Let’s back up and I’ll show you why, how and where I got this code…

An affiliate link let’s you recommend a website or a product online, and earn commission for any referrals you send. It tracks the traffic, and action or sales they take on the site, and you get paid for that.

For example, if I tell you about a cool new photo canvas I got online from CanvasPeople, and you decide to click on my link and get their Free Photo Canvas Offer yourself, I earn a $10 referral fee.

To get affiliate links, you sign up for affiliate networks or affiliate programs.

I like the Commission Junction network at CJ.com. You go to CJ.com, register and create an account, then sign in. You’ll go to Get Links and choose advertisers or product types you want to promote, and apply to their affiliate program. Once you’re approved, you’ll be able to get affiliate links to promote their products.

Here’s a video that shows exactly how I got the code that you see above:

It’s not as bad as it looks – I promise.

But if you’re new to this and you’re trying to share an affiliate link in an email, on Facebook or Twitter, or you’re trying to put it into a blog post or web page editor that was supposed to make creating web pages easy… you’ll be pulling your hair out. If you just copy & paste that HTML Code, it won’t work.

You’ve probably discovered this already.

You need to know which part of the HTML Code to use when, for what –and why…

Affiliate HTML 101

Before we start, you’ll want to open and bookmark this link to a Complete List of HTML Tags. You can refer back to that anytime you get confused, or want to look up a specific HTML element.

We’ll go back to the HTML code we looked at earlier for reference:

The A tag is used for creating a hyperlink, the href specifies the URL you’re linking to. So the A HREF part of the code above is referencing the actual affiliate link, which you see in quotes.

It requires a closing tag which you see at the end in red – that tells the browser where to stop the hyperlink. What you put in between those A tags is what you’re linking the URL to – whether it’s an image or text.

Note: this is not going to be color coded when you go to do this on your own LOL

The blue code starting on the third line is the image that I’m linking to. In this case it’s an affiliate banner image. IMG SRC means Image Source – or the source/URL of the image you want to make clickable. Your images have to reside somewhere on the web so people can see them. Once you upload them, they have their own URL – so the image source is the URL of the image.

Target=_blank (in red on the 2nd line) tells the link to open in a new browser window. If you remove that part of the code, the link will then open in the same browser window.

The width, height, ALT and border tags are all optional. The ALT tag is for Alternate Text. If you’re visitor has images turned off, or they’re blind and their computer is reading the page to them, this is the alternate text that will be used. It also shows in most browsers when you mouse over the image.

You can manipulate the HTML Code in various ways. You might want to link to text instead of a big banner ad. You would simply remove the image code, and put your text in it’s place. This is called Anchor Text, which is basically the clickable text on a web page. You’ll use this to create a Text Link within a blog post or article.

If you’re creating a web page or a blog post, and you’re not working in code – you’re using a WYSIWYG or Visual Editor instead – then you can’t paste in all that A HREF code stuff.

You’ll have an icon or link in your editor that you click to add a hyperlink.

You highlight the text you want to link to, then click the linking option, and it asks you for the URL or affiliate link. That’s going to be everything within the quotes in the A HREF tag of your affiliate code. You’ll see it in black in our example code above – that’s your actual affiliate link. You can use that link in an email, on Twitter or Facebook, or any other place that you can’t use HTML code.

You can also switch into code mode (the HTML Editor) on most programs, WordPress included, and paste in the HTML code. Then you can switch back and finish formatting your page/post in your visual editor.

Don’t gloss over on me yet!

I have another example to share with you. This time on creating affiliate links for products at Amazon.com. I’ll show you how to use better or larger images, and a live example of how great an Amazon affiliate link can really look if you know what you’re doing.

But I’ll save that for the next post, and we’ll talk about deep linking as well because that can really increase your conversion rates. Meaning… it will make you a lot more money.

Check back for Part 2, or subscribe by email below so you don’t miss out. And while you’re waiting, get out there and share some affiliate links!

Best,

p.s. This is the part of Affiliate Marketing that gets left out of most ebooks and blog posts. If you want to learn the nitty-gritty how-to of becoming a successful affiliate, you should attend the Niche Affiliate Marketing Workshop in Atlanta. I teach there twice a year, and it’s a great opportunity to learn hands-on!

Original post by Lynn Terry and software by Elliott Back