Changing Link Codes

[Ramster]

I have been in this biz for 5 years and started out with free sites. So you can imagine the amount of sites I have out there in cyberspace.

With so many hubs, galleries and free sites I decided to get Stats Remote a month or so back. It tracks hits very very nicely and sales.

I have one sponsor that dropped ccbill March 1 for their own tier processing but I still get credit for rebills so I added them to Stats Remote. I noticed I'm still sending 4000 hits a month to the old ccbill link codes. I hate to think of the money I lost.

So I spent 3 hours the other day changing them all.

But here's the thing. I noticed I also had a handful of sites to another old old sponsor with codes that needed to be changed so I did even though I was only sending a couple hundred hits a month and I actually made a sale today from it. $25. YeeHaa!

So though it's a pain in the ass, change your old link codes people!

[Surfn]

Very sweet! Nothing like free money

[Greenguy]

I remember when I went back & verified all my sponsor codes & updated them accordingly...huge pain int he ass, but worth it

[Toby]

StatsRemote is great, just added it about a month ago too.

I only have about 1½ years worth of link codes to keep track of, but it's still a pain in butt to update them when a sponsor changes things, and with a number of them switching to NATS I've think been through almost half my galleries and sites changing codes.

[MadMax]

Statsremote has been a godsend for me, especially with the programs that have piss poor stats in their affiliate areas. I was losing my ass with a couple but I had no idea...so getting on board with Statsremote was the step before flushing the toilet on a couple sponsors that were worthless to me. Well worth the $30/month.

[CelticTiger]

I started to use a little php code to manage my affiliate links so if the need arises you only need to change one file and all your links are changed accordingly. It's a real time saver. I forget who gave it to me but I know it was someone from this board (as I'm pretty much GG&J exclusive as far as boards go ).

If anyone would like it feel free to pm me.

[Robbo]

More often than not when I change out an old sponsor I pop a sale pretty fast. Sometimes so much I wonder if it`s some kind "thanks for the new traffic" gesture to get you pumped for more promotion! hehe

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by CelticTiger

I started to use a little php code to manage my affiliate links so if the need arises you only need to change one file and all your links are changed accordingly. It's a real time saver. I forget who gave it to me but I know it was someone from this board (as I'm pretty much GG&J exclusive as far as boards go ).

If anyone would like it feel free to pm me.

Do most link lists accept a php link? I've been leary of using it on free site submits. I use it all the time on my search engine sites and it would save a lot of time on free site building if link lists approved of it.

[CelticTiger]

Originally Posted by Maj. Stress

Do most link lists accept a php link? I've been leary of using it on free site submits. I use it all the time on my search engine sites and it would save a lot of time on free site building if link lists approved of it.

It could be down to whether or not your a trusted regular submitter or not I suppose. Tho I don't see how it would save time on actually building sites. I chose to use it as a speedy method of changing links in case the need should ever arise.

[Ramster]

A php link to the sponsor can be okay yes. Anywhere else like on the enter link or having the page in php might cause a problem with some people.

I have some sponsors I just link to an FPA so that has saved time in many cases too.

[tickler]

PHP Code:

<?
$GOTO_URL = "http://www.thepaysite.com/link.php?a=123456";
header("Location: ".$GOTO_URL);
?>
</HTML></BODY>

Pretty basic part of a WMs toolkit.

I also use a few other flavors for things like random tours and applying a percentage flip between PPS and Revshare links.

[CelticTiger]

[quote=tickler]

PHP Code:

<?
$GOTO_URL = "http://www.thepaysite.com/link.php?a=123456";
header("Location: ".$GOTO_URL);
?>
</HTML></BODY>

It may be basic but you might want to explain that a little better to someone who doesn't know anything about php

[Useless]

[quote=CelticTiger]

Originally Posted by tickler

PHP Code:

<?
$GOTO_URL = "http://www.thepaysite.com/link.php?a=123456";
header("Location: ".$GOTO_URL);
?>
</HTML></BODY>

It may be basic but you might want to explain that a little better to someone who doesn't know anything about php

...and what good is it going to do to link to 'link.php' if you don't have such a script? I can invision a shitload of newbies changing their linking codes right now without realizing that they'll be 404ing themselves to death. Major missing component here.

[Maj. Stress]

Hmmm.... I do it a little differently. On the actual web page I make my anchor link to a global folder/file
a href="/globalfolder/latina.php"
/globalfoler/latina.php looks like this:
<?php header("location: http://sponsorcode.html"); ?>

[SexycityBrian]

you could also use a server side include put the link code for each sponsor in a text file and include it on the pages then if you ever need to change them just change the code in the text file and it changes all your pages at one time

[tickler]

Originally Posted by CelticTiger

It may be basic but you might want to explain that a little better to someone who doesn't know anything about php

Sorry folks, I assumed that most people were up to some basic PHP.

So here goes:
Take your link on your page that looks something like:
http://www.latinapaysite.com/link.php?account=123456
and replace it with a line that looks like:
http://www.yourdomain.com/latinapaysite.php

Now create a file with:

PHP Code:

<?
$GOTO_URL = "http://www.latinapaysite.com/link.php?account=123456";
header("Location: ".$GOTO_URL);
?>
</HTML></BODY>

And save it as:
http://www.yourdomain.com/latinapaysite.php
So now you just need to change the $GOTO_URL value to any new linking code when required. It saves having to go change individual pages, and making all the TGP/MPG/LL scripts mad.

Major Stress: The PHP files do the same thing. I use the variable because most of my script are choosing from multiple links like PPS or Revshare.

SexCityBrian: Most places don't allow SSIs on free sites or galleries.

[Halfdeck]

Another alternative is to use one link.php file and rewrite paths using .htaccess.

On my server, I'd have a folder /visit/ and have one php file there named links.php. Then I'd use links like "/visit/hornymilkmaids/", "/visit/grocerystorerobbingsluts/" that rewrite to /visit/links.php?pid=4556

Then the link.php will pull the ref code in the MYSQL db and redirect to the paysite tour:

PHP Code:

<?php

$paysite = new Paysite($_REQUEST['pid']);
header("location:" .$paysite->ref_code);

?>

[Maj. Stress]

k, where's the smiley that shows something that went way over my head?
This is getting interesting, looks like I might learn something new. Always a good thing

[CelticTiger]

It's not really necessary to go as far as using mod_rewrite in your .htaccess

Here's the code I like to use:

PHP Code:

<?php
switch($_GET['id'])
{
case('1'):
$location = 'sponsor url here';
break;
case('2'):
$location = 'sponsor url here';
break;
case('3'):
$location = 'sponsor url here';
break;
default:
echo 'Error: No ID Specified';
exit;
break;
}
header('Location: ' . $location);
?>

Save as links.php or whatever you wish. Using categories like amateur-links.php for your amateur links etc is also helpful in keeping things organized. You can add more links as required by simply adding in :

PHP Code:

case('4'):
$location = 'sponsor url here';
break; 


before the code

PHP Code:

default:
echo 'Error: No ID Specified';
exit;
break; 


Just make sure you change the case numbers.


Upload the file to your server and
now you simply use: "links.php?id=1" ie

http://www.domain.com/links.php?id=1 where the id=1 represents

PHP Code:

case('1'):
$location = 'sponsor url here'; 


Now for example if the sponsor/site in

PHP Code:

case('1'):
$location = 'sponsor url here'; 


is performing badly or the sponsor goes under you can simply change the url to something else and your traffic is rerouted to another site.

Hope this helps.

[Halfdeck]

It's not necessary to use mod rewrite, but I like it I prefer "http://www.domain.com/go/bilfhunter/" over "http://www.domain.com/link.php?id=2" because it slightly improves ranking for the link.php page in G (although granted sponsor tour pages don't really rank well at all usually) and it's more inviting for surfers to click, imo. Of course you can use mouseovers too, but I prefer "http://www.domain.com/visit/bilfhunter/" to show instead of "http://www.bilfhunter.com/."

Also, there's nothing wrong with the switch/case setup, but I have sites that use 2000+ paysite links, and for those, I prefer just having one php file with 2 lines of code.

[mikeyddddd]

When I add a paysite I create an .html page that autorefreshes to that site's URL and I link to that page from galleries, ads, whatever.

If the sponsor or paysite goes away I just delete that page.

I've got the pages in niche directories. The 404 for the niche directory is setup to go to a site running bonuses/contests for signups or is selling well.

So a deleted paysite then gets sent to the "default" niche paysite.

It just takes a few seconds to login to my server and delete the defunct site.