A comment at 45n5.com recently called redirecting affiliate links “sneaky” and I thought that was a wrong understanding of redirects. This post is to clear up why I redirect affiliate links and you might want to also.

What is a redirect?

When you click on a link and the you think it goes to www.a.com but you end up at www.b.com.

Why I Redirect Affiliate Links

Reason 1: Looks

I think this

http://www.45n5.com/links/pepperjamnetwork.php

looks better than this

http://www.pjtra.com/t/QUlARUdASUBBQ0FJQkRE

Reason 2: Convenience when things change

Let’s assume the PepperJamNetwork closes down or changes their links. Or maybe I just figured out how to add a tracking Id and want to do that.

When you don’t redirect your affiliate links, you need to go back through all of your archives, change every single link you hard coded into your blog, to make whatever change it is you want to make. A headache.

When you are using a redirect, you simply change the affilaite url in one file, the file with the redirect, and automatically all your links from your entire archives will start redirecting to the new affilaite url.

Both the points here are strong reasons to redirect affilaite links.

How To Redirect Affiliate Links

1. Set up a folder called “links” on your site

2. Download this redirect template, add your affiliate url to the code (easy to do, just copy and paste), and then name the file whatever you want your redirect to be called, like affiliate.php.

3. Upload affiliate.php to your “links” folder and you are done

Sidenote, you can call the “links” folder whatever you want. Some people call it “recommends” or “go”.

Now every time you want to link to that affiliate program just type:

yourdomain.com/links/affiliate.php

Redirection Conclusion

There are other reasons and methods for redirecting affiliate links however the method mentioned here is the easiest in my opinion.

And for sure redirecting affiliate links is not “evil” or “sneaky”, it serves a purpose.