Advanced Tracking Tactics

by John Delavera

This week, I also released the new version of the "Best Free Ebook" (http://best-free-ebook.com.) You have to spend some time in order to brand that ebook with your affiliate links (when you order the master resale rights), but once branded, it can be your commission booster: Up to 81 affiliate links of high-quality products are listed inside. And people love the idea of getting 64 free ebooks they can also brand free of charge.

This week, I also changed my affiliate program for these products: TurboZiner and Best Free Ebook. You can now promote almost ALL of my products through the site at http://software4profit.com and by using ONLY 1 affiliate link. More information here: http://affiliatescenter.com.

So there were some customers wondering what will happen to their old affiliate links... And that made me think…

Do you remember my article "Learn to Last"?

You must ORGANIZE your Internet Business in such a way that your future is NOT dependent on ANY changes made by other people.

You see... everything changes in our lives. And everything changes on the Internet too. Links change also. I will say it again: Links Change...

YOUR links MUST remain THE SAME.

Today I am going to tell you HOW to do it. I am going to tell you what to do in order to LAST online and depend ONLY on yourself for reaching your success.

I remind you that I am talking about affiliate programs here, but you can use the method I am going to show you with ANY link you want to remain the SAME no matter what changes take place in the future.

In order for you to better understand what I am talking about, imagine this situation:

In September, ClickBank announced that the old hop-links would stop working... Fortunately, ClickBank decided to KEEP the current format of hop-links while releasing the beta version of the new format of hop-links.

But... Could you imagine what would happen to all of your affiliate links that you distributed to your customers, throughout your ebooks, in Forums, and anywhere else?

Here is another example...

In my "Best Free Ebook," I have 100s of links. For example, I have 64 links for the 64 free ebooks you can download and brand free.

Now, say that one day, the server on which I host ALL 64 ebooks stops working... What would I do???

The BFE has been distributed to 1000s of users by me. It has also been distributed to other tens of 1000s by my customers... Can you imagine what would happen to me if ALL these people COULD NOT download the ebooks inside that product? They'd Kill Me... Or Flame Me to Death!

So, what did I do? I used TRACKERS instead of the direct links for all the ebooks listed inside the BFE.

Here is an example for James Allen's ebook, "As A Man Thinketh," edited by Rebecca Fine:
http://software4profit.com/best-free-ebook/download/download.cgi?id=0

The "download.cgi" is a cgi script I run on my server. So what I did was define a link for that ebook and correspond a Tracker to it: id=0

Now, if my server collapses, I could point the tracker id=0 to direct all users to server B instead of server A - provided that I keep a mirror site with all the ebooks on 2 different servers.

The cgi script I am talking about allows you to correspond links to trackers. You can use this solution to point to ANY website, any URL. For example, you can add the link http://turboreferer.com, correspond that link with id=11, and use this tracker instead,
http://yourserver.com/cgi-bin/download/download.cgi?id=11.

If you add another link, say for the site http://best-seller-ebook.com, you'll correspond that link with id=12, and then you can use the tracker
http://yourserver.com/cgi-bin/download/download.cgi?id=12.

Now, if something happens to any of these direct URLs, you can point ALL trackers to ANY page you want and explain to your users what happened. Or again, if you distribute ebooks, you can correspond their direct links to trackers, and if something goes wrong, just replace the real location
of the ebook with another link while your users still use the SAME tracker.

I hope you got my point.

If you know how to install these kinds of cgi scripts, you can go here, http://www.hotscripts.com, insert the word "downloader" inside the Search Box, and choose the script you want to install on your server.

OR if you want to use the same script I use, you can go here, http://www.themusicpages.com/HWD/scripts.html, and download the "Download Manager (V1.0)."

All those scripts that correspond IDs to your links have various features; some of them also allow you to see how many people have downloaded your product, or from which site your product has been downloaded from, etc. It depends on the script and how it works. For all of you who do not know how to use or install a cgi script, here is another way to deal with this matter. Suppose you are my affiliate and want to promote the Best Free Ebook. You can get your affiliate link here:
http://affiliatescenter.com/aff_bfe.shtml

In any case, you need this affiliate link:
http://hop.clickbank.net/?YOURID/delavera

All you have to do is replace YOURID with your ClickBank ID. If you do not have a ClickBank ID, you can get a free one here:
http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?soft4pro/ezsignup

Suppose your ClickBank ID is "1nternet." Thus, your affiliate link will be
http://hop.clickbank.net/?1nternet/delavera

The way I am going to describe this to you will allow you to use a UNIVERSAL link so you can distribute without the fear of changes, AS WELL AS allow you to hide your actual ClickBank ID, since some people will steal your commission by replacing your ID (for example: change 1nternet to their ID, john2002) and using their link to order what you have already suggested to them as an affiliate. Bad practice, but it happens.

So, here is what to do.

Log onto your server and create a directory. Use a SHORT name, like "r" or "t."

Example: My domain is http://turboreferer.com.

So, I created a directory "r" and the link to that directory will be http://turboreferer.com/r.

Now enter that "r" directory and create a SUB-directory for the product you want to promote.

For example, create a sub-directory "bfe" for promoting the Best Free Ebook. So your URL for that directory should be http://turboreferer.com/r/bfe.

Then open your NotePad or any other text editor and include this code:

NOTE: REPLACE { with < and } with >. I used those symbols {} instead of < and > so you can see the code if you are reading this email message as an html file (if you use AOL.)

{html}
{head}
{title}Best Free Ebook{/title}
{meta http-equiv="Refresh" Content="0;URL=http://hop.clickbank.net/?1nternet/delavera"}
{/head}
{body oncontextmenu="return false"}
{a href="http://hop.clickbank.net/?1nternet/delavera" onmouseover="window.status='Click here'; return true" onmouseout="window.status=''"}Click here {/a}
{/body}
{/html}

REMEMBER to replace "1nternet" by your actual ClickBank ID.

Next, save that document as index.html and upload it into the "bfe" sub-directory.

So, if your server was turboreferer.com, then your affiliate URL for the Best Free Ebook should be
http://turboreferer.com/r/bfe/index.html.

You can even use this link, http://turboreferer.com/r/bfe, and not end it with index.html because all browsers read the index.html automatically.

That's it!

Next time you want to promote the Best Free Ebook, just point your users to http://YOURSERVER.com/r/bfe and all users will automatically be directed to
http://best-free-ebook.com - you'll get your commission (50%) for all orders generated by your affiliate link.

In case you're wondering why I suggested that you create a directory “t" or "r," here is the reason: You can put ALL the products you promote inside that directory and have everything in place instead of searching your server to find out where the file is located that includes your affiliate
link for that product... Some people use a descriptive file.html and upload it to their root server without creating any sub-directory at all, like http://YOURSERVER.com/bfe.html, but I prefer to have ALL the products I promote inside the SAME folder so that I only have to REMEMBER the title for the sub-directory whenever I want to distribute a link.

Using the way I described above, here are some of my affiliate links I created for Michael P. Rasmussen's ebooks:

For Ezine Marketing Magic: http://turboreferer.com/r/ezine

For eBook Marketing Revealed: http://turboreferer.com/r/ebooknow

For curious readers: In case you wanted to know more about the html code I used above (PLEASE NOTE: I have used these symbols [ ] to differentiate HTML code from regular English words when I describe what the code does):

{meta http-equiv="Refresh"
Content="0;URL=http://hop.clickbank.net/?1nternet/delavera"}

This is the META REFRESH tag. It re-directs your user in
0 seconds to the page you define next to [URL=]

{body oncontextmenu="return false"}

The addition of the code [oncontextmenu="return false"] next to the 'body' tag prevents people from right-clicking their mouse and seeing the source of your file – thus, stealing your
link.

{a href="http://hop.clickbank.net/?1nternet/delavera"
onmouseover="window.status='Click here'; return true"
onmouseout="window.status=''"}Click here{/a}

The addition of the [onmouseover="window.status='Click here';] code next to the link in the tag above hides the actual link and displays the message "Click here" in the Status Bar of the browser when the user points the mouse to that link. You can even encrypt the pages you’ve created using this technique by using a software like WebLockPro,
http://turboreferer.com/r/weblocker.

Well, that's it for today!
Take care!
John Delavera

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Copyright(C)2003 by John Delavera
Automated Solutions for Internet Marketers!
TurboMembership.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.s. Feel free to use my article and include your affiliate
links both inside the text and in the Resource Box.
You can become my affiliate here:
http://affiliatescenter.com

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