I woke up today to see that TinyUrl is down. It's not forwarding any links. I imagine some of you will be hurt by this as I'm sure I was. It's amazing that such a big service is down like a bomb.
Anyone know a better alternative. I tried the one from Jonathan Leger (forget the name) to mask affil links and when I tested it got an affiliate=none at the cb checkout.
OMG!! My Links!!! This is what I am getting when I click a tinyurl link! ------------------------------------------------------------------ 500 - Internal Server Error This server has encountered an internal error. Follow these instructions: change the domain name that appears in the URL in the address bar of your web browser from tinyurl.com to b.tinyurl.com and leave everything else the same. Press the "go" button or hit the return key to be redirected to the page the TinyURL you followed goes to. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you. ------------------------------------------------------------ We apologize? Ya tell that to someone who doesnt have hundreds of links from CB using your services! -------- OK I added what they said to add which looks like this http://b.tinyurl.com/ .... it works but I Have to go change all my links now? this is terrible! I have videos with my old tiny's on it. I just made 22 videos and this would be horrible if I have to redu them all.
Damn. I'm seeing it down too. That really sucks. This is a serious inconvenience for thousands... Bummer.
I've been burned this way, not just by tinyurl, but by tubeurl also. I've seen that the hops weren't coming as much as they should, and checked the likns, just to see that actually the url redirect service was down. I learned my lesson since than: He who shall not register a top level domain, thou shall lose in revenue, because thee redirect services are unreliable. so when I'm serious about a product, I register a .com domain .
I really think it's a mistake to use any of these services, you should really redirect your links on your own domain so you have control of what's going on & so you can change things easily if you have to. For example I was promoting some products on CB that all got taken down (iPod related.) Instead of having those links going to dead products - I just change my redirect link on my own site and automatically all of those clicks are going to a new CB product that is still up. This is how I redirect links on my own domain. I create a blank html file and paste this into it: -------------------------- <head> <script language="JavaScript"> location.href="http://yourclickbankid.dayoff.hop.clickbank.net"; </script> <title>Product Name</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> </head> <a href="http://yourclickbankid.dayoff.hop.clickbank.net">Product Name</a> --------------------------- Obviously you change the links to whatever you need them to be... and then I save it as productname.html on my domain... and then just link to mydomain.com/productname.html in the future. This gives me complete control. Once you do it a few times, I think it's almost as easy as using tinyurl - and I think it looks a lot less spammy too. Plus... These redirect pages actually get indexed sometimes! That's a big bonus.
It is back up and running, wow that was a scare and a half. Thanks zibblu, I am going to look into other ways rather than depend on my tiny's
I found a great alternative for tinyurl 5 or 6 months ago and I changed all my url's to shorty: http://get-shorty.com This small program installs on your own domain and lets you create custom short url's by keyword. You can see them in action on my football site directions page: http://www.neshaminyfootball.com/directions.htm Each Google Map link is a custom shorty.
You shouldn't rely on those services, because as you can see, there are some "off" days, which can affect your campaigns and overall performance. Just get a cheap hosting with relevant domain, and do HTML/PHP redirects. It's not expensive to get hosting....