When this happens, you’ll be given an affilliate link like this;
https://paydotcom.com/r/88429/JohnTanner/25533774/

Affiliate links can be used as part of an email campaign, be part of a forum signature, or be direcly mentioned within a blog post.

So you don’t want to put people off by displaying links that scream “I’m trying to sell something”.

First impressions count.

So take that an extra few minutes and create a more appealing url address that will hide the affilliate link.

 
To do this, think of a meaningful address that you’d like to display.

In this instance I want the url to follow the following naming format;

http://www.myblog.com/recommends/productXYZ

   
Start off by creating an empty folder on your P.C. called ‘recommends’ and within that folder, create another empty folder called ‘productXYZ’.

Open up Notepad and copy the following code into the editor.

 
<?php $URL=”https://paydotcom.com/r/88429/JohnTanner/25533774/“;
header (“Location: $URL”);
exit();
?>

Change the value of $URL to be the affilliate link address you want to cloak.
Save as “index.php”

(Note; If you save the file without quotes you will end up with index.php.txt)

 
Now you need to open up your FTP Editor and copy the Folder ‘recommends’ from your P.C. across to sit within the folder Public.html of your website.

   
The end result will be that you can use

http://www.myblog.com/recommends/productXYZ  (or what ever you decide),

as part of an email campaign, forum signature, or blog post, rather than the ugly affilliate link.

Whilst on vacation, I thought I’d try my hand at creating a video.

The other people on the beach must have thought I was a right nutter talking to myself.

My wife and kids were really embarrassed!

I was looking back at a few of my own blog posts yesterday at work, and something occurred to me.

It was a lesson that I learned, years back now, about writing for the web. Something that apparently slipped my mind in the midst of all of this excitement.

I almost forgot – how to write for the web.

But first, I want to share with you, that up until now, all that I know about website development and having an online business, I learned from Ken Evoy, the founder of Site Sell.

One of the things that I learned from Ken, early on, is that when we are writing for the web.

We need lots and lots of white space….

Lots of line breaks…

And short paragraphs.

And why are we doing this?

We are doing this for our readers, yes, the people that land on our webpages and blog posts. We have to consider what they see and think when they arrive.

The last thing that we want to down is drowned them out with a sea of words. So they just initially look at our blog post and think…

“Well this looks exhausting,” and just click away.

We want to make our pages as reader-friendly as we can, and help our readers get through our writing, so we can get our message across.

And the way to do this, is to shorten our paragraphs.

And yes, included lots of line breaks.

And make sure there’s lots and lots of white space on the page.

See, how easy that was to read?

I can take this a step further, too. And share a bit more, and this is about the font that we are supposed to be using when writing for online reading.

The font is Verdana.

Verdana is apparently very easy on the eyes when reading on a computer screen. And we should be using this font with all of our post, pages, and ebooks.

Because the idea is make what we write for online reading, as user-friendly as we can. So we don’t loose our visitors.

We worked hard to get them to our sites and blogs, and we want them to stay.

Because remember, it’s just one-click and they’re gone.

So do everything you can to make what you write, really easy to read online.

This is so your visitors can get through your masterpiece.

Your thoughts and ideas…your writing.

For more information from Karen, visit her excellent blog at http://karenkalata.com/

(Now I need to work out how to change the Font on my Blog)

So if you want your image to appear on a blog posting;-

1. Sign up for a Gravitar  account at  http://en-gravatar.com
2. You will be asked to enter an email address,  after which you will create a nickname and password
3. Next you can upload an image to associate with the email address you entered.
4. Go to you WordPress blog admin section http://youraddress/wp-admin
5. Select the option ‘Settings’, then ‘Discussion’, then Avatar
6. You will see a panel with options which you set with a radio button. Set Gravitar and then save.

From now on, when you post a comment, the image you uploaded to your Gravitar account will be displayed.

• Using Powerpoint, I created a series of slides, which I then saved as jpg images.
• Open Windows Movie Maker and upload the series of images.
• Add Royalty Free Music and save.
• Upload to your YouTube account and copy the Embed code that YouTube provide.
• Paste the Embed code into your blog using the HTML tab (rather than Visual).

Select Preview and watch your video play in the blog.