Text Link Ads is my preferred way to make money online right now, besides my candles, of course, but sometimes TLA just gets on my friggin’ nerves.
Last week they let a porn website advertise on this one. In their defense, the people who bought the link started out with a different URL and text but then changed their link and text to something else that went to a site full of porn links. TLA claims they will never let any adult, gambling, pharmacy website through, so this begs the question: how did the site get around that? Surely one would think the links, when changed, would have to be re-approved. But I digress, that is not the purpose of my post.
Anyway, today they sent me an email informing me that affiliate URLs for the service will be changing from the old affiliate link formats to tinyurl links.
My first thought was… what the freaking heck?
Maybe it’s just me, but it totally turns me off when I see people using tinyurl to hide the fact that they’re using an affiliate link. When I see that, I will purposely go type in the URL into my browser rather than possibly give someone an URL just because it annoys me so much. Now I’m forced into doing it as TLA gives us this as a requirement to refer people now. The old affiliate links will no longer function in just a short week.
And what’s the reason for this? I have no idea. They didn’t bother to tell me, nor have they talked about it on their blog.
So what gives, guys?
Here you have it, my wonderful affiliate URL. Yay. http://tinyurl.com/2qmxbp. How exciting is that?
I’m signed up for TLA but I’ve never had anybody want to be advertised on me *shrugs*
Ditto Karah.
Don’t like the tinyurls thing either -_-’;
PS: Love the new layout colours =), see you are good with graphics too ;)
PSS: You dyed your hair? :)
Kara [hi :)], same thing with me before. :)
1 : Regarding the porn site getting through, I wonder if TLA explained to you how the site got through.
2 : Regarding the tinyurl change, I found out about that too, and I also find this a bit interesting, as it can result in a few things:
A : It is not professional to rely on an outside url’ing system.
B : As you pointed out, it allows people to hide affiliate links. I hope that was not the intention of TLA. Some things should be hidden, but affiliate links should be more open in my view.
C : What if the TinyUrl services goes down?
D : TinyUrl is blacklisted by a lot of services and sites because of the way it is abused; the destination of a TinyURL so far is never clear, and thus a user can be duped into going to an unwanted site.
E : Will the old urls still be active? Changing affiliate links is a big change for many people.
F : Because of E above, were users consulted about such a change before imposing the change onto them?
Vera [hello! :D] , yes, she dyed her hair. :)
@ Karah and Vera — sometimes it takes time. I have several sites that are in and have nothing, but this one does fairly well. Of course, the higher the pagerank and such the more the ads will sell…
@ Vera — yes, I dyed it; though it’s been twice dyed since then, too, and is now more natural looking. Also thanks for the compliments, though the original graphic isn’t mine mine, I bought it. :P :)
@ Bes — yup, you’re right. But no, TLA did not tell me how the porn site got through. And as far as E goes, no the old urls are no longer active after one week from the date of email, so… what three, four days from now? They sent out an email to all affiliates.