Affiliate Marketers You Need Your Own Domain Name!
When marketers start their internet marketing journey they usually start by promoting affiliate programs. Usually the affiliate program gives you a long url with your id on the end of it like this:http://www.BigValueDepot.com/store/index.asp?affSponsorID&XXXXXXX
There are a couple of problems with this scenario. First of all many other affiliate are promoting the same base url which in this case is www.BigValueDepot.com. Popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as popular classified ad sites such as Craigslist and Backpage.com have a tendency to block urls from popular programs.
They do this because simply too many people are using the exact same ads with the exact same base url. Maybe the end of the url is different but from the viewpoint of the social media or advertising site it is all the same thing so they block the base url.
Many Major Affiliate Programs And Redirect Services Are Blocked By Major Social Media and Advertising Sites
The same holds true for the most popular redirect urls such as Bit.ly and Tinuryl.com. They are generally getting blocked on major advertising sites. So if you use one of the services to shorten your url it may be counter productive. Your ads simply will not go live on some of the most popular sites.
Another downside to promoting the long raw affiliate url is that it just looks terrible and unprofessional. Which link would you click on “http://www.BigValueDepot.com/store/index.asp?affSponsorID&XXXXXXX” or http://www.mattsbigdepotdeals.com?” The later is definitely the most professional looking.
The Answer Is To Buy Your Own Domain Name And Redirect Your Domain To Your Affiliate Link
For about $10. per year you can reserve your own domain name and re-direct the domain name to your affiliate url. This way you can promote your very own unique professional looking domain name rather than a long affiliate url or a popular url shortener which the entire planet is using to spam offers everywhere.
I know that most beginning affiliate marketers are not that techy but getting your own domain name is cheap and easy. It is also easy to re-direct the domain name to your affiliate link. Most domain registrars have a control panel which allows you to re-direct your domain to any url you wish. It just takes a few seconds. So for $10. bucks and about 10 minutes of work you can get your link into more sites and have it look more professional to boot. If you business is not worth 10 bucks and 10 minutes of effort is it really worth it at all?
You can reserve your own domain name here.
I highly recommend you promote your own domain name instead of your affiliate url with your marketing campaigns. You will definitely get better exposure for your ad if you use your own domain name rather than the raw affiliate url or a popular redirect service.
Here is a video which shows you how to redirect your domain name to your affiliate url:
