far the most important.   Do a trademark search before spending any money on the domain.   You don’t want to get all your accounts and processes setup then have someone take the name from you.   I would also recommend doing a quick Google search to see what shows up when searching for your business name, use the WayBack machine to check its history, and check the alternate extensions to see if others are using your potential business name.  In my case, I noticed the dot net was taken, but it is a company outside the United States and appears to not have a web prescence or a trademark so I feel I’m okay. 

I know this may seem complicated, but it really isn’t.   This is the thought process that goes through a domainers mind EVERY time a domain is registered/backordered/purchased.  Even though you aren’t a domainer, you really need to follow this thought process when registered a domain and especially when doing something as important as naming your business. 

I know a lot of people don’t put a lot of time or energy into naming their business, but this is a big mistake in my opinion.   If you aren’t willing to set yourself up for success, how are you going to succeed?   You’ll want to check the public registry, but if you don’t find what you are looking for, spend some time at Sedo or Afternic searching for names, check backorder lists for good names that are dropping, etc.   If you have to spend $50.00, $500.00, or even more to get the name you want, it is worth it.  You need a name that your business that looks/sounds professional and that you can grow into.

Once you’ve found your dot com domain and have possession of it, you can now name your business!   I would also recommend regging the other extensions (at least the dot net at a minimum if it is available). Mark’s post goes into greater detail about getting a trade name, etc.  

As far as what you do with the domain, it is fairly irrelevant.  Once you own the dot com, you have the power and essentially the ownership of that name.  Owning the dot com domain is sort of like the internet version of a trademark!   If your business is internet-based, you’ll probably want to put a splash page up of some sort.  This can be via WordPress or old school HTML.   That is basically what I’ve done with Apricot Media, which gives my business a homepage, provides people with both information about my business and a way to contact me, as well as it filters interested traffic to a few of my main sites.   By using WordPress, I can later easily add pages to help grow its ranking and become more findable.

This weekend I’ll try to get a post up about how to do a trademark search because I know there will be some questions about that.   Any other questions?  Let me know in the comments below!

Tips On Moving Your Website

As most of you probably remember, I moved this site to a new domain back in January of 2008. Prior to that time, this blog was known as Kyle’s Cove. It has been about 3 months now since the move and everything has settled nicely, with traffic continuing to grow from where it was prior to the move, and I am much happier with this domain name.

For anyone that is considering moving their site to a new domain name, you’ll want to first really think it through and make sure that is what you want to do. Your site will take a hit for a couple months and it can cause some frustration for readers, but it can be worth it in the long run if you do it for the right reasons.

If you’re wanting to move your website, I ran across some great tips from Google to follow when moving your website:

  • Test your processes by moving only one directory or subdomain first. Check to see whether those pages are appearing in Google’s search results before moving your entire site.
  • Don’t just redirect all pages from your old site to the home page of your new site. Try to redirect all pages on your old site to a relevant page on your new site.
  • If you’re thinking about changing your domain and redesigning your site at the same time, consider doing these things separately to minimize the risk of error.
  • Check both external and internal links to pages on your site (which can be done using Google Webmaster Tools) and try asking webmasters to change any links pointing to your site to use the new domain.
  • Don’t allow your old domain to expire until at least 180 days have passed.
  • Add your new site to Google Webmaster Tools, verify you own it and submit an XML sitemap containing all the URLs. Keep your old site too so that you can keep an eye out for any errors.

The bold option above was done by me to emphasize that one, as I felt that was the most important part of the transition.   It helps keep backlinks valid and helps Google’s spiders properly index and replace your posts.

How To: Add Ratings To Your Blog

Have you ever noticed that many blogs now collect instant feedback from their users through a AJAX based rating system? This has become a popular trend around the blogosphere, allowing readers to give quick feedback on your posts instead of requiring them to take the time to submit a comment. As of today, adding a rating system to your blog has just gotten a lot easier.

Whether you use Typepad, Blogger, or WordPress to do your blogging, you can now easily add a rating system to your blog through Outbrain. There is no registration required and it is available for free for you to use. For Typepad and Blogger users, you can use a 1-click installation method to get this done. For WordPress users, you just need to download a WordPress plugin and you’ll be all set.

Once setup, Outbrain will place stars below your posts and allow your readers to let you know what posts they like by rating them between 1 and 5 stars. It also looks like it will work with your feed as well, but I haven’t been able to confirm this.

Update:  You can now add ratings to your WordPress feed as well.

How To: Create Your Own Feed Flare

One of the great features of having your feed with Feedburner is the ability to easily integrate your website’s feed with one of their most popular features, FeedFlare. This can be found by going to the Optimize tab and clicking on FeedFlare.

However, unlike in the movie Office Space where you are required to have at least 16 pieces of flare at all times, with FeedFlare you can pick how many you want to display and actually choose from a bunch of existing flares, or create your own custom flare for your feed. I’ve seen numerous reasons for creating a custom flare, ranging from adding a copyright notice to your feed, to announcing contests, promoting posts, or even advertising affiliate links to your readers.

Making a custom FeedFlare is actually pretty easy, so I decided to draft up a quick post on how to make one. First, you need create a document in the .xml format and paste some code into it. In order to simply this part, I just went ahead and created a document that you can right-click and save (and name it whatever you want). Now edit the document and fill in the appropriate information in the fields where it asks you to.

Once you’ve got your document saved, just follow these steps:

  1. Upload it to your website somewhere (most people just drop it in there public_html folder).
  2. Locate the URL of the document (if placed in the public_html folder, it should be at .
  3. Now go to your FeedFlare section of your Feedburner account and paste this URL where it says “Add New Flare.”
  4. Activate your new FeedFlare!

Any questions? Post them in the comments below!