Affiliate Linking & Redirection

[maxor]

Say you've got a site with various affiliate links...

Rather than linking directly to the affiliate page with a long ugly url is it standard practice to link to a script on your site that can then redirect the clicker to the affiliate offer?

For instance:

http://www.someaffiliateprogramurl.com/id=A8Bd91j83jqx8a3jfC8

Becomes

http://www.myexamplesiteurl.com/redirect.php?=1

This seems like a much better way of doing things since it allows for the capture of information locally as well a much nicer looking URL. The only disadvantage I can see is that some affiliate programs would prohibit affiliate's from not using the supplied affiliate offer URL.

 

[beejeebers]

Redirects are the best way to do it. Why would the affiliate program care if someone hits their site via a redirect?

 

[maxor]

Redirects are the best way to do it. Why would the affiliate program care if someone hits their site via a redirect?

Seems like one of those stupid TOS rules required by a lawyer.

Well I'm going to write a small tutorial for the newbie forum on this topic, hopefully it will help somebody out.

 

[spyderman4g63]

Aren't you technically still using the supplied URL. I mean at some point the URL is in the redirect script.

By the way, I prefer to use something like:
http://www.someaffiliateprogramurl.c...1j83jqx8a3jfC8

becomes
http://www.mysite.com/go/offer-name/

By modifying the .htaccess file or just creating directorys.

 

[Bofu2U]

Yeah but keep one thing in mind. An actual redirect will push them to the merchants page via screen + displayed URI. An IFrame will push them via screen, but keep your URI as mysite.com/go/offer-name/ - therefore it's technically "your site" with a mirror image. Some companies want you to sell them before they see the companies ad, so this is a little way to go around that.

Aren't you technically still using the supplied URL. I mean at some point the URL is in the redirect script.

By the way, I prefer to use something like:
http://www.someaffiliateprogramurl.c...1j83jqx8a3jfC8

becomes
http://www.mysite.com/go/offer-name/

By modifying the .htaccess file or just creating directorys.

 

[jened]

Yeah but keep one thing in mind. An actual redirect will push them to the merchants page via screen + displayed URI. An IFrame will push them via screen, but keep your URI as mysite.com/go/offer-name/ - therefore it's technically "your site" with a mirror image. Some companies want you to sell them before they see the companies ad, so this is a little way to go around that.

can you or someone elaborate on this? if i'm using htaccess, is my original url still displayed?

 

[yozshura]

Remember to create robots.txt to restrict google bots from crawling the empty folders

Personally i use .htaccess with javascripts to cover the URL in browser's status bar. Some people even insert a small analytics code in the php redirect file to track click. Quite cool.

 

[yozshura]

can you or someone elaborate on this? if i'm using htaccess, is my original url still displayed?

AFAIK it depends on the affiliate program the companies use. Some do cut off your affiliate ID (using cookies ?), some others don't.

 

[maxor]

I seem to recall reading something in the linkshare TOS that forbid affiliates from redirecting to the offer page while in an iframe (so as to keep the affliate's url displayed).

 

[maxor]

can you or someone elaborate on this? if i'm using htaccess, is my original url still displayed?

If you're justing using mod_rewrite (what's inside .htaccess) you're not going to be able to load a new page on a different server (the offer page of the merchant) and keep the URL.

However, if you used mod_rewrite to make use of a url like "myexamplesite.com/redirect/offer" and on that page you opened an huge iFrame to the merchant's offer page the user would be viewing content from a site other than your own but it would still appear as though they were on your website.

Again, this might be against the TOS for some affiliate programs.