One of the things you have to deal with as an affiliate marketer are long, complicated, ugly links (URL's) and frankly, people don't like them. They’re hard to type and can get mangled by email delivery programs which can make then un-clickable unless you copy and paste the link into the address bar and by this time, your conversion rate has dropped out the bottom.

There are several ways to handle this though.

One way is to use a service that takes long URL's and shortens them for you while at the same time leaves them pointing to the same page. And they do it for free!

You can include the shortened URL's in your newsletter campaign, classified ads or any campaign for that matter. They also server to help with theft in that, your affiliate number is not even seen, so people can't simply cut off your identifying numbers and go straight to the website, bypassing your affiliate number and not giving you credit for the referral. This happens more often than you'd think.

The sites below allow you to shorten your long URLs into small, compact links for sharing and remembering and the cool thing about SnipURL is that they offer a free button that you can drag onto your browser that snips URLs with a click, rather than having to copy the URL, visit the site, and paste the URL into a form.

SnipURL also creates a list of every shortened URL you've ever made, making them available for easy access in your "my snipURL" folder.

TinyURL is another service that also lets you add a "link shortener" to your browser.

MakeAShorterLink was acquired by TinyURL but still works the same.

SnipURL
http://snipurl.com/

TinyURL
http://tinyurl.com/

MakeAShorterLink
http://makeashorterlink.com/

Both of these services offer an easy and free way to shorten URLs. Understand as well that they are both apparently smallish companies and may be subject to the vicissitudes of business challenges so, make sure to monitor your affiliate links every so often. But, you should be doing this anyways. So, for everyday use, they're very useful services indeed for eliminating those pesky, awkward long URLs.

Another but more advanced method of hiding your affiliate links and making them as short as you please is by creating a redirect file on your hosting account. This is a more advanced technique and is actually covered in most of the training and instruction we provide but I'll give you the steps below. Again, if it seems to technical either use one of the above services or let us teach you how as part of one of the training programs we offer.

We will use the sample folder path:

www.ResellRightsGarage.com/recommends/RRG (Note: remember, all files, folders or directories after the domain name are CaSe SeNsItIvE)

1. Create a folder on your root directory for your redirects. I usually name mine recommends like in the example above.

2. Create an additional directory and call it something generic. Something that doesn't really give away the exact location you are sending your prospect for example "RRG". If I were sending someone to find out where they could get resell rights products, host them, learn how to install them or have someone do it for them, and I didn't want to give away the full domain name, which would defeat the purpose, you just name the directory (folder) RRG.

3. Open "notepad" on your computer.

4. Copy the entire code below, all 5 lines, including the < and > and everything in between and paste it into notepad.

4. Replace http://www.place_your_affilite_url_here with your actual affiliate link, the long ugly one and make sure to keep the "" in place.

5. save it and upload it into the /recommends/ RRG folder

6. Name it default.html or index.html in the /recommends/RRG directory

7. Test it!

That's it! You can also have it redirect through a tracking link so that you can monitor the clicks independent of the affiliate program you belong to just to make sure all is as it should be.

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
window.location="http://www.place_your_affilite_url_here";
// -->
</script>

Yet another technique is to simply purchase a domain name that’s similar to the product or service that you want to promote, and set it up to direct traffic. This can be a bit more complicated but, it can be done. This one I won’t spend time explaining since you should know more about the subject than a few steps here can easily cover. Again, you can learn this technique in one of our training programs if needed.

Wishing the success that you deserve,

Larry Hall