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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The same people who created that site, have also created a 26 week Internet marketing program that gives an incredible amount of in-depth information aimed at helping small business achieve online success, and is the expanded version of the free PDF report above.

I’ve been reviewing the 26 week program for a few weeks now, and it is definitely comprehensive and informative. In fact, when the package showed up in the mail, I was surprised by everything that was in the box. (It came with a t-shirt too, but that’s in the washer right now, so it didn’t make it into the photo below).

Besides the fact that it comes with 4 workbooks with 4 accompanying dvds, which details the 4 phases, it also comes with 7 bonus interview cds, and a bonus cd with everything in mp3 format as well. Oh, and it even comes with a nice poster that outlines the steps to be taken during the 26 weeks of training.

If I were to create an Internet marketing training program, I’m not sure I could create a better one than this. Look, let’s face it, I’m a pretty tough critic. I hate when people pretend to know something (such as SEO) and you quickly find out that they are just spewing old information that is no longer true or relevant. So I was prepared for the worst, and was really excited to find that this is really good, quality information!

This course is comprehensive, easy-to-understand, and does a great job of really helping anyone understand the fundamental tasks that should be undertaken to implement an effect Internet marketing strategy. If you are in charge of your business’s marketing efforts, or you want to learn how to effectively manage all of the various online strategies, this plan will lead you in the right direction.

Over the course of 26 weeks (my calculator tells me that’s 6 1/2 months), you get detailed instructions and guidance via video, workbook materials, charts, pdf’s and audio interviews that lead you through the various phases. You are shown what to do when, and how often to repeat each process. Again, I kept waiting to find the “gotcha” – the one thing that I could point to and dispute, but it wasn’t there.

The course structure is well thought out and relays information to you at the right time and at the right pace. Let’s take a look at the course outline now.

Phase 1: Website Structure
Business Strategy
Keyword Research
Site Architecture
Conversion Rates
Viral Coefficient
Visitor Tracking

Phase 2: Automation and Launch
Blogging
RSS
Email Updates
Blog Communities
Blog & RSS Directories
Press Releases
Pay Per Click

Phase 3: Broaden Your Base
Major Directories
Industry Directories
Local Directories
Article Marketing
Competitor Backlinks
Forum Interaction
Blog Comments

Phase 4: Broaden Your Horizon
New Website
Social Networking
MyPage Marketing
Podcasting
Video Marketing
Visitor Analysis

Now, let’s take a look at the bonus interview cd’s.

Bonus Interviews with:
Matt Trimmer
Brad Fallon
Yaro Starak
Jeff Walker
Timothy Seward
Jonathan Farrington
Shawn Collins

This is not a cheesy product, thank goodness. I am so tired of checking out Internet Marketing products, only to find them filled with cheesy sales hype that boils down to “Make Millions Overnight” bullsh#t. This product is real. It’s not cheesy, and it’s not bullsh#t. It is an educational product aimed at explaining the process of online marketing in the right way.

I’ve wasted a fair amount of money on cheesy waste-of-time products. This training course is a bit pricey, but you do get a product that delivers quality information in exchange for the price paid (£399). I wish I’d created it first. Good stuff.

Go check it out. Read the information about it. In the near future, what you read may enable you to win a little contest in which I’ll send one of you everything you see in that photo. (Sorry, I’m keeping the t-shirt).

(I should note that I did have one small problem with the dvds. They are in a format that I couldn’t immediately view on my computer. Luckily, if your computer can’t read them, there are free tools online that make them work. They are .vob files, and I used VLC Player to get them to run. I’m guessing this is some sort of format commonly used in the UK maybe, but not here in the U.S. Anyway, just be aware that if your computer has trouble understanding the format, there are several free programs out there that quickly solve that problem).

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Brad Fallon Yaro Starak Jeff Walker, cheesy product, cheesy waste-of-time products, educational product, effect Internet, Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing Plan, Internet Marketing products, Jeff Walker Timothy Seward Jonathan Farrington Shawn, Jonathan Farrington Shawn Collins, Major, Matt Trimmer Brad Fallon Yaro, mp3, online marketing, online strategies, Online success, private membership site, United Kingdom, vob, week Internet
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.