One of the common, recurring questions that comes up a lot on here (especially in the comments section) is making money with affiliate re-directs.  Or more specifically, using article marketing to automatically forward to a vendors URL, with your affiliate link, for fast and easy commissions.

In my view – using straight re-directs is NOT the best way to build a viable, valuable long term business. 

Why? 

As a rule, your conversions will be a bit lower, and the only thing you’re really building, long term, is the business of the vendor or company that you are sending traffic to.

You can, however…make A LOT of easy money from straight re-directs, and in many ways that are pretty simple and straightforward, may be the BEST way for you to start making money online if you haven’t been able to do it thus far.  

Linking DIRECTLY to the vendor is a mercenary business. 

You don’t care about a list. 

You don’t care about blog building, being friendly all day and having to make sure your wrinkles don’t show in your about me page.  

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is strictly about picking kick ass offers, and driving boatloads of backsides at each one you promote.

The truth is, most of what I learned about making money online, I learned from using straight redirects. 

Why? 

Because while my natural skill set is probably BEST suited to building blogs and relationships with people who are entertained by my stuff, when I first got started I simply had a hard time getting people to buy anything.

My site building skills weren’t good - and blogs weren’t as easy to modify and creatively experiment with as they are today.

In combination with the fact that I’m obsessive compulsive about testing designs, layouts and other stuff, I was spending SO much time tweaking my pages for conversions, that I was wasting all my time, energy and income on trying to build valuable sites that I THOUGHT would convert well and have real value…..only to find that the sales were so sporadic I feared having going back to a life of bulk isle supermarket crime to support myself.

What saved me were straight redirects.   

One day – I just decided enough with business building. 

Enough with ruminating over the perfect blog posts to sell more stuff. 

Enough  with worrying about how many people were un subscribing from my lists when I got hyper aggressive with email. 

I just wanted to start making some money……and to stop THINKING all the time about strategy, technique and all the silly stuff that keeps us up late when you’re paying the bills on the broad shoulders of a brain that’s just said…..ENOUGH..:-)  

And truly…….I can still remember the shift – that *light bulb moment*  in my consciousness where I realized – this is going to work. 

My ability to support myself GOING FOWARD is ONLY limited to my willingness to work harder and smarter than some other dude who wants to "own" the same "eyeballs" I do. 

I can be a mercenary – in the background….quietly working on my own terms, at my own pace, on my own schedule.

My only responsibilities?  Pick LOTS of good offers.  Experiment often. 

And be willing to attack them aggressively when they work.

And that worked really, really well….and still does for many, many people on a day in and day out basis.

I still MUCH prefer building lists. 

I enjoy building blogs and adding value….and I’ve grown much better at it. 

I do far less direct linking or re-direction today than I did a few years ago. 

I recommend that you list build to. 

But if your brain is saying…."ENOUGH", I have outlined some of the "step by step" stuff for you below.

Use it if it meets your needs and serves your goals!

(some of these are *notes* that I wrote for myself – and am reprinting here – and I have elaborated in other areas on why today, I often NOW find direct linking FAR preferable in many markets over building review style sites or blogs, especially in the ever popular, and hyper profitable "FREE TRIAL" sorts of markets, in which, if you also work – you’ll recognize some of the below as true!

Benefits to Direct Linking

1. Cheap! (You can get lots of 99 Cent Domains to Test Markets)
2. You CAN MIGRATE FROM MARKET TO MARKET SUPER FAST (one a day)
3. In 30 days you build a REAL business and focus JUST on the markets that are converting (create your own product – or – specialize in one specific area of the market – i.e. – life coaching versus business consulting)
4. It’s analogous to the super popular (and hyper profitable) adwords arbitrage approach ( direct linking) that is pretty much no longer allowed….but you can do it all day long for FREE with organic and directory traffic
5. Ezine Articles allows it – has to be a root level redirect
6. You can alternate affiliate programs using scripts (I use GoTryThis – which was the best available program when I bought it – there may be better stuff now – but it works great)
7. You can set up the re-direct on the server side – hands free and code free
8. In good markets you can control HUGE amounts of traffic that will pay you for weeks, months or even years to come
9. You are protecting the ROOT – so you can always swap in an opt in form, or a site map – or anything else you want on a page that is getting a ton of traffic when you’re ready
10. Google "forgives" root level redirection pretty fast in my experience
    

Markets that it works really well in

High converting free trial offers (diet/weight loss/feel better/live longer/look younger/etc)

CPA style offers – zip submits, etc ( Although I don’t do these – )

Quick Action Plan:

Go to the CPA networks – and search these style offers – then - do a PPC search for these specific and/or style products - any of them that you see are doing direct linking….you KNOW are good candidates for these offers.

(note – some of the free trial stuff, direct linking- converts, on PPC – at 5% or better….which is very, VERY tough to do with click bank style products)

The BIG advantage to straight redirects for CPA style offers, especially FREE Trial – in MY experience is this:

Flexibility. (and hassle free if you don’t have time to tweak and change lots of different sites on a regular basis….which many us don’t if we want to have a life)

For example, you can build a review site – put in tons and tons of work – get FIRST page rankings, organically on a whole bunch of product specific stuff - send your traffic DIRECTLY to the product page the proper way….and then find out, serendipitously - that the product has been pulled – or the offer is down….or some other nefarious nonsense that kills your conversions.

What do you have to do?

Go back and re-edit all of those links on you page – take them down – change it up – etc.

It’s a major league PAIN IN THE ASS….and it happens more often than you would think.

(i.e. – anyone who was reviewing or selling acai berry products can tell you that half of those offers went off the market in one fell swoop a while back…simply because of the widespread and embarrassing level of manipulative marketing and mental midgetry that lots of affiliates resorted to – and the general dishonestly of the companies themselves – Oprah’s FAVORITE Acai Wow! Dr Oz LOVES Rez Ultra, etc -)

Even if you are doing honest sites for general health and wellness products and had some of those offers and were getting good traffic to them – you’ll find lots of dead links and a major league pain in the ass when they go offline and you’ve got to either fix them fast……or simply leave them (and money) on the table instead.

Re-direction gives you flexibility.

An offer goes down?

You simply go into your re-direction script and swap in a new link. One step – smooth simple and seamless.

Find an offer that you don’t find yourself comfortable selling anymore? You just pull it out and change it up to something you do.

Diet programs also are really good for redirects - find HIGH EPC offers on Commission Junction like Medifast, for example – and then write GENERAL articles on weight loss - and redirect to Medifast.

When I promoted medifast – they had a 200 + EPC – which means that mas o menos – for every 100 visitors you send them, you will make 200 bucks if your traffic is average quality.

Pretty damn good.

To be perfectly honest with you – I had BETTER luck using a straight redirect – then I did to a "review" style site.

Why?

Because if people are already typing in "Medifast" – and read a good article on medifast - they are already "ready" to buy.

They don’t need a "secondary" or tertiary source to read - they’re already chubby – and probably just had a big lunch anyway.

All you need to do is build the bridge that they walk across to make the transaction.

But -

Writing general articles on weight loss -which alot of you are doing I presume- is a better strategy now.

Why?

Because EZA seems NOT to like product specific articles - going to product specific redirects anymore. ( i.e. – they seem to want a medifast article – to go to a intermediary site  and NOT Medifast through a redirect in this example)

General weight loss and BIG evergreen markets are great- which I’ve been preaching on here for a while as one potential strategy – you can control MASSIVE amounts of traffic – redirect it all to the parent site – and make close to that  EPC figure pretty easily. (in this case – 150 – 200 – or whatever it is….even if you do HALF as well, it’s still pretty damn good compared to Clickbank offers)

You can always switch it up – or stick a root level opt in, etc if it doesn’t work – remember, flexibility is key – and this is flexibility personified.

Okay – now here is a very easy, very specific way to start making REAL money, right now, with redirects – OTHER than the obvious above.

It involves two simple tools – one is perpetually free, and one has a free 14 day trial, and I promised in a previous email I would write more about this. (becuase it’s super cool and WILL make you money)

Go to wordtracker questions.

Ask a question for your market. ( just type in a word - lets say resveratrol)

It will spit out all of the questions that people are typing in to the serps for answers AS they’re asked.

It will also give you COUNTS, on how often those queries are made. (I ignore the actual count total as I don’t trust it…but, it will give you a good idea as to the ‘weight" or conversational quotient of your market)

Sign up for Article Video Robot (they still have a free trial as of this writing…and it’s killer easy to use)

Make short videos of your articles (each video can be 90 seconds or less and literally takes less than 10 minutes to do)

They will DISTRIBUTE those articles for you to 17 + very popular video sharing sites like youtube, daily motion, viddler, et al (note – only 9 or 10 of these are really necessary, or even relevant, if you are trying to sell products that aren’t your own – i.e. – affiliate marketing)

They will even ROTATE the titles for you automatically if you choose that option……(giving you different title text for search engine uniqueness – a BIG ass benefit for "spinning" the video titles which is truly cool)

Plug your redirection URL into both the WATERMARK – and the end of the video credits too. (giving your users the ability to "click out" at any point in show and go right to your URL – (note:  the watermarked URL requires a manual type in by the user – I happen to abuse drugs unfortunately, and I may have hallucinated this.  Carry on below )a big benefit if you are using .info domains rather than .com’s for pricing purposes – as people typically will append a .com if they need to type it in directly after the video is done)

Your videos – if they get similar results from the ones I’ve seen (and many other people who use video marketing) will get indexed, and RANKED, in the search engines in hours. (often minutes)

And everyone knows that videos get lots of love when it comes to ranking well…and ranking fast.

(I had a test video done for me last week at like 9pm – in a very competitive market – using a reasonably competitive keyword – the girl who did it learned the whole process in 30 minutes – did it – published it – and within like 9 minutes or something……we were on the FIRST page of Google for the targeted keyword – visa vi it being picked up first on DailyMotion – and that’s with no promotion – no social book marking – no other work – and quite honestly – NOT a really good video either..:-)

That’s really it.

Get a list of ALL the questions your market is asking from Wordtracker questions.

It’s a super cool way of REALLY getting in the head of the niche you’re targeting – and if you’re like me, it will give you a whole host of tangential ideas to target as well.

Turn those EXACT questions, into answers, in the form of articles.  (using the questions in the titles, obviously)

Then – take those articles – and turn them into an autopilot publishing machine by turning them into VIDEOS, using article video robot.

Submit the text directories and re purpose otherwise as usual.

(hint…if you REALLY want to be successful with this, use book marking tools to "buzz" the videos on the multimedia sites, and "buzz" the articles on the directories and satellite sites. All of this of course, promoting a URL which auto magically forwards to your affiliate program of choice as a straight redirect for easy commissions)

(one EXTRA hint: Use different social networking profiles for EVERY niche if you scale this out. Doing a straight redirect for a psychic powers ebook on Monday? Have a social networking profile for "Paranormal Pete" and buzz not only YOUR stuff, but lots of other cool things in the paranormal market that other people will enjoy.

Promoting an skin care ebook on Clickbank on Wednesday? Have a social networking profile for "Acne Amy" and buzz a whole bunch of good stuff in skin care...and of course, mix in your own stuff as well)

Lots of fun – very easy…..and one of the best ways to generate a terrific torrent of traffic – often overnight!

Great for list building, great for blog building but ALSO great for dead simple re-directs that go video"viral" in a hurry.……very cool and dead simple to use.

It seems by the emails I’ve gotten since writing this blog, and most specifically since starting the “Crash Cash Creation Q and A” and coaching, that the biggest problem MOST people have is simply getting started.

Moving away from learning mode….and diving into doing it instead.

In my view, probably the biggest enemy of achievement of success online ( and in many areas of life – but MOST specifically in fields where is thick veil of mystery, intrigue and folks who have “cracked the code” offering their insights for a fee) is the notion that you’ve got to learn it all before you begin.

The aim, aim, aim, aim, ready, ready, ready.……..approach to success. That NOT having that little piece of information, or that elusive ingredient to success, is the thing that’s holding you back from getting where you want to be, and what’s propelled that guy whose e -books you’ve been buying to where he is.

Want to know the truth?

The biggest key to succeeding with online marketing is simply being brave enough to get down on the ground and get your face muddy enough times that you’ll eventually stumble into success.

I’ve been working in direct response marketing and consulting, in one form or another, for 15 years, I’ve owned a successful telemarketing company at 22, done tons of direct mail and was playing around with Internet marketing when Al Gore was first dreaming it up.

And guess what?

My first articles were terrible. My blogs looked like shit. My pay per click ads all lost money. ( most of them still do..:-)

My resource boxes got no clicks. My articles were like 2000 words long and took me a week and a half to write, and were truly embarrassingly bad, especially considering one of the very few skills I have in this world is I’m a pretty good communicator by nature.

(I’m also an excellent tennis player, and once drank a bottle of mad dog out of a beer funnel in college, which unfortunately, is the most enduring intellectual legacy my college years left behind)

The key is, and I’m going to sound trite and cliché, but it’s true…..take baby steps.

The magic is in the momentum.

Conceptualize, strategize and plan out where you want to go, and then apply simple systems that will take you there as elegantly, and expeditiously as you can.

Don’t be afraid when it doesn’t work out exactly as you planned it, but be brave enough to trust in your vision to ultimately see it through.

( before you start a whole new path, chart a whole new course, and buy a whole new round of BS from some other “guru” offering to show you the light on the other side of the mountain)

I want to share with you an insight into my own experience that is sort of a metaphor for the above, and has been incredibly profound in my own life ( and work).

I’ve been really interested in meditation for the last 5 years or so. I’ve read books on the benefits of mediation, the life changing, tranformative effects mediation has on your health, on your wealth, on your joy, happiness and daily outlook.

I’ve studied Vipassana meditation, Kaballistic meditation, Big Mind, Christ Consciousness, Zen, and just about every odd and esoteric variation of this ancient art ( and science) that I could get my hands on.

It excited me…and filled me with a constant and never ending sense of hope and happiness about what my world would look like once I became a master.

But guess what…………..

I never actually meditated.

I just kept reading, and learning, and reading and learning until I usually forgot completely what I had read the month before, and was never any closer to becoming happier, or more grounded, or more joyful……simply because the books couldn’t give me that.

Maybe they could point the way, or shine a bright light on the proper path to get there, but the MAP and the territory are rarely the same thing.

Want to know what is?

Sitting my ass down, and meditating clumsily for the very first time, without a book in my hand, or a “guru” in my ear trying to lay down the framework for what I needed to succeed.

In truth, the spiritual guru is not much different the marketing one.

They only endeavor to point out something that you probably already know – and that’s something you need to dig out of yourself, not from them.

In the end? I now meditate everyday, and while I’m still grumpy, impatient and occasionally temperamental, I finally understand what the fuss was all about, and am much closer to the “light” than 5 years worth of reading could ever offer.

I’m making progress with my practice, and rather than trying to piggyback off the passion of other people, I finally have my own (occasional) amazing insights of TRUE authenticity, that doesn’t need to be borrowed from a book, or grifted off of a guru to believe they are possible for MY life too.

You can use other people for inspiration, but ultimately, true progress ( or profit) only comes from personal experience, and being willing to throw it all up against the wall, and catch what sticks long enough to grab.

With that said, if you’ve been afraid of creating your first list – simply stop being a sissy and do it. If you’re planning on buying that next home study course to make your first million – forget, it’s not going to happen.

If you haven’t written your first headline, crafted your first piece of copy, left your first blog comment or just about any other “haven’t” on the Internet marketing totem pole of things you PLAN on doing, but just haven’t learned enough to do well just yet, it’s time to pull up your pants and get off of the pot.

The simple truth is every little action you take creates a sense of passion, and purpose, and BRAVERY, and ultimately the belief that you are entitled to succeed, and I believe that with every fabric of my being.

There will be a LONG blog post (or short e-book) on how to create your first profit center in 7 days or less, and although my initial plans were to sell it inexpensively, ( and I probably still will down the road) for those of you who are on my list right now, I’m going to give it away for free to gage feedback and helpfulness – so look for a “Crash Cash Creation” email over the next few days, which will point you to the download location.

Remember though – as above, all of this is just a guideline for you to pick what works best for YOUR business, your goals and your needs, so don’t spend an inordinate amount of time trying to uncover the “secret” in what I write either, I’m just sharing my process – what works best for me, my skills and talents, and equally as important, what doesn’t as well.

As always, thanks for reading, and speak to you soon!