Life of a blogger is not an easy one.

[aaclapham]

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Most people say blogging is great content for the search engines, it produces a good reading experience for the customer, and is a great starting point if you are not very good at web design.

I agree it would be great if you didn't have to deeplink the blogs to the merchants

I have been blogging for over a year now and instead of adding new content daily I have to spend more time revisiting all my old posts because either the merchant has moved networks, changed their url structure over night, decided to completely use a different domain name, moved their product images onto another server, the list goes on and on....:scared

Every time a merchant sends out an email saying "good news, we are revamping our web site to improve conversions, or we are moving to a new network who will be better for us", I get a cold sweat and watch sales that were doing well dwindle down to nothing.

I know this will affect most content site owners, having altering pages is easier than having to check 800+ posts to see if they are still linking correctly.

Guess what I am doing this evening

[ash]

Totally agree.

Very, very frustrating.

[tbp]

I use a redirect system, so the link on the page is used to pull the affiliate link from a database, and then redirect the visitor there.

It has a number of advantages, in that you get your own stats to see which links are clicked most, and also if the merchants url changes its much easier to update the links in the database using phpMyAdmin - rather than going through each post to change them one by one.

Wasn't difficult to set up, and I can really recommend doing something similar as it does make life easier.

[MadHatter]

Never thought of that. Great idea. could you please point us in the direction needed to get some info about this.
It would be greatly appreciated.

[John]

For those using Wordpress, this can be achieved using a plugin called "ShortURL" - Just add your affiliate link, and your link becomes http://www.yoursite.com/u/1 for example. When a merchant swaps network for the fifth time in a year, you just change the one URL in the shorturl admin, and all links across your site are updated - it's been a real lifesaver for me this year!

[purple]

Shorturl is a gem, I use it across my sites fantastic, there is a wordpress plugin, or a simple phpmyadmin script which i use on other sites.

You get click stats too so all good

[Stellar]

For those using Wordpress, this can be achieved using a plugin called "ShortURL

Does it track clicks by time period? eg.. x number of clicks to y merchant link yesterday.
Or is it just a straight counter? eg x number of clicks to y merchant link since the last time you cleared the counter

[purple]

Or is it just a straight counter? eg x number of clicks to y merchant link since the last time you cleared the counter

Straight counter, just a basic one i believe

[Stellar]

Straight counter, just a basic one i believe

Ok.. there is a similar module on Drupal too.

It is probably pretty easy to convert it to a time period report. eg write a script that grabs the count and puts it in a seperate table with the date. Run it on a cron every day and you have a daily count of clicks.

[Andrew Starr]

Ok.. there is a similar module on Drupal too.

It is probably pretty easy to convert it to a time period report. eg write a script that grabs the count and puts it in a seperate table with the date. Run it on a cron every day and you have a daily count of clicks.

or knock up a simple admin panel where you can select a date from/to.

[aaclapham]

Great news this morning. Just finished off moving the links for a merchant that has changed networks, to find another merchant has revamped their urls without telling anyone.

Another 4 hours work I could do without:td

[amisuggests]

Don't know what merchants you are with but you should consider partnering with more reliable merchants, maybe?

[cheapflights]

yea..........absolutely.....

[aaclapham]

Don't know what merchants you are with but you should consider partnering with more reliable merchants, maybe?

Does anyone have a list? :laugh

[jezaff]

yeah was gonna suggest using a redirect system. Like has already been said you just pop all the links into a table and then look up the redirect link. Changes become a quick update on that table. Add in some nice meta data (category, site, product, etc) to ensure you can manage it all with little fuss - you dont want to be trying to remember what each link meant in 2 months time.

It's definitely the way to go. I see a number of people get quite upset over sudden suspencions etc. But with the right system you can just swap stuff in and out, you can set date ranges for the redirects, you can switch them off and on (when off the url redirects to other relevent content on your site, or perhaps the text shows but the link is dropped).

GL