Affiliate Help – Custom Links

Affiliate Dashboard Area

Custom Affiliate Links

Understanding Affiliate Links

By understanding how Affiliate Links work, you gain much more freedom in your use of Affiliate Links. You'll have the ability to do things that you can't do just by using the Affiliate Links supplied to you in the Control Panel. Here's a start:

  • Get total control of what Landing Page your visitors arrive on when they come to our website

  • Add your Affiliate Links to any graphic or text in your site or e-mails

  • Customize what text your visitors see in your Affiliate Links

Just in case you're new to this, let's get a couple basics out of the way. Our Affiliate Program works like this - After you sign up for the program, you go to your private Affiliate Dashboard Area in our website. It's in this password-protected section where we supply Affiliate Links to paste in websites, social media sites, e-mails, or forums (either your own or those belonging to others).

The Affiliate Links we supply you with are often in the form of text links that are to be placed in e-mail newsletter advertisements, at the end of educational articles on a website, or even as posts in message forums and blogs. All of the Affiliate Links we give you have a special code unique to you that serves to track all of your commissions.

When a visitor clicks on one of your Affiliate Links that leads to our website, their activity is tracked by our sophisticated Affiliate Tracking Software. When they make a purchase as a result of these Affiliate Links, you earn a commission. Our Affiliate Program automatically sends you an e-mail whenever a sale/commission is made as a result of one of your Affiliate Links.

Detailed Explanation Of Affiliate Text Links

Important: Before we get too detailed into explaining VisionRise Affiliate Links, we have a new feature which allows you to make sure to submit your site in the "Site" area. This will allow you to promote affiliate traffic from your site without ever having to use and affiliate link. Any link on your site which leads to visionrise.com will count as an affiliate link. Learn more now: Affiliate Site Area

Of course, if you are marketing to your favorite social media website, email newsletters, or another marketing method, the following information should help you.

By learning how to modify Affiliate Text Links, you gain a greater ability to use Affiliate Links in websites, social media sites, e-mail lists, etc. To get started, take a look at this example of an affiliate text link:

https://www.visionrise.com/healthy-home-tips/go/1/

This hyperlink is made up of 2 different elements:

The first part is the Standard Affiliate URL, which is used for all of our Affiliate Links (Text Links and Image Links). It's simply a hyperlink/URL (internet path) that leads to a specific page on our website. Notice the Standard Affiliate URL (in bold) in the hyperlink here:

https://www.visionrise.com/healthy-home-tips/ref/5652/

In the above example, the URL points to our Healthy Home Tips Guide ( https://www.visionrise.com/healthy-home-tips/ )

The second part of the hyperlink is the Affiliate Tracking Code - it contains 2 elements:

1. "/go/" - this is included with all affiliate links. It's a URL path that is used by our Affiliate Tracking Program. The only thing you need to know is that has to be used whenever you create affiliate links.

2. "5652" - the Affiliate ID of the Affiliate who created the code. When you go into the Affiliate Dashboard Area and you create an affiliate Link, part of that Affiliate Link will be the Affiliate ID.

You can see "/go/ and the affiliate tracking id "/5652/" (in bold) combined in the hyperlink here:

https://www.visionrise.com/healthy-home-tips/go/1/

Your Affiliate Tracking ID is unique to you. It could be 150, 340, or it could be 104, or any other code for that matter. This depends on what ID our Affiliate Program created for you when you first signed up for an Affiliate Account.

Here's how the Complete Affiliate Tracking Code works - When a visitor is on a website or e-mail, they click the Affiliate Text Link. This brings them to our website (actually a specific page on our site that is promoting a specific service/product). The code in the Affiliate Text Link which brought them to our site has your Affiliate ID in it. If the visitor makes a purchase on our site, our Affiliate Software (located in our site) tracks this Affiliate ID and credits you with a commission.

Of course, before you start combining our Standard Affiliate URL with text to create Affiliate Links, you need to know your Affiliate ID. You also need to know where you want to send your site/e-mail visitors. This is easy information to get -

For Your Affiliate ID - Just go to the Affiliate Links Area, and you'll see the Affiliate URLs section. In this section, you can see your Affiliate ID. It should look like this:

Your affiliate ID is:
(the above id is actually your unique affiliate id)

To make it easy for you, in the Affiliate Links Area we created a several affiliate links to our various products . All of these links are unique to you. You are welcome to copy and paste these links for your marketing, but they also give you a better idea of how to create your own custom affiliate links.

In the Affiliate Links Area, you can generate a custom affiliate link by copying and pasting a link from a page on our site into the following URL Generator: Affiliate Links Area

Creating Your Own Affiliate Links

You can make your own links easily. Simply copy the url of any page of our website and append your unique affiliate id to the url.

Your unique affiliate will always be
(the above id is actually your unique affiliate id)

So to create an affiliate link to our VisionRise Shower Filter, you would use this url:

https://www.visionrise.com/product/shower-filter/

...and add your affiliate id in this way (don't forget to add "/go/" before your affiliate id):

https://www.visionrise.com/product/shower-filter/go/

It's that simple.

Once you create this link, you can copy and paste it in an email newsletter, you can use it in a social media post (like Facebook). You can also use this link to create a HTML link for your website, blog, etc.

If you have some basic HTML knowledge, you can create the appropriate anchor text for you link (this is especially helpful for posting links into your website or blog):

<a href="https://www.visionrise.com/product/shower-filter/go/">VisionRise Shower Filter</a>

Using HTML, you can also attach your affiliate links to images. This way, when site visitors click on your choice of images, they will be directed to our website with your affiliate link.

Best Practices For Using Affiliate Text Links

If your site has specific content, like educational articles, reviews, etc, integrate Deep Links to our products/features where you can. For example, insert the links within an article or blog post. This can be even more effective than banner advertising. You have the visitor's attention and they are more clear about what's being offered.

Also, these days, people tend to subconsciously avoid website banners. Years of aggressive banner advertisements has created what many marketers refer to as "banner shyness." We suggest avoiding banner advertising.

When appropriate, give your personal comments, introductions, recommendations, and descriptions to our products/products. Your visitors value your expertise and judgment. They will be more likely to make purchases if you provide comments or recommendations about what you're promoting.

When you set up your Affiliate Text Links, make sure they are working properly. Check to see if the link directs to the correct page on our site. Check to see if your Affiliate ID is showing up correctly in the link.

Here are some more ideas to consider about your affiliate links:

  • Make your links stand out.

  • Play around with changing the color, size, boldness, and placement.

  • Put the Affiliate Link above-the-fold.

  • Test using different headlines in the text. Take a look at Editing Tools or use your own. Angle the Headline to align with your visitors. Write them in a way that fits exactly how they are used.

To Summarize...

There are different levels of skill when working with HTML, Hyperlinks, and Affiliate Links. We've covered just some of the basics to get you started (hopefully without confusing you too much).

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to Contact Us.

HTML Links

These are helpful if you have your own website or blog. Copy and paste these HTML links at your convenience.

If you are only posting to social media sites or you are using affiliate links in email blasts, you will find standard text links in our Affiliate Links Area.