Putting Affiliate Products on your Blog

There are only three main types of affiliate links and they’re all built on the basic coded link that you receive from your affiliate partner. Once you?ve created your account and selected your product, you?ll wind up with a ?hotlink?, or the basic text link that contains the code needed to tie your account to the sale.

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It will look fairly obvious, some variation of:

http://youruniquecodegoeshere.youraffiliatespage.com

You?ll be able to see your specific code alongside of your affiliates domain information. This is the core of all three major links ? without this piece, all your sales won’t go to you.

Basic Text Link

The three main link types all have to do with dressing up that raw link. The basic text link is a simple hyper link with more attractive text to click on. Your hotlink up above goes from this:

http://youruniquecodegoeshere.youraffiliatespage.com

to the HTML code here:

<a href=http://youruniquecodegoeshere.youraffiliatespage.com>The Best Product Ever</a>

Which comes out the other end looking sharp, like this:

The Best Product Ever

Which obviously looks much more clickable than the junky ?youruniquecode? raw link.

Image Link

The image link, or banner link, is functionally no different ? we’re dressing up that ugly hotlink with something much more clickable, in this case an image. These images are almost always provided for you by the affiliate company, sometimes in many different shapes and sizes for your convenience. They’re almost as simple to use, once you?ve uploaded the image to your blog you just have to set your link to it like this:

<a href=http://youruniquecodegoeshere.youraffiliatespage.com><img src=?/images/path/to/yourimage.jpg></a>

Then when the image is clicked, they?ll follow your affiliate link without ever having to see it.

Video Link

I imagine you can see where this is going ? more and more affiliates are providing their partners with compelling sales videos that you can post directly on your blog. This will significantly boost your conversion rates, since your potential customers are seeing exactly what they’re getting into before they even go to your affiliates page. There are many different ways to integrate this link, depending on how it’s hosted and how you insert it into your blog ? its possible to make the actual video turn into a link, although most times you can simply provide a follow-up link below the player.

Where To Place Them?

Now that we have our banners and videos and text links, we’re faced with an important decision: where to put them? The short answer is, anywhere ? you can put them in widgets in the sidebars, you can place them in the headers and footers. You do need to be aware of a few things; there’s the ole ?banner blindness? problem ? people have become so used to seeing advertisements in the sides and tops of their web pages that they begin to tune them out without even realizing it.

Not to say that the sidebars and headers and footers aren’t effective locations! You?ll be watching and seeing how and where people on your site are interacting with your advertisements and you?ll soon begin to see where the ?hotspots? are in your individual site.

Generally, the most effective place to insert your links is throughout the actual content of your blog. This is the most disarmed that your readers will be ? they’re intently reading the things that you have to say and they?ll pay attention when suddenly you suggest that they visit an affiliate.

A Word Of Caution

Don’t burn your reading audience. You can get away with cautiously and strategically placing a few ads where it makes sense. If you get carried away, your readers will grow wary of your blogging and begin to suspect that you’re only using them for your ad revenue. This is a good way to lose readers, and fast! But, if you take care and do it right, you?ll find that your blog is a fantastic means to drive affiliate sales.

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