Using Custom Links Menus for Affiliate Marketing
I was watching a training given by Rob Fore tonight on setting up a blog for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In it, he talked about setting up your blog “store front” in order to help monetize the site through affiliate marketing links. One of the things he did, which I thought was pretty cool was adding links to various affiliate marketing capture pages directly on the sites main navigation menu. He didn’t do a “how-to” on it, since that wasn’t the focus of tonight’s topic, so I started playing around with it to figure out how to make that work.
An Extra Income Stream
One of the four income streams you should have in your business is selling products through affiliate marketing. Your primary network marketing/mlm business will be your residual income that will build over time. You also need income right now to build a marketing budget and to stay in the game while you’re building that residual check. Affiliate marketing is a great way to do that. Like network marketing, it gives you the opportunity to generate income by recommending products you use and trust. It’s an important component of building a long term, profitable business.
Setting up a Custom Menu Link
At any rate, setting up a custom link on your navigation menu going straight to affiliate marketing capture pages is a cool idea and pretty simple to set up. From your WordPress Dashboard, click on Appearance>Menus. You can also go directly to the page by typing yoursitename/wp-admin/nav-menus.php
Click on the Custom Links drop-down on the left hand side of the page. Copy and paste the URL for your affiliate marketing capture page in the appropriate box and then, in the Link Text box, type the Menu Item Name as you want it to appear on your site. Click the Add to Menu button.
Next go to the top right of that window to the drop down titled Screen Options. Click that to open it. Under Show advanced menu properties simply check the box marked Link Target.
Finally, in the Menu Structure section, click on the little arrow next to your Custom link menu item. In that editor, you will now see a check box that allows you to select open link in new window/tab. Check that box.
Viola! It is done.
I’m looking forward to testing the results of this tweak going forward. Let me know what you think or if you’ve used this successfully or not.
To your success,
Steve
Steve Norris’ blog
Skype: norris.steve
steve@stevenorris.biz
