Just starting out in the affiliate industry? Need to learn internet marketing basics? There has never been a greater variety of excellent places to find good quality affiliate marketing help.

Forums are a fantastic place to find out what is happening in the affiliate world,
and free to join.

A variety of people visit forums. Information and news is free and all you have to do is listen in.

You will pick up a great amount of information as people talk about things they have tried and have worked, or where failures are and ask for help.

Check out article directories for good information. It’s another great place to learn internet marketing basics. It’s all free, and you have permission to republish stuff on your own website if you retain the author’s name and web links in the article.
Just be wary of a sales pitch within the article.

Be wary of paid resources offering affiliate courses.

If you are looking for a paid resource, you should look for one that is modestly priced, functions on a membership basis, recognizes that different marketers have different needs, but most of all offers ongoing help and instruction.

As the blog world is expanding, you can find lots of affiliate information in blogs.
And watch the comments or questions and perhaps ask a few yourself.

Marketing and home business electronic zines (ezines) offer a lot of affiliate information and their publishers know where to find it, that’s another idea.

Every day, we open the browser, look at new opportunities and find new web sites, ezines and affiliate programs. We scan hundreds of ads, articles and click to new sites.

Perhaps you have your own particular rules set up to follow when you are surfing/browsing the web. I collected certain items to check off before I sign up/submit my information to others.

I always look for contact information. For example: An email, a telephone number, an address and a name.

I ask questions and wait for an answer before I hit submit.

Look for a privacy policy or ask for one. [ This will often give you vital information, such as the length of time in business and credentials.]

Look for excessive spelling errors. An occasional error is normal and can be easily missed and is not something to be   excited about.

If it is an ezine I am subscribing to, I ask for a complimentary copy or check out the archive if they have one.

Page load time is important… If it takes too long to load, we all move on. [An important note: Update your browsers - old browsers do not always display properly and often hang. This is not the web sites fault.]

Easy navigation. Can you find everything without reloading, and clicking the back button a zillion times?

Readable pages… fonts and backgrounds

Oodles of reading may indicate a scheme – do they go around in circles repeating themselves? [This one really ticks me off!] Then scroll way to the bottom of the page… and WHAM..here is where you PAY that outlandish price.

Payment options – go for your gut feeling. I offer PayPal but there are others. Often a business simply is not large enough to offer credit card payment, this does not mean they are not reliable!

Can this business provide a reference if asked?

Outdated links, or broken links indicate updating of site irregularity.  These are just a few points to help you make up your own mind Before you hit Submit.

Link cloaking refers to hiding your web/affiliate links from website visitors. This is done by redirecting from one link to another, hiding the destination link from the web page visitor.

If you are promoting a product as an affiliate, you would be using your affiliate link to send visitors to that web page. Visitors can easily see that the link is an affiliate link and prefer going to the website directly. Link cloaking hides the affiliate(s) link and replaces it with a tidy, short URL.

Affiliate commissions can be easily stolen. This is done by substituting the original link with the new affiliate id. Link cloaking hides the affiliate id from the visitor, and thus can prevent your commissions from being stolen.

It is also easy to track your links and obtain traffic statistics by using cloaked URLS/LINKS

Another reason for cloaking is probably become one of the most common complaints that most ISPs face when someone complains that their bulk emails from a marketing campaign or a newsletter/ezine are blocked out as spam. This can cause problems for the the person(s) and their ISP as well.This problem may result in blacklisting from ever mailing again and the chances of the end users marking your emails as spam are pretty good.

Spam filters are the ones responsible for this action. Even legitimate mails get lost in the process.

So, when you are in a position in which spam filters have blocked you out, the first step that you should take is to check if you have gotten a report from the domain that you were mass mailing to. Some filters will actually send you back a mailing stating that your activity seemed like you were spamming and are now blacklisted. The site will also give you the option of getting yourself delisted.

Spam filters are a fact of life and the chances of blacklisting are quite good, unfortunately. One good remedy for this is not to mail at domains but rather to mail to webmail accounts.

A good link cloaker is Tiny Url, and free to use. http://www.tinyurl.com