Check your affiliate links!
Last Update: April 29, 2012

I was doing some research on my site today, as I wanted to know which were the most popular links being clicked.

I was a plugin called Simple URLs but there are others that do a similar job, PotPieGirl for instance recommends PrettyLinks. Anyway, I dont get much info from the plugin except that it counts the number of times the link is clicked.

(as an aside I *should* be making sure each links has a separate link ID so I know exactly which ones get clicks and which don't. But I have so far been lazy and not bothered. Perhaps a mistake?)

I discovered that a plugin that I had reviewed had got 51 clicks, not a huge number, but considering it wasn't something I expected to get clicked it intrigued me. So I checked with the site (because annoyingly a lot of affiliate sites never email you about sales) and found out there was no sales, nothing, zip.

OK no problem I thought, lets just check the traffic analysis to see whats happening. And there it was, NO TRAFFIC. Erm, ok so I had 51 clicks but the affiliate site says no traffic?

I checked the affiliate link the site gave me versus the one I had on my site and lo and behold they were different! So it seems that I either mucked it up or they changed the link structure without telling me.

Either way I changed the link on my site, clicked it and bam there was traffic on the affiliate admin page.

Stupidly I should have checked the link before changing it but didn't (that's a lesson learnt) but I think that I would have found those links wouldn't have produced traffic (and therefore SALES!) to my affiliate account.

So what is my advice here? 

Schedule a day a month/quarter/6 months whatever, to systematically check all your affiliate links are right - it might aid in lost sales due to changes by affiliate companies, etc.

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fishing Premium
Hey Dean that bites, but now you know, this is something I have been doiing for a while now to check my entire site and make sure all is still working....as at times especially when I make changes to site I sometimes forget and things get all mixed up...I learned the hard way also...it won't happen again though I check now....good piece Dean I am sure most others forget to do this as well....
Countrygirl47 Premium
Sorry to hear that :( Thank you for the heads up. I will have to take time and check mine:)
Sielke Premium
Great advice Dean. I actually experienced this a few years back and lost quite a bit of because of it.
jatdebeaune Premium
Oh, that's painful to hear. I've lost so much that way. Painful thinking about it. Broken links can cost you dearly. I have one site that is so full of product, it would take a crew to keep on top of it. I do it all by myself, and because checking links is time consuming and totally boring, I've been lazy and lost revenue. Makes me feel very foolish. Google Affiliate Network is notorious for broken links. Keep an eye on them if they are one of your networks. Nothing sinister, just the way it is. You have my full sympathy. Yes, you have to check links all the time, and it's a costly endeavor however you look at it..
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