So now we will take a look at using the pretty link plugin

Before we start allow me to give you and introduction as to why we should use some kind of plugin to cloak and most importantly, track our links

I use this plugin primarily to do one thing and that is to track my links, so I can understand what the behavior of the people on my sites.

Allow me to interrupt your thinking for a little while, on WA, I keep hearing about being passionate about your niche, this is all very good but if you want to make any real money or be successful at online marketing your going to have to get used to the idea that marking is not about passion, its about testing.

In the world of online marketing there are two groups of people

Group 1 = Chuck it out there and chance it and hope someone clicks my links, so I can make some money

Group 2 = The people who test stuff and track data

Group 1 can make a few dollars

Group 2 can make millions of dollars

If you were to ask any successful online marketer, and by successful I mean making 5 figures a month, they will tell you its because they test things

Your job is not to be the expert in your niche, your job is to understand the behavior, wants and needs of the people that you are marketing to, so you can adjust your website to give them exactly what it is, they want and not what you think they want.

I am now going to tell you the number 1 mistake people make in marketing, here it is;

They make an assumption as to what their crowd of people want, instead of offering people what they actually want

The only way you will ever know the answer to the above problem is by tracking the behavior of your visitors, so you can then be armed with actual facts rather than your assumptions.

Its the data that makes the money, not the passion for your niche, data is the crucial piece of the puzzle and all the big successful company's out there, spend millions of dollars in obtaining data about there customers and that is why they are so successful, its not because of luck or chance its because they consistently collect and utilize accurate data about there customers

It is very important that you become aware of what links get the clicks and what links don't get any clicks, as well as the banners with links in, so you can tell which banners are working best and which ones are not getting clicked

You can then use new banners and test them to see if they are getting clicks or not and where the best place to put your affiliate links is and what converts to clicks and what does not convert

This information is vital to your website success and it negates you from membership of the "chuck it out there and chance it" club with your marketing strategy, being just HOPE FOR THE BEST.

So now I am going to get a real affiliate link from my click bank account and then I am going to make a pretty link from this so I can track it and also cloak the link with the pretty link plugin

Above is a screen shot of the pretty link window for creating a new pretty link, this window displays when you click add new link in the settings

The first box is the target URL, this is where you affiliate link is copied pasted in, its the destination URL

The second dialog box gives you a space for adding a name to the link so you can track it, then you will be able to tell if the links is getting clicked or not, as it will have its own unique ID

You can call it anything you want, for example - home page link or side bar banner - or anything that lets you know where the link is placed so you can track it.

So now I will put my affiliate link and tracking code into the relevant boxes

Here you can see that I have put my click-bank hop link into the URL box and have given the link its own ID called "side banner 1" in addition to this, I have ticked the "no follow" box and this will automatically create a no follow link which I recommend on all affiliate links as will as ticking the tracking options box to enable tracking

If this linked gets clicked or not clicked I will be able to tell and so make more informed decisions as to banner choice and banner placement and by testing different banners I can see what works best and so I will get real time data on the behavior of the people visiting my site

Below is a screen shot of the pretty link I have created in order to use this link I will need to paste it into my banner html code or use it in my text on the page and it will create a link using the new pretty link as the URL destination

To discover how to place an affiliate link in banners click here

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/bazboy247/blog/placing-affiliate-links-in-banners-and-pictures

That's the end of the training on links so far, there is also much to learn about back-links but I am going to leave that for another lesson called HTML for beginners part 4, there is a lot of information here, so I do not what to overwhelm you, so I will do a separate training on back-links

I hope you enjoyed this training, if there is anything you do not understand or think I have left out let me know and I will include it in a following training.

Barry