What really is a short URL? Short URL’s can be created by use of   Short URL services that are often used in microblogging such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk and more.

So how does a link-shortening service work?

Well, basically a short URL  service, shortens a longline of web address, for example:

http://www.softwarecasa.com/antivirus-software.html

A link-shortening service will completely change it and make it shorter and it could instead look like this:

http://tiny.cc/cWy51

The new and shortened URL is alot better to use on Twitter or anywhere else than the very long one.

But just like all things in this world, there are some advantages and disadvantages associated with link-shortening services.

ADVANTAGES OF USING SHORT URL’s:

1. Easy to distribute as they don’t get broken into pieces in mail messages

2. For affiliate marketer, easy to distribute without having their affiliate id revealed.

DISADVANTAGES OF USING SHORT URLs:

1. Does not look clean

2. Not Easy to type and Remember

3. Unable to identify the website content by simply looking at the URL. Normally, you can just tell what is inside the link by simply looking at the URL. For example:

http://www.softwaremarketingsecrets.com/

With short URL, there’s no way you can tell whether the site you are being redirected to is safe and doesn’t contain adult content or viruses.

4. Slow down in loading the redirect location

5. Failure to give credit to the website you’re linking to.

6. Failure to retrieve the real location. In cases of bad links, and you need to update the link to display the correct redirect link.

7. Most of the short URLs services provides shortened URL in an almost jibberish way.

8. Some short URL services are not trackable.

If you really insist on using short URLs without losing track of it, there are services that also offer redirect tracking along with the link-shortening capability such as KlikDeal.com and Bit.ly, both of which have URL shortener and redirect tracking functions.

I’m not convincing you to trash your URL shortener ONLY service, it’s still nice to have a clean and stylish url posted on sites that only allows you  a limited number of characters to type in. But it would still be much better if you do it the right and productive way.

Until Next Time

Peter – Your Affiliate Marketer Guide

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Hey guys! We have added some new functionality the last few weeks. Perhaps some of you are using Twitter so I wanted to share some of the revelations I got testing twitter using klikdeal.

About Twitter

Lately I have been measuring every link that I have posted on Twitter. After posting I checked my klikdeal account for Twitter (yes, I have a couple of different klikdeal accounts under different campaign names). I then measured minute by minute how people have browsed through my klikdeal links.

The first minute after you post on Twitter you will normally get as much as 90% of  your Twitter clicks. The five first minutes you will get about 95% of the total number of clicks and the last 5% can be spread out as much as over a month. I expect this curve to spread out somewhat now when people are discovering and using Twitter as a search engine.

During more active hours the bulk of visitors come faster. I am guessing the spread of the last 5% has to do with people finding your twitts via search and so on.

I am getting about 2-3% number of viewers compared to my total number of followers. But this often varies as much as between 1-7%. I believe the variation is caused mostly by factors:

- Time of day
- Subject at hand
- Copy of the twitt

I will be looking more into the Copy of my twitts, for example testing the “mystery” approach, not telling the whole store any so on.

You can follow my twitts at: http://www.klikdeal.com/Twitter/TwittPeter

It’s important that you have a sense of what your audience on twitter is interested in so measuring the traffic is really important.

New Klikdeal Features

We have added periods in the reporting area so now you can set your statistics to get a better overview of:

- Today
- Yesterday
- Last 7 days
- This Month
- Last Month

Previously you could watch 20 redirects per page but we have now set this so you can change it to 10, 20, 50 or 100 redirects per page depending on your loading times.

Coming Features

If you have any ideas about what you would like implemented into klikdeal, send me an email at: support@klikdeal.com.

We will seriously take all suggestions into consideration because we want klikdeal to become the best service available.

Until next time

Peter – klikdeal redirect+track

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Shorter Redirect Links

We have now updated the Redirects and cut away the file ending .php. Now your URL will consist of only your campaign and redirect.

Before:

http://klikdeal.com/Campaign/Link.php

It will now look like this:

http://klikdeal.com/Campaign/Link

Apart from shortening the actual URL with 4 digits this will also give a cleaner link and a more trustworthy look which will result in more clicks on your links.

More than one Campaign Accounts

We have listen to your comments and are now accepting more accounts under one email address. So you can freely set up as many accounts (campaigns) as you like.

If you haven’t signed up yet, get a free klikdeal affiliate tracking and redirect account here.

Please comment of any other stuff you might like us to incorporate into KlikDeal.

Malcolm
klikdeal.com

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You found us – welcome to klikdeal!

Klikdeal is a service quite similar to tinyURL, but with a little twist or two. You can easily create simple URLs that you can drive traffic, but the difference to tinyURL is that you can actually control what your link looks like.

Instead of http://tinyurl.com/3dtzrx it will look something like : http://klikdeal.com/Your/Link.php and you can choose exactly what it should say.

Not only can you choose your link, but you also have statistics that tells you how many people have klicked.

And did I tell you, it’s free!

Go here to sign up to klikdeal

Malcolm

klikdeal.com

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