To shrink or not to shrink, that is the question.

Every day we see hundreds of sites, e-books, and softwares that recommend using a redirect service like TinyURL.com to shrink ugly or long affiliate links claiming that they protect affiliate commissions and make the link look better. Think Track That Ad or many others and let’s take a look at how this works.

Regular affiliate link: http://www.myprogram.com/aff/track/username

Shrunken URL : http://www.urlservice.com/13635

Pretty went out the window with the number after the domain name and it also lost search engine value as neither a redirect or a number instead of a name will result in indexing. In addition instead of the visitor going to your affiliate site first they are sent through the urlservice.com site giving them credit for your traffic. None of this helps you sell or convert anything.

SPAM and Scam risk.

I refuse to click a shortened link personally because of having been attacked with a nasty virus through just such a program. Hackers, Spammers, and Scammers use these programs to cloak a site that is a known attack site and keep your virus software from blocking it. By using the same service these people do you have thrown trust and probably 2/3 of your potential visitors out the window so someone else could steal your traffic and get you to promote their site for free.

Traffic Theft.

How many of these URL services do you see that display ads above, below, over, or during your visitors time on the site you sent them too. These ads are flashy or interrupt the flow of the visit and distract from the sale. Worse yet most of these take the customer away from your offer if they click the link. Say goodbye to your customer as the other users and paid advertisers say thanks for the sale. You are being robbed at every turn by the poorly designed services.

So what do I do with those ugly links?

Simple, buy a domain name and hosting account. Most come with a simple auto responder system and in minutes you can build a intro page or blog without knowing any HTML. There are now a couple ways to create pretty links from your hosting account.

Method 1: Sub-domain redirect. In your C-panel you create a sub domain like product.mysite.com and then select redirect and aim the redirect to your affiliate page. Takes less then 10 seconds to do. Or build a splash page using the easy type and save website builder included with your account and 5 minutes time to add a splash page with link to the program and a auto responder capture form.

Method 2 folder redirect: Instead of a sub-domain you would add a folder like mysite.com/myoffer/ Again you would use a redirect from the folder or use the web builder to create a small splash page which can also include your auto responder sign up form.

Method 3 is to simply link in your programs from the main site and promote that site. You can either add a link to them or add a pre-sale page with lead capture and a link to them.

Regardless you will take control of your business and see benefits that even direct promotion of your link will lose for you. When you have your own domain and lead capture system you get the leads instead of the company you are promoting, and you get credit and search engine rankings for your traffic. You also will be using 100% text based links that can be ranked in the search engines giving free traffic to your offer and will not have the risk of being confused with the fraud sites that use URL shrinker services also called URL cloaking services.

 

To see how affordable hosting can be visit Velocity Marketer Hosting

 

Thanks for your time,

Andy Zeus Anderson

 

 

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