A little surprised no one has commented on it yet...a lot of people don't do this and it is so easy and useful everyone should be...
They both work equally and my stats tracking seems to do a better job with the Meta refreshes...but yes I guess you could use PHP re-directs as well MeetHere: what happens if the user has JavaScript disabled?
<quote>my stats tracking seems to do a better job with the Meta refreshes</quote> Really? What do you use to track, may I ask? May be something to look into.
AWStats. I'm trying to remember which category of stats didn't work as well...but one subsection definitely didn't work properly with PHP redirects.
technical much? What I'm saying is...if someone doesn't currently cloak their links...or uses one of those crappy URL shortening services...this method will work well. Meta Refresh is the Honda - solid and always works well .htaccess is the Porsche - performs great but more difficult to operate
Naming the .htaccess file. Windows can really screw you around when doing that. And also it can appear to disappear from FTP if your linux server doesn't automatically add -a to display hidden files.
Just so you know, why not use metacafe? and make videos with camtasia or some other screencapture piece of software, actually showing how to do it. If you had used metacafe you would've earned money per viewer. Just an idea though, and I use that method as well, except I use php-redirect most of the time. New domain though for every affiliate link. Works like a charm greetz, jobic