What is the best mehod? I have tried some redirection services but when I test them they often fail giving a page not found error. This can be very costly.
That sounds like a great solution. Trouble is I don't know the first thing about php. I have been told that it is possible to make html pages behave like php. I don't know how true this is or how that would be done. Bearded would you mind explaining a little more?
Or you could use .html header redirects; Say you are running a Vonage offer; You would create a .html file with whatever name you want to use; ex: vonage.html Then open the file in your favorite editor (notepad, etc) and drop this in there; <html><head> <title>WHAT EVER YOU WANT TO PUT HERE FOR A TITLE</title> <META http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://YOURAFFILIATELINKGOSHERE.COM"> </head> <body> </body></html> Code (markup): Just replace the obvious things in there with your stuff and upload to your site and you'll end up with http://www.YOURSITE.COM/vonage.html You can go on and on with this method, folders, etc. If you found this helpful show me some green love.
Meta redirects aren't that great. A lot of people have their browsers security settings prohibiting meta redirects. Its best to put a redirect in your .htaccess file on your host. Most host will let you do that through your control panel under 'redirects'. You set a fake file like cars.html to redirect to your affilate link. If your domain is mycars.com, then in your web page you just put mycars.com/cars.html instead of your affiliate link.
create a file called ".htaccess" (no extension or rather no name just the extension) and put this in it: RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^link/([/_0-9a-zA-Z-]+)$ link.php?id=$1 Code (markup): now create a file called "link.php" with this in it: <?php $path = array( 'link1' => 'http://www.link1.com/', 'link2' => 'http://www.link2.com/', etc... ); if (array_key_exists($_GET['id'], $path)) header('Location: ' . $path[$_GET['id']]); ?> Code (markup): put both files in your main directory now when you put a link to yoursite.com/link/link1 it will redirect to link1.com edit: btw, you can change link to anything else by changing "RewriteRule ^link/([/_0-9a-zA-Z-]+)$ link.php?id=$1" to "RewriteRule ^goto/([/_0-9a-zA-Z-]+)$ goto.php?id=$1" and naming the php file "goto.php". now the link yoursite.com/goto/link1 would redirect to link1.com.
You can also just add a simple line of code to your htaccess Lets say you have an affiliate url like htp://www.zzxcby.com&sid=3211 But you want to have a link pointed to yoursite/widgets/ Just add this to your htaccess: Redirect /widgets/ htp://www.zzxcby.com&sid=3211 Note I left a "t" out of the url to keep it from being clickable.
I would try Manage Affiliate Links. Its a new link management software program for affiliates that allows them to redirect dead, expired, or broken links to a backup link they choose. This allows you to avoid "404 Page Not Found" and "Sorry, This Offer Has Expired" pages and redirect the visitor to a similar offer. Now you can stop commission loss and take control of your affiliate links. Also includes; deep linking, stealth links, link statistics, and more. Visit Manage Affiliate Links Watch the video to get a better understanding of how it works. This should really help you with the "page not found error" problem.