Craiglist is a teeming market. Unfortunately, they don’t look kindly on affiliate links cluttering up their pages. Business affiliates have to find ways in order to “hide” their links.
One of the easiest method is to use a URL-shortening service such as TinyURL. However, the resulting link really has no identity and a lot of people are wary of clicking links with destination unknown.
A lot of affiliate marketers prowling Craiglist instead use domain redirection or forwarding so their affiliate IDs doesn’t appear at craiglist. Domain redirection or forwarding doesn’t have to be expensive as there are free subdomains out there. Dot TK is a favorite of Craiglist marketers. We believe CO dot CC wil also work. It’s also very easy to set-up a redirect in the CO.CC panel.
Affiliate programs gives us a slice of the pie as finder’s fee for ferreting out customers. Online companies usually use cookies to determine from which affiliate the buying customer came from.
Cookies are teeny bits of text data stored by web browsers on a surfer’s computer. Affiliate programs use tracking cookies.
When we sign-up with online companies to become their affiliates, we are given links with affiliate IDs to include in our posts or articles. Interested surfers or readers click on the link with our ID and gets taken to the product site. The company then downloads a tracking cookie with our affiliate identification into the surfer’s or reader’s computer.
Whenever somebody from that particular computer uses it to buy a product from the affiliate website, that purchase gets tagged with our affiliate ID.
In case the customer visited 2 or more affiliates before makign a purchase, it is the latest affiliate ID that gets credited.
Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately following Black Friday, which this year is December 1. Whereas Black Friday is about offline shopping, Cyber Monday heralds the online shopping frenzy before Christmas. The term was coined in 2005 when marketers noticed a 3/4 increase in online sales the monday after Thanksgiving.
Online stores are giving out laptop specials as well as deals on other gadgets on this day so it’s a good idea to get our affiliate links into product reviews or recommendations.
