If you do any affiliate marketing at all – occasionally or as a large business – you should consider adding a new free tool that can make a huge difference in your affiliate earnings. This awesome new tool is a URL shortener called Cli.gs. For those of you who may not be familiar with URL shorteners, they are simply web tools that allow you to turn all those extremely long, extremely ugly URLs into nice short ones. The one most people are used to seeing and using is TinyURL, and although I give them respect for being around so long, they just no longer are the winners of the best URL shortener out there anymore. That honor goes to Cli.gs now, and Cli.gs has special features that are especially wonderful for anyone who has ever used an affiliate link on their site or blog.

Here are the main reasons why an affiliate marketer should use Cli.gs:

1. The affiliate URL is shortened and looks much less intimidating, and much more inviting to users. But of course, other URL shorteners do the same, so this one feature alone doesn’t put Cli.gs above the rest. But Cli.gs also allows you to rename the URL using user-friendly words, and that is very cool! Here’s an example. Let’s say you set up a Cli.gs URL pointing to a product page that is selling straw hats. You could rename the Cli.gs URL so that it would literally be http://cli.gs/strawhats. Can you see how inviting that URL is to visitors, as opposed to some random mix of letters and numbers, or a long affiliate code?
2. Cli.gs allows you to set up a private account (free) that lets you track statistics of every Cli.gs URL you use. What does that really mean? That means you can TRACK WHAT AFFILIATE URLS YOU’RE USERS CLICK ON. Yes, Cli.gs comes with its own analytics, so you are no longer in the dark. You know which ads work and which don’t! That is powerful information to have. You can create different Cli.gs URLs for different ad placements – all leading to the same affiliate URL. You’ll be able to test your ad placements and decide which section of your web page provides the best clickthrough rate for each affiliate you place! Or test different versions of link text for each affiliate link, and determine which is most clicked on by users. The amount of information you can gain from analyzing which affiliate links get clicked on most can improve your success rate – a lot! And you’ll never again wonder if the affiliate company is being honest about the amount of traffic you’re sending either!
3. Geotargeting – This one is extra cool. This feature is called Right Clig, and it allows you to set up Cligs with various alternative destination URLs that are targeted based on the visitor’s country. An example use would be if you wanted to direct UK visitors to Amazon’s UK URL and German visitors to Amazon’s German site. You would only use one Cli.gs URL on your page, but the rules you set up would determine where the visitor was from, so each user will be sent to the correct destination. This feature isn’t one that would be used in all of your affiliate links, but when appropriate, it can make a HUGE difference in your affiliate earnings.

Cli.gs has been the most exciting new thing I’ve used in a long time. It can literally change your affiliate marketing. Look, it’s free – and it’s extremely simple to use. If you’ve ever placed an affiliate link on any of your sites, I urge you to try this. You won’t really get how absolutely awesome this can be for you until you take a couple of minutes to try it out. No gimmicks. Just a straightforward tool that is easy to use, and gives back a wealth of information and usefulness for free. You can read more about Cli.gs on its blog, and you can follow Cli.gs on Twitter as well. Oh yeah, one other thing I forgot to mention – Cli.gs can automatically post new blog posts to Twitter, and since it has an API, any service can be hooked up in the same way. Trust me – Cli.gs is cool. It’s the affiliate marketer’s new best tool.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate marketer, Affiliate marketing, Amazon, awesome new tool, Cligs, free tool, short URL, straightforward tool, Twitter, United Kingdom, URL shortener
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