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:

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.

I made a comment in one of my recent posts about my internet and affiliate strategies, where basically I am launching loads of sites at once, then monitoring them for a month to see which ones produce and weed out the ones that don’t appear to be working out.  It appears that the post has sparked some debate, or at least some additional questions, so I decided to write a follow up post with more information.

As with most things, to me this strategy is kind of a money vs. time thing and people will be on both sides of the fence.  Though I’ve found that this strategy works well for me, there are definitely a negatives with launching a number of sites all at once.

Here are some of the positives I’ve found go with this approach:

• Less Time Wasted – If I launch 5 BANS sites at once, then monitor them to see which 2 or 3 get the most traffic and develop them, I am not wasting time on those other 2-3 sites that probably would have failed.
• Diverse Portfolio – The more income producing sites you have, the less trouble you run into if somehow one of your websites gets shut down or comes up missing from the search engines.
• Creative Ideas – Lately my mind is constantly racing with ideas and I’ve made a habit of finding an appropriate domain for the idea, then launching a small site on the domain when I do my next batch of sites.  If I didn’t go this route, many of my ideas would never get developed.

And here are some negatives for this approach:

• Higher Costs – Like I said above, it is kind of a time vs. money thing.   With this approach you will buy a lot of domains and launch many failed sites, which results in wasting a lot of money and saving a lot of time.  For people that don’t want to spend money to make money, they will make better and more educated decisions, but will not clear near as many sites and miss out on a lot of opportunities.
• Difficult to Manage – Once you get to 50+ addon domains in your web hosting account, it can sometimes be difficult to manage.  You will also have to manage a large domain portfolio.

It is really just a preference thing, but my ultimate goal with each batch of websites/blogs I launch is to grow my internet presence.  I think the like-minded people at Court’s Internet Marketing School feel the same way.  In their post about deep linking strategies, I found this:

I think one of the best aspects of SEO is that it’s both cumulative and compounding in nature. It’s cumulative because every time I put a page on the internet it has potential to rank, bring me traffic, and make me money.

As long as I don’t let the domain expire or let it go stale with a lack of links, it stays on the web forever (basically) with very little maintenance. If I add 500 pages per year to across all my sites, the net I’m casting on Google gets a little wider with every single page I add.

Every time I launch 5 new sites, I am growing my internet (SERPs) presence.   If 3 work out, those could prove to be income generators for not weeks or months, but years.  Even if some only make $1.00 a month, they will pay for their renewal and ultimately kick in extra income.  My hope is that at least 1 out of every batch will prove to be a bigger producer, making up to $100.00 a month (or potentially more).    It only takes a few of these to really give you a huge boost in monthly income.

What are you doing to expand your internet presence?

Whether you are a blogger, an affiliate marketer, or you make a living with BANS and related sites, there is a good chance that you are using some form of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing to help drive targeted traffic to your website(s).

I’ve managed to find a lot of success with PPC in a variety of ways, and I plan to discuss some of those ways over the coming months.  In the meantime, I wanted to start out by featuring a great post I found over at the Affiliate Classroom blog which details some great ways to use PPC. What I really like about the post is that they take some methods that are unusual and that most people probably wouldn’t have thought of, then teach you how to use them.

Here are the topics that are covered in their post:

• Using PPC to Build an Opt-In List
• Using PPC as a Lead Generator
• Using PPC as a Viral Generator
• Using PPC with Unique landing pages for Your Own Product

When you click over, you’ll see full detailed explanations of each method of PPC marketing.  My favorite is probably using PPC marketing to grow your mailing list.

Last month I kicked off a new monthly Affiliate Income Report series with my May Affiliate Income Report, which is basically a report of how much income is being generated by me via affiliate marketing.   Overall, I would say that it received a positive response, so consider this to be the second installment!

This series was originally created because I’ve found that the blogosphere has been filled with a lot of distrust lately due to the many “Make Money Online” blogs launched by pretty much everyone, yet most fail to bring in even $100.00 income.   Do you really want to take advice on how to make money from someone that isn’t?   I’ve also found that this series also serves as a great way for me to gauge my progress over time as Apricot Media continues to grow.

June Affiliate Marketing Income Report

So, how’d I do?

• E-Junkie – $1279.10 ($1,269.21)
• Clickbank – $159.64 ($176.09)
• Commission Junction – $4.79 ($1.69)
• Amazon Associates – $0.54 ($21.87)
• eBay Partner Network – $195.31 ($89.08)
• Other Miscellaneous Affiliates – $398.35 ($395.55)

• Gross Income: $2,037.73 ($1,953.49)
• Advertising Costs/Banners Purchased: $108.00 ($85.00)
• Total Net Income: $1,929.73 ($1,868.49)

**All numbers in quotes represent the previous months income figures**

You’ll probably notice that this months figures look a little different.  That is because last month I talked about total online income, where as going forward I will only be disclosing my affiliate income.   Additional income sources such as Google AdSense and private advertising have been removed because they aren’t affiliate income. 

As you can see, a few went up and a few went down, but I basically stayed the same for the most part (which sustaining success is half the battle).   As far as I can tell, the main difference is with my BANS income.   I spent a lot of time in May of 2008 working on BANS stores and you can see that has REALLY paid off.  I’m sitting at around 30-35 stores currently, so if you factor in the cost of BANS, plus the BANS Templates I use regularly, then the cost of registering the domains for my stores, I’ve pretty much broke even just in the past two months.   Anything going forward is 100% profit until those domains come up for renewal.  At that point, the stores that aren’t at least producing $10.00 a year will be let go to expire and the rest will be renewed (with no additional work required).  

I also managed to maintain the E-Junkie income and improve upon the miscellaneous additional affiliates, which is the 30 or so small affiliate programs I have that are directly with the company, rather than via an affiliate service.

Expectations for July’s Online Income

July will be an interesting month (plus we get the extra day!).  I got one really big project that I hope to have finished within July that will likely be a decent earner, but that income may not start showing up until August.   I’m also planning on doing some additional Article Marketing for the niche sites that are already profitable (to push that profit higher), and I hope to launch some campaigns for Market Leverage, Neverblue Ads, and possibly my favorite new option, Pepperjam Network.   These companies provide you with a campaign manager and provide affiliate opportunites that include getting paid percentage of sales, fixed profit sales, and some that pay you simply for qualified leads.

Over the past couple months you’ve probably heard me talk about landing pages, but if you are new to affiliate marketing, you may not be familiar with them. I decided to write a post and provide some details about what exactly a landing page is.

What is an Affiliate Marketing landing page?

Affiliate marketing is broken down into a few different key areas, but one of the most important is your website setup and landing page.   A landing page is either the homepage or a page within the website whose sole purpose is to sell a product.

What are Some Key Points For a Good Landing Page?

Here are things that should be included in a good landing page:

• Grab Readers Attention – When someone finds your page, whether it be via search engines or PPC advertising, you only have a few seconds to grab the readers attention.   The top of the page should accomplish this.
• Sell the Product – Make sure the reader knows why they need this product.
• 1-2 Outbound Links – A good landing page won’t include anything but your affiliate link.  You don’t want the reader clicking anywhere except where you want to send them.

If you’d like to see an actual example of a landing page, Zac Johnson recently posted a killer landing page on his website and provides an actual template to download so you can make your own landing pages.

Earlier in this series I talked about how to make money online with several of my favorite companies, but one that has the potential to be my favorite company is Commission Junction.   That is because they have the affiliate programs of pretty much all of the top companies out there.

In a recent post, Affiliate Tip talked about how Commission Junction Dominates the Internet 500, meaning of course that they run an overwhelming percentage of the affiliate programs of many of the internet’s top 500 companies.  Obviously you are doing something right if most major companies choose you. Of those that don’t, most house their affiliate programs internally.

If you decide to place more focus on affiliate marketing, and you decide to partner with CJ, the first thing you’ll notice is that the site is a little old fashioned and sometimes the navigation can be a little difficult.   With that said, after using it a bit it really isn’t that bad to find your way around.

Some nice things about Commission Junction:

• Top Companies – As mentioned above, you’ll find many of the top companies with Commission Junction.   These products are familiar to internet buyers and many buy them anyway, so it can sometimes be easier to sell their products.
• Huge Selection – Pretty much every keyword is covered, so no matter what kind of niche blog/website you are starting, you should be able to find at least 1-2 companies/products to promote.
• Banners – Some affiliate companies just offer affiliate links.  With most companies in CJ, you get a nice selection of banners, including 468×60 and 125×125.

So far, my success with Commission Junction has been minimal at best, but I’m planning to switch some of my focus to CJ products in the future.  My hope is with a little focus, I can push that number up and continue to diversify my online income.