This is a guest blog post from Alice Seba, the Internet Marketing Sweetie.
Recently I received a great question from one of my newsletter subscribers: “I notice that you redirect your affiliate links through your own domain. Why do you do this?”
Yes, I definitely do redirect affiliate links. There are a number of reasons this is a smart practice. First let me say that some affiliate marketers do redirects to try to avoid losing commissions via “stealing”. For instance, if it is a ClickBank link, someone can see the hoplink and easily switch yours for their own affiliate ID to get the commission.
Frankly, I don’t lose sleep over this possibility. People who want to cheat and steal commissions for themselves will always be one step ahead of the honest guys. Besides, if you don’t market to other Internet business owners, the chances of your readers even knowing what an affiliate programs is are slim to none.
Reasons I Redirect Affiliate Links:
Time saver – I create one redirect link on my domain (ex. internetmarketingsweetie.com/hello.html) that is simple, short, and easy to remember. Affiliate links are typically long and filled with a bunch of crazy characters. This way, I don’t have to waste time looking for my unique link. Of course, if I’m using special tracking, I may set up a second link, but in most cases, this makes a simpler way to go.
Easy to switch – How often have you had an affiliate manager change the program management software on you, making all of your links invalid? What a nightmare if you haven’t created redirects! The time you would spend hunting down and changing out all of those dead links on web pages and ebooks – the temptation would be there to just leave it alone, but that would mean lost commissions. Another scenario is when you stop promoting a product and want to switch to another. If you have made those redirects, it’s easy to switch – in one place – to an alternate product or a new link.
Tracking – It’s important to the profitability of your business to know what your visitors and subscribers are clicking on. If the company doesn’t provide tracking, you can still see your clickthrough stats this way.
Shorter URLs – Sometimes long affiliate links will break up in email, and many of your subscribers won’t know why. Most probably won’t bother to ask or let you know. Shorter URLs also make it easier for the readers of your ebooks in case people print them out. It’s easier to type in a short URL then a long cumbersome affiliate link (often, with all those strange number and letter combinations).
Hopefully by now I’ve sold you on the idea of creating affiliate redirects. If you want to create redirects, there are a few different ways to do it. I use a simple javascript redirect (the only drawback of this is that if your visitor doesn’t have javascript installed, the links won’t work).
Here’s how to do it:
Name the page (file name) whatever you want. I like to name mine something intuitive so I don’t forget, and keep it as short as I can. For example: mydomain.com/easyseoguide.html
Then insert this html into the body of your html document (copy and paste into a text file first or you might get strange formatting added in):
<html><head><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.linktolinkto"> </head><body></body></html>
Congratulations! You’ve just created an affiliate redirect link. It’s short, easy to remember, easy to switch out, and you can track clickthroughs anytime.
Get More Help: If you’d like tips to help you increase your affiliate income, sign up for free here.
Note from Kelly … want to see a video that shows how to set up those redirects? Check out this one here.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:
- Link Love for Loved Links
- Great Ways to Fail at Affiliate Marketing
- Links Important Enough to Write About on a Saturday
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Jim Pearson has spent more than 25 years helping small and mid-size businesses find solutions to their business problems. He specializes in sales, marketing and rapid revenue growth and has helped hundreds of companies make more money.
Gene Culver has more than 15 years of diverse business experience across the music industry, telecom network marketing and business coaching. His specialty is helping individuals with marketing, their internet presence and lead generation.
Thanks for the tutorial. I use php redirects because the meta refresh never works as fast as I think it should, but it’s good to have more than one method to use.
Ok, I have no clue really how to do this. I use affiliate links but I guess I will have to re-read this post to fully understand and take it in! It may be cuz I have two in diapers and my husband running around in the background right at the moment so my brain is not concentrating correctly.
Alice,
I agree with you a ton. “nice” redirected links are so much more productive and less “ugly” than something like http://www.site.com/&aff=572821&redirect=5&name=Bill
Sorry, got carried away with that!
I use WordPress, and made a plugin a few weeks back for doing banner affiliate links.
I can’t tell you how much time it’s saved me! It’s got one bug still (that I can find), that I’m trying to figure out.