If you want to keep better track of
your links, have more control over necessary changes to your links
and possibly even have more clicks on your affiliate links, you
should be redirecting your affiliate links.
This means where your affiliate link may look like:
http://www.learndigitalphotographynow.com/a.php?a=XXXXX
You can change it to a link coming from your own website like:
http://www.mydomain.com/mylink.html
There are a Number
of Reasons to Redirect Your Link and Here Are a Few:
1. Many affiliate links are long and they can actually
break into 2 lines if you’re sending them in an email. Once they
break up like that, your readers won’t be able to click through.
2. Sometimes affiliate programs change their links or even
shut down. Learn Digital Photography Now is going to be here
for a long time, but always be safe with your affiliate links as a
matter of practice and redirect them. That means if you ever need
to make changes to your link, you can simply make the change from
your redirected link, instead of trying to find where you placed
all those links on your website and in your emails.
3. If a link is showing as coming from your site, your
readers might be more likely to click on it than if they see a
long strange affiliate link direct from the program. You can even
name your file something creative or descriptive (ex. mydomain.com/best-guide.html)
and your readers might be more likely to click through.
4. If you redirect your links the way we describe in this
tutorial, you’ll be able to log into your website statistics and
track click throughs for your links. The affiliate program you are
involved with may already provide some of these statistics, but
you can track multiple links and get all your data from one place.
5. It makes it easy to remember your affiliates links for
promotions on the fly. Whenever you want to recommend Your
Guide to Digital Photography or another product, you’ll know
your link right away.
How to Make Your
Redirected Link:
There are a variety of methods to redirect a link, but we’re going
to keep it simple and use what is called a javascript redirect.
1. Create a new blank page for your website. Name the page
whatever you’d like (for example: best-guide.html).
2. Remove any HTML code and paste this instead:
3. Be sure to replace http://www.INSERTAFFILIATELINK.com
with your full affiliate link.
4. Test your link to make sure everything is working.
Simply type in the location of your new page into your web browser
to ensure it is redirecting (ex. type in mydomain.com/best-guide.html).
