Have You Made This Affiliate Redirect Mistake?

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I just got this email from a product owner who I am an affiliate for.

"Firstly I wanted to thank you for becoming an Affiliate for my products and services. I regret to say that on May 31st 2008 I will be dropping the Affiliate program through XXXXX. I will be setting up new programs through another provider"

This type of email is one I have seen a few times now. I remember Perry Marshall changed his affiliate software provider, and ebay is changing the way they link right now etc… just recently John Reese decided to no-longer sell Traffic Secrets and he cancelled his monthly Reese report. So this is a common occurance. If you promote other peoples products you need to prepare for Change.

Am I worried? No.

Some people will be panicking though. Especially if they have produced content with direct links to the affiliate program. Imagine what happens to any direct links in ebooks that are unable to be changed? Even if you can go and chnage your links on every site it is still a huge hassle. Even the experts got caught out with this when the first viral ebooks went out.

I recommend all affiliates use redirects!

This is critical to "future proof" your affiliate income. In fact, later on you may even decide to make your own product so it is handy to be able to redirect your traffic to your own destination.

Even with redirects some people get this wrong. For example it is unwise to use third party re-directs. DO NOT use URL shrinkers or membership site redirect linker services. What happens when they go out of business or their site is down or you want to discontinue a membership? You lose control.. Always make your own. You should never, ever,  ever just paste the supplied affiliate link directly on your page.

Three preferred methods of redirects that will save your profit

Method 1: Add a page or sub-domain or folder to your domain to re-direct your affiliate traffic. So if you have a domain like www.cheekypuppy.com and you want to link to a puppy training ebook you link to www.cheekypuppy.com/training.html etc….  If the puppy training product changes you simply change your redirect. It is best to keep a generic name rather than a brand name so you can change the brand later. For clickbank products remember to cloak your links. For some products like $7 dollar scripts or sophisticated affiliate carts you cannot cloak links as it strips out the part that tracks your commission.

Method 2. Buy a domain for all your redirects. Put the domain on your hosting service then upload your redirect script to each page. So you now have a "hub" that you can manage all your re-directs from in one place. You can also add tracking scripts to your pages and keep a close eye on your incoming referral source. This works well if you have a lot of affiliate links and a lot of websites. So in this example you point all your site links to one central redirect. So you could link to  www.securelinkdirect.com/ar.html (for autoresponder). You link to that whenever you want to mention autoresponder. Your stats will show which site of yours is sending the most traffic. Handy for building your affiliate empire.

Method 3. When you have core affiliate programs you will be using all the time it is time to get a domain name for each one. I use domain names like: www.ClickHereForHosting.com when I want to link to hosting. I will put it on my own server and create a re-direct so that I can track the web traffic rather than just redirect it at the domain service. Also when you put your redirect on the server you can add meta tags and a page title. You get the benefit of backlinks and if your link has a keyword in it it sometimes ranks for that in the search results. This data will give you valuable clues about where to invest your attention. If you choose generic names you can change suppliers when you want. Also you can safely put these links on your blog posts, ebooks and websites knowing that when you want to change you can.

Final word - Make sure you TEST all affiliate links

When you set up your links you need to check that they are tracking. After you lose a few sales you will remember to do this forever!

Happy linking!

Tags: Affiliate, affiliate links, affiliate redirect, cloaking links, how to re-direct, re-direct

Filed under Affiliate, How To, Ideas by James

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