How to Make Money with Affiliate Links

The concept of affiliate marketing is very easy, you put up an affiliate link for people and when they purchase through it, you get paid. As with anything, there is a right and a wrong way to do this.

What is an affiliate link?

When you sign up or register for an affiliate program you are given a link. This link will track your sales, it is basically the way you will get paid. As people click through your link and make a purchase the sale gets credited to your account. When commissions are paid out you receive funds via a check or into your PayPal account.

Masking Your Link

An affiliate link will look something like this:

http://productname/?id=34598

The id portion is the part that identifies you as the affiliate. Now if you use this link as is you are leaving your link open for changes. Unfortunately there are people who will take your link and add theirs to it. They get credited for the sale and you lose out.

There are several ways around this. You can mask or hide your affiliate link by using software. A popular one is Pretty Link which actually works on your wordpress blog. Other link shortener's include bitly, ow.ly and even Google has its own link shortener.

The benefit of this is that your link is effectively hidden and ensures that you will get credited for any sales. Now please be aware that some affiliate programs do not track any links that are shortened. So look into this before doing so.

Hyperlinks

Using a hyperlink is another way to mask your link to a certain extent. You have no doubt seen hyperlinks as words or a string of text that is clickable. When you click on that link you are taken to an affiliate offer.

Here's how to do this:

If you are doing this in Microsoft Word or inside your wordpress blog it is very easy to hyperlink text.

1. Copy your affiliate link.

2. Highlight the words in your post that you want to link to.

3. Click on the icon at the top of your dashboard that looks like a link, it often has a picture of a globe with it.

4. A pop up box will appear asking you for the URL to link to.

5. Paste in your affiliate link.

6. You have just created a hyperlink.

This is often the best way to share your affiliate links and you can usually add hyperlinks in your emails as well. If you post images on your blog don't forget to add your affiliate link to those as well.

This will give you more exposure and more possibilities for making money with your affiliate links. Enjoy!