Are UGLY URL’s Keeping you from Making Money?
by: Glen Barnhardt
What is an UGLY URL? An UGLY URL is one that is long and has special characters in it. It could look much like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/get.php?ref=yourname&value=6.
How would you get a UGLY URL like that? When you begin promoting other peoples products you will be assigned a URL to promote the product. In many cases these URL’s are not pretty at all. In fact they are darned right UGLY.
Now that you know what an UGLY URL is and how you might end up with one what can you do about it? There are many options. You could create what is called a redirect which is a way of sending someone from one URL to another.
Many hosting companies have the capability of setting up a redirect in there control panel. This method works well but takes a bit of time to setup each time you need a new redirect.
Another method is to create an index.html file or a index.php file with code in it to redirect anyone who goes to that page to another. This method will only allow one redirect per website and many people will want to have many redirects for that site.
You can use the same method but instead name the file something different which will allow you to redirect many URL’s.
The other option is to go to one of the redirect sites.
http://www.tinyurl.com is one such website that will allow you to redirect those UGLY URL’s.
Many times you will also want to cloak your URL. What is cloaking? Well when you cloak your URL it will never show the actual UGLY URL at all. All the other methods above will show the UGLY URL when they arrive at that page.
There is however one other method that is convenient, personalized and cloaked. This is a piece of software that you would load on your server. The software will personalize your UGLY URL by giving it your domain name. It’s very fast to add a new URL it can be done in less than a minute and upon arrival at the site you will not see the UGLY URL displayed.
Some versions of this software will have added features that include click statistics and places to store the information of the site so you can keep track of your affiliate programs.
In summary I suggest you find one of the programs available and install it on your own server. It has been proven that this method will increase your click-thru’s, opt-ins and sales.
About The Author
Glen Barnhardt is owner of Barnhardt Enterprises and Author of URL Makeover a software designed to redirect URL's.
http://www.urlmakeover.com
