Affiliate Links and Linking Instructions

Affiliate Links - How To Use Them

There is a different link for each type of product that you can sell.

As an affiliate, your job is to place these links in the high traffic areas of your web site, or in your newsletters.

Each link points to a landing page on CareerPlanner.com which is optimized to sell that particular product.

We normally have a dedicated landing page for each product.

You can use all of the links or just one. You will get sales credit regardless of which link you use.

The reason for different links for different products is to increase the chance of a sale.

The decision of which link to use is based on what you think the visitors to each of your web pages will most likely click on. Is it a 'Career Test" they are interested in, or perhaps a "Free Personality Test." Or maybe an eBook on how to write the perfect resume.

Regardless of which link you use, you will get sales credit for any of the Affiliate Approved Products that are sold as a result of one of your visitors following the link to our site.

If you are not sure, use the "Career Test" link or the "Free Personality Test" link. They are both very popular.

Click here for instructions on how to customize your links to us.

These are all "Rev 2" links. Used correctly, these links will enable you to measure the performance of the links on your site including: how many times per day the links are viewed, your daily click through rate, and of course your order rate.

You are not logged in as an Affiliate.
You must be logged in as an Affiliate,
before you copy these links to your web site, blog etc,
or they will not work correctly.

Link to Sell a Career Test

You can also use these images...

Link to Our Free Personality Test.

Visitors who take this test have the opportunity to buy the Advanced Personality Type Career Report. Plus we send follow up emails to anyone who takes the free test.

Link to Sell the Advanced Personality Type Career Report

You can also use these images...

Link to Sell Our Resume eBook

You can also use these images...

Link to Sell Our Online Career Counseling Service

How To Customize Your Links

You will notice that there are two tags, or two lines of code for each link. You must include both tags to get full credit for any sales.

The first tag is the actual clickable link. You can modify it's "Link Text" to best attract the attention of your audience.

The second tag is an "image tag." This tag will help track the impressions, which is how many times the link is shown to your visitors. Please do not alter the second line or your reports will be inaccurate.

Modifying the Link Text In The First Tag

The links that you place on your site must be properly formatted and must include your "Affiliate Code" also called the "Affiliate ID" in order for you to receive credit for the referral.

The proper format is shown below:

The link begins with an "Anchor Tag" which looks like "<a href=".

After the anchor tag is our domain "http://www.CareerPlanner.com/".

The domain name is followed by the "Landing Page." There are different landing pages for each product. Each landing page has been specially written to optimize sales for that product.

After the landing page is a question mark which tells our server that there will be some data embedded in the URL.

After the "?" is "AFID=" followed by your Affiliate Code.

Your affiliate code contains the four characters "AFID" followed a series of letters or numbers or both that are unique to your account. That is followed by a quotation mark and the ">" symbol.

Next comes your "Link Text".

Optimizing Your Link Text

The "Link Text" portion is totally up to you. The "Link Text" is the only portion of the link that shows up for your visitors to see.

Link Text is critical. It has to convince your visitors to click on it. The words you choose for your link text will have a huge impact on how many people click on the link.

The link text is where you will want to put on your "web copy writing hat" and get creative.

Use words that will grab your readers.

Use words that will remind them of a problem they have that they are looking for a solution to.

But to get a sale, you must also include the words that describe the product i.e.: Career Test; Resume eBook; Career Counseling; Personality Test; etc.

Including these key words in the link text is critical for the click through to turn into a sale. There must be good alignment between what the user reads in the link text and what they find after they click on the link. Otherwise they will feel betrayed and misled and you won't get a sale.

For example, if your readers are high school students, you might use link text that mentions things like:

• Want help deciding on a college major? This career test will help.
• Want help deciding on your career? Check out this career test.
• Do you know what college degree you want? This career test will help.
• Not sure about your future? Use this career test.
• Need ideas for what to do after you graduate? This career test will help.
• Do you know what the best career choices are for you? This career test will show you.
• This career test will help you find the perfect career.

If you are promoting our career test, because you think your audience might like it, you should use the words "Career Test" in your link text so that they won't be surprised when they land on a page talking about our career test.

If you are promoting any of our Personality Type products, you should use the words "Personality Type" in your link text.

Likewise, if you are promoting our Career Counseling Service, you should include the words "Career Counseling in your link text.

You have probably noticed that these links can become fairly long and they will take up space on your page. We recommend that you put these links right into your main content. Check out our Marketing Tips for ideas on best placement.

Testing Your Link Text Ideas

If you have an idea for Link Text that you would like to try, we have a method for rapidly testing it for you.

Just send us an email with your suggestion and we will test it in front of over 100,000 visitors to see whether they click on it or not.

Due to our high volume, we can run this test in a few days. Then we will email the results back to you.

This way, you get to take advantage of our high volume of traffic to quickly see if your Link Text will be effective at generating sales. Also, if you come up with something that works, we might decide to use it on our site.