So if you’ve been around affiliate marketing for very long then by now you have probably heard that you should cloak your affiliate links.

In case you have not heard this yet, let me explain why. If you already know why skip down to G-Lock link cloaker.

Basically you want to cloak your affiliate links so that no one can steal your commissions. Cloaking is a term used to describe hiding your links. If you have a link that is not cloaked, it might look something like this:

http://www.affiliatelink.com/ref?-kksa2erf

Or something like that anyway.

So if someone knows how to read your affiliate link, which any affiliate will, they can replace your portion of the link kksa2erf, with their affiliate link and steal what would have been your commission. There are also programs out there that will do this automatically.

Well, what I had been doing to hide my links was place them into a redirect script, save it as a .html file, then load it onto my server. I’m not going into everything with it here, but it was still possible to steal commissions from me, and from anyone else using this technique.

Until now! As soon as I found this tool I started switching my links over to this format. There are a few still on this site that I have not switched over as of the time I write this, but the switch will be completed very soon.

G-Lock Link Cloaker

G-Lock has a link cloaker that they introduced in the early part of 2008. I think this thing is pretty cool.

It has 3 fill in the blank fields where you tell it what you want to do. Here is a screen shot of it.

So all you do is take your assigned affiliate link for whatever product you are promoting into the first section titled Affiliate Link. Next you put in where you want the link to go to. This is great if you want to skip part of the site of the product owner.

Let’s say they have a squeeze page and you don’t want your customer having to go through the squeeze page to get to the sales page. You can get the link to the sales page yourself, then put it here and your customer will bypass the squeeze page. To learn more about why you might want to do that, G-Lock has a good explanation here.

Next is the field for the file name. The program is going to generate a .html file that you can load onto your server with your cloaked affiliate link. So the file name is whatever you want to call your .html file for that link. Once you fill that out, your done. Just click save to disk and it will work it’s magic. You will get a popup box asking you where you want to save your .html file.

What this program ultimately does is it encrypts your affiliate link. In the field under where it says Page Source you will see a bunch of numbers and letters. This is the encrypted link. So if anyone tries to steal your link URL so they can steal your commission, all they will see is a bunch of useless numbers.

The best part is, this tool is free. Check it out here.

Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is a great way to drive traffic to your site or to an affiliate offer that you’re promoting. I want to spend a little time in this post sharing some information that I learned from my training in PPCClassroom.

PPPClassroom is a great training program and they went way above what I thought they would. If you’re interested in using PPC in your business, I strongly suggest you reserve a spot as soon as they open back up.

In the mean time, here are some PPC testing tips you can try:

1. Watch you budget

When you are first starting to learn about running PPC campaigns, the most important thing to keep in mind is your budget. Nothing is more discouraging than blowing through $100 and having nothing to show for it.

For the first couple of weeks you really want to keep a close eye on your campaigns. Set a daily budget that you can live with. For me I decided that I was going to start out with $50 in my budget. I set my daily limit at $5, expecting my money to last me roughly 10 days.

I had structured my campaigns well enough that it took me 23 days to spend my $50, and I made $120 in sales with it. So I made a $70 profit with my first campaign. I was very happy with that. Thank you PPCClassroom.

2. Build a website based around your campaign

Once you have determined you have a niche that you think is going to be successful for you, build a website around it. You want to fill the website with around 20 to 30 pages that are targeted to your keywords. You want to choose the keywords that generate the most traffic for your campain.

3. Split test your landing page

Once you have your site set up, start split testing your landing page. In case your not sure, the landing page is the first page your visitors see when they come to your site.

You want to split test the landing page to see which page does the best. You can only change one thing between the two pages. Anything more and you have no idea what caused one page to get more visits than the other.

You can run a split test with a free service at Splittester.com. Whatever you do, you need to make sure you track your results and that the statistics are valid.

4. Optimize your campaigns

After you have let your campaign run long enough to get some decent traffic (this will depend on your opinion), drop the loser keywords for the winners. The loosers are those that are not producing any sales.They might be getting clicks, but if you have more than 100 clicks on the keyword and no sales conversions, you probably need to dump that keyword.

Position your keywords for the “sweet spot.” The sweet spot is a position on the first page, other than number 1. The first couple spots are often times tire kickers. They click the link out of boredom, not because they are interested.

Spots 3 and on, are generally people who are interested. This is because if they are still reading the ads in those positions, they are truely interested in finding information about the topic.

When you are looking to start driving targeted traffic to your affiliate offer quickly, PPC marketing is a great way to do it. But be careful you don’t spend too much, and that your keywords are converting into sales.

One of the keys to affiliate marketing is to continuously provide up to date content on your website. Providing regularly updated and quality content will mean better Search Engine rankings, more traffic, and higher conversions, just to name a few. The problem is finding or making the time to write that content.

The easy solution is to buy Private Label Rights (material that you own all editorial rights to and can change anyway you want), also referred to as PLR. When you have the PLR rights to articles you can change the content however you want to suit your own needs, putting your own individual style on them.

Now one of the drawbacks to PLR content is that some of the sites that sell PLR products, sell them to thousands of marketers. So if you are interested in using PLR, you should use a provider that limits the number of members allowed to use their products.

One of the best services that I know of is from Matt Callen.

One of the most important considerations in using PLR content is the need to rewrite it. It doesn’t matter if the package you purchased is limited to a few hundred, or available to several thousand, you need to rewrite it. This is neccessary to make the content uniquely yours. The last thing you want is to put your name on something as the original author, and have your readers find the exact same information, word for word, somewhere else.

A huge benefit to using PLR content is you don’t have to write your content from scratch. Someone else has done the research ad already written the content. So all you have to do is change it up, add whatever you want, remove what you want, and give it your own personality. Using PLR allows you to write content much faster than you could otherwise.

Here are a few suggestions that will help new affiliate marketers tailor PLR content to their personal needs:

1. Put your own personality on it

As long as you put your own personality and flair into your PLR content it will never be the same as someone elses content. Don’t be afraid to be controversial either.

Several years ago there was a study done on the listeners of radio shock jock Howard Stern. Listeners who loved him listened for an average of 2 hours a day, the number 1 reason they continued listening was to see what he would say next. Listeners who hated him listened an average of 3 hours a day. The number 1 reason they gave for listening? They wanted to see what he would say next!

2. Combine with other content

When you own PLR content you can do just about anything you want with it. So you can alter how long it is by removing some of it or breaking long sections into smaller pieces.You can also take different pieces of content and combine them to make a larger piece of content.

If you own omre than one kind of PLR content you can combine them also. A good example would be taking several articles on a topic, rewrite them, then package it as a report or ebook for your visitors. You could also take PLR videos and combine them with your report.

For PLR Videos I recommend Instant Video Empire. The normally charge $97 for access to this site. I talked to them recently, and they have allowed me to give my readers a free membership. But you have to go through this link >>> Instant Video Empire.

3. Adapt to your target audience

Some of the things you need to take into account when working with PLR content is your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? You want to speak in the same kind of language they speak in. So you need to consider things like age, sex, cultural differences, income level, and education level of your audience.

All these things are going to be considerations for how you want to structure your content for your audience. I don’t mean to put anyone down, but what I’m about to say is a fact. The way you have to write to communicate with a doctor who makes $250,000 a year is going to be different than how you communicate with a construction worker who makes $20,000 a year.

That’s just a fact. I say that as a guy who worked in the construction industry for a few years. There is a whole different way that construction workers communicate that a medical professional would find unacceptable. So pay attention to this.

4. Double check grammer and spelling

Do not assume that just because you spent money on a product, that the spelling and grammer is going to be acceptable. The product should be acceptable if you are spending any decent money on it, but don’t take any chances. It’s your reputation on the line.

One thing to keep in mind with PLR content, you get what you pay for. Buy an entire book for $2, and you should not expect much. If you are paying $40 0r $50 a month for content, you should expect it to be well researched, with proper spelling and grammar for the most part. Nothing is going to be perfect though, so read it completely and rewrite at least 75% of the content.

One of the things I like about PLR so much is that the possibilities are virtually limitless. You can take one piece of content and do a lot of different things with it. It also allows you to quickly put out some quality content. Instead spending your time researching, you can be spending your time building your business.

A lot of us have been wondering recentlyhow the problems affecting our economy are going to impact our affiliate marketing businesses.  I was reading around today finding out a little about this from some other people.

Here’s some of what I learned:

26% of consumers surveyed in January said that if the economy worsens over te course of the next year tey wll acctually shop online MORE. Mark Kirschner, chief marketing officer at affiliate marketing company LinkShare Corp., said “They see online as part of the solution to the challenges they face right now.”

A large number of shoppers said they purchased something online with a coupon that they would not have purchased otherwise. Between 64% and 70% said a coupon or discount convinced them to buy a product or service from an online retailer that they would not have purchased from otherwise.

Most suprisingly there were quite a few shoppers who said they planned to purchase more online this year than last year.

Click here to read the entire story.

So a few days ago I told you about my BloggingProfitsBlueprint.com website.

I got the idea from Liz Tomey. I bought a product of hers that showed how to do what it was I did with that site. The two videos she showed on her sales page showed exactly how to get into her site for anyone paying attention.

So I logged into the site she was using as an example and took a look around. I was impressed at how simple the site was, and the kind of money the new owner was already making after just 5 days.

Anyway, I wanted to share this story with you because we all love tohear about someone else who has become successful.

Now if you don’t know, Liz Tomey is an internet marketing expert who is also known as a “softy”. She has a real commitment to people, and when she found one of her close friends in need, she came to the rescue, and turned a total newbie into an “insane affiliate marketing machine”.

You see, Liz’s close friend Michele was going through a divorce, and losing her husband’s income. She knew that she couldn’t pay all the bills and in turn would have to sell her house, and uproot her little boy from his “little world”. All Michele really needed was a few extra grand a month to pay the bills and keep everything “normal” for her son.

Now to some of you that doesn’t seem like much, but to most of you, a few extra grand a month means a lot.

So, Liz took 5 days out of her schedule and showed Michele one of her very own affiliate marketing systems that had worked for her for years.

Now Michele had never heard of affiliate marketing before. She knew how to check email and surf the Internet, but had no idea that you could make money online.

Boy was Michele shocked to find that after 5 days of implementing what Liz taught her she was able to make over $500 and get 400 new subscribers that she could make money off of time and time again.

Michele wont be worrying about bills now as she continues to make money. She’ll even be quitting her job in just a few months!

With Liz’s teachings, Michele has an easy to obtain income goal of $500 a day, and now Liz wants to show you how to do the same thing…

Click here to learn how to get started today.

Like Liz, I’m very proud of Michele, and hope that you will take advantage of Liz’s help, and start creating your own autopilot affiliate income today…

You’ve probably heard that having your own product is a great way to start building an affiliate marketing business. This is the easiest way I’ve seen yet to make your own product, and jump start your affiliate career.

Grab the new course from Liz, and get started right now.