Affiliate Link Shortening for Profit
Coupon Cabin just launched their latest offering yesterday in the world of affiliate marketing called Dealfer.com so you make commissions on the sales you generate at participating merchants. It's a clever idea and leverages their relationships with affiliate merchants to help you make money.
Why would I need a short URL?
If you're not hip to the URL shortening jive yet it has a couple of benefits. The first is that shorter URLs are easier for people to type in and they fit on business cards, in books or promotional materials nicely. Dealfer.com links become http://dlfr.me/xxx where xxx represents a string of characters used to find your link and expand it when someone clicks. Being so short they also use less characters on a webpage or the most common use in twitter where you're limited to just 140 characters.The second big reason for URL shortening is that marketers can track how many clicks a link in a certain place received. For example if you tweet a link using dealfer you'll be able to see how many clicks it got on twitter. Some URL shortening services, like bit.ly, even offer stats so that even if your link get's copied and repurposed anywhere like on someone's blog you'll know about it.
Online marketing is easier to monitor than offline marketing traditionally because when someone types in your home page URL into their browser you have no idea where they saw it or heard it, be it on the side of a bus or on the radio but by using a link shortening service you bring traditional marketing back into the ring. The downside is that you're marketing a link that doesn't look like your home page - dlfr.me - but at least it's memorable "deal for me", with the exception of the string part that follows!
Why not use bit.ly?
True, the links are one character shorter and the stats breakout the referral sources but Dealfer wins out in my mind because if I'm linking to a merchant they support I'll get a commission for a sale vs bit.ly links where I won't. Commissions range up to 15% which could help turn a hobby blog into a paying venture.How does it work?
Just like every other URL shortening service but you get paid! The first way to use it is that any time you want to shorten a URL just go to Dealfer.com and paste in the URL. If you're not logged in it will ask you to login, create an account or if you just need a short URL you can skip registration and get the short URL.When you register you give them a PayPal account to receive funds for any commissions you make. Not every link is going to result in commissions but their list of merchants broken out by commission level could inspire you to promote products in the 15% tier! If you link to a merchant not on the list or a site that doesn't monetize you'll get your short URL and can track the number of clicks but the real magic happens when you link to a supported merchant. Chances are if you get 100 clicks to a merchant you'll end up with a sale, especially if it's something your peers would be interested. You can either link to the top level domain name or deep link to a specific product.
Any top tips?
They have a bookmarklet you can drag onto your bookmarks to make it easier to generate links while you shop. Basically if you're on a product page for something you think your friends would like you can hit the bookmarklet and it pops up a window to give you a dealfer link to use when you're done shopping. You don't have to worry about whether it's on the participating merchant list or not - you'll still get a link you can share. If it is, it's a bonus.I would recommend looking at the merchant list shown by commission percentage to see what to expect from each merchant. Some only offer 1% of a sale and others offer 15%. Familiarize yourself with the sites so you know that if you have a choice between linking to something at site A vs site B (a participating merchant) you don't miss any opportunities.
Lastly, think about where you are sharing your links. If your blog is about Adobe products then linking to Adobe makes perfect sense. Try to put your readers one click away from the purchase instead of just linking to the merchant home page. For example a long blog post about Adobe ColdFusion would deserve a link write down to the ColdFusion product info/purchasing/trial page.
Until the stats are broken out at Dealfer by referrer you can at least create different links for the different places where you wish to use a link to a site. For example in an ad in the newspaper you might use one link and for a twitter promotion another. Even though they both point at the same place you get to see how many people "clicked" each. (The quotes because if they type it in after seeing it offline they are still tracked as a click).
Think about opportunities to promote specific products as you wander around the web. If you're in a forum about the latest nike running shoe and you know one of the featured merchants has a sale on that product or is the cheapest, "dealfer a link" instead of just linking to the store directly and you'll still get commissions on whatever sells. Even on facebook or linked in where people are asking for product recommendations. If it's truly a great product you believe in and a reputable store it will sell and you'll get the credit.
Future developments
I'd like to see this service incorporated into some of the big twitter applications like cotweet.com and Twitterific or Tweet Deck. The advantage for developers is that until the account holder enters their own login for Dealfer into the application, the developers would be credited with commissions generated by links. I shudder to think how many links per day the average twitter app sends!Another feature I'd like to see is a list of the merchants listed by the highest conversion rates and/or revenue generated per click. This type of breakout could help potential linkers find the stores that, while they may offer excellent commissions, rarely convert visitors into sales. Dodging the dogs could lead to a really profitable linking hobby!