Easy Redirect Script Review - Are You Still Using Free URL Shortners

[Ron Boyd]

Easy Redirect Script Review

Hey guys I just bought this and was so impressed that I thought I would write a review for you.

What is Easy Redirect Script and why should I have it ?

Well let me start by first asking you a simple question.

Why would you put the destiny of your online business in the hands of a FREE service that you have no control over ?

I know that many of you have and have also been advised by other marketing experts to do so. The kind of URL shortening services like bit.ly, tinyurl and budurl and the various other ones that exist.

You have been advised to use them for a variety of reasons from hiding your affiliate url to making a long nasty url short so that you can use it on certain social sites like Twitter and Identica where you only have a limited number of characters for your message.

All sound advice except for one fatal flaw (there are other reasons they are a bad idea which I will cover at the end) you no longer have any control over the new URL. What if the url shortening site goes out of business or simply shuts down you may have hundreds if not thousands of links out there in the websphere that are now totally useless and only point too error pages.

How much would that impact your business and is it a cost you can afford ?

I just wanted to highlight a few things to stir the imagination before I continued with this review.

Here's the break down of Easy Redirect Script.

Easy Redirect Script is exactly what it says in the name it is a script that allows you to create URL redirects simply and quickly and more importantly you control them.

ERS is installed very easily via ftp on the root of your domain and the accessed via an admin panel from your domain.

Here are the functions you can easily and quickly perform using the advanced tools in Easy Redirect Script.

• Standard Redirects
• SEO Redirects
• Stealth Pages
• Stealth Redirects
• Promo Redirects
  

There are two more categories that are not redirects but never the less vital for your business.

• List Redirects
• Categories
  

That was a quick over view of the main functions in Easy Redirect Script now I will break each one down for you.

Standard Redirects - This redirect is the simplest of all and the correct term is "302 redirect" which is a temporary redirect and most often used to hide long ugly URL's. The search engines will ignore indexing this type of redirect and not pass any SEO benefit onto the final destination.

Example . My Redirect URL http://internetmarketingwall.com/EasyRedirectScript302
The Actual destination URL http://nanacast.com/vp/100004/104075

SEO Redirects - This redirect is also a simple redirect however the correct term is "301 redirect" which is technically a permanent redirect and as such it will pass on any SEO benefit to the final destination. HINT make sure it is a going to one of your own sites.

Example . My Redirect URL http://internetmarketingwall.com/EasyRedirectScript301


Stealth Pages - This redirect is where things start to become a bit more controlled and there is a warning that in some circumstances you should not use this however it can be a very powerful redirect. The redirect uses iFrames which means that you are effectively showing a copy of the destination URL on your own domain and as such, as you can see from the screenshot below, you keep control of the URL that is shown as well as the page title. I mentioned earlier that you should use some caution when using this type of redirect as some affiliate programs and product owners do not allow the use of iFrames. You should also check, if you are using an affiliate link, that you are getting credit for sending the traffic. Do this by clearing your cookies and using the redirect URL also check in all major browsers to make sure it works ok.

Example . My Redirect URL http://internetmarketingwall.com/StealthERS/

Stealth Redirect - This kind of redirect is similar to Stealth Pages in as much as it also uses iFrames so the caveats in Stealth Pages also apply here. Stealth redirects differs from the previous redirect because it allows you a greater control of where your URL lands the person clicking it. For example say you wanted to promote an affiliate program that had an optin if you used the standard affiliate URL but you did not want to send your traffic to their optin **, so you could either send them directly to the main sales page or alternatively send them directly to the order page via your own version of their sales page hosted by you. This way you maintain total control of your hard earned traffic. See the example below, the other examples I have given you take you to Easy Redirect Script main sales page but this one takes you directly to the order page but still uses my affiliate id.

Example . My Stealth Redirect URL http://internetmarketingwall.com/StealthRedirect

** NB Wherever possible a smart affiliate marketer will always maintain control over their own traffic for a variety of reasons, especially with clickbank products, if your prospective customer ends up not buying on the first instance but submits their details into the product owners auto responder then it is not unheard of for them to be re cookied with the vendors ID and as such you would recieve no commission for sending them to the product if they decide to purchase a few days later (this happens more often than you would think and is the shadier side of affiliate marketing) so here is one great reason to use Stealth Redirects and control your destiny.

Promo Redirect - This is a whole different kind of redirect and allows you to do some interruption marketing essentially when a person clicks on this type of link they will be taken to a splash page which you can put whatever you want on and after a set amount of time they will be then taken to the page you initially wanted them to. See the example below .

Example . My Promo Redirect URL http://internetmarketingwall.com/ERSPromoRedirect

The Final two sections List Redirects and Categories are fairly self explanitory, List Redirects gives you a big list of all the redirects you have created and a place to edit them or remove them if needed, Categories is simple a way of further ordering your Redirects to make them easy to find if you have a huge amount of redirects.

There is one more thing which as yet I have not mentioned for each and every redirect you create then a QR code will be created for that redirect. If you do not know what a QR code is then please visit this link to learn more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code . Very briefly they are 2D bar codes that can be scanned by modern smart phones and then acted upon ie taken to your redirect page. I personally would use this in a few different offline marketing strategies such as leaflet or post card marketing.

There are many benefits to Easy Redirect Script not the least of which is that you now control your own business assets.

Here are some flaws with using one of the many free services such as tinyurl, budurl and bit.ly.


#1 Lots of people use these services to heavily promote products and service's all over the internet and invest a lot of time and/or money in doing so. Lets say the product or service either goes out of business or they simply chaneg their affiliate linking structure. Now because many of these free services don't allow you to edit your links they are now all useless.

#2 What if the free URL shortening service goes out of business or shuts down all your links are going through their servers and again they are now all useless. There is already precident for this happening in October of 2010 the url shortening service vb.ly was shut down for violating Libyan pornography laws since Libya has jurisdiction over .ly domains.

Can you think of a very popular URL shortening service that also uses a .ly domain ?????

#3 Those URL's might as well come in glowing pink neon colours as far not being seen as promotional links in fact more and more places are starting to block these kinds of URL's. From ISP's blocking them on an IP level to some very popular marketing platforms like Facebook not allowing them.

#4 The URL's whilst being shorter than a big ugly affiliate URL they are, in my opinion, not only hard to remember but just as ugly as the longer affiliate URL.

#5 You can not control the type of redirect you are getting most likely a simple 302 and you certainly have no extra features as a rule.

Conclusion

What I have tried to do in this review is to explain all the features of Easy Redirect Script and highlight some of the problems with using the various free services that exist. If you want to learn more about all the possible problems with these services then you can easily look at the same source that I got all the information above over at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening .

All of the things above can be done by hand coding individual html redirects on your server and you would be able to achieve the same effects so there is certainly nothing new here from a code viewpoint. The advantages offered by Easy Redirect Script are having a very easy to follow user interface to create, maintain and edit your redirects easily and quickly.

My recommendation

This product is for anyone who regularily uses URL shortening services for their affiliate or promotional links and who doesn't want to put their hard earned virtual assets in the hands of a free service that they have little or no control over.

Even if you dont choose to invest in a copy of Easy Redirect Script for your business then at the very least take heed of all the warning signs surrounding free URL shortening services and learn how to make redirects on your own domains using html files.

NB all the links in the examples above are my affiliate links and if you choose to buy through them then I will be compensated. I don't often recommend products but this one in my mind is a real must for any serious affiliate marketer. However for your convenience and to save anyone having to go clear their cookies if thats how they roll here is a direct non affiliate link as well as my affiliate link.

My Affiliate Link for Easy Redirect Script http://internetmarketingwall.com/EasyRedirectScript302

Direct non affiliate link http://easyredirectscript.com

I hope this review has opened your eyes to a possible flaw in your online business and that it has presented a viable stable alternative that will serve your business needs for years to come.

Regards Ron

[Jack]

Hi Ron,

Nice review.

Does this have any stat reporting? Like click tracking, ip addresses, graphs. Similar to what pretty Link has.

[Ron Boyd]

Hey Jack,

I knew I had forgotton something lol.

It has a simple click tracking ie number of clicks each link has had which you can reset.
So the answer is no it doesn't have the same functionality that prettylinks does with regard to tracking but from what I understand it has more options for the type of redirect than pretty links does but I stand to be corrected as I don't personally own Pretty Links.

The other difference is that ERS sits directly on your domain root rather than as a wp-plugin and whilst I understand that most people use word press these days there are still plenty people that don't use wordpress.

I think that both products have their own merits and if someone already owns pretty links pro then I would say you probably have no real need to invest in a product like Easy Redirect Script.

I did forget to actually mention the price in my review ERS is currently avaiable at $77 for an unlimited site license.

The important thing here that I wanted to draw everyones attention too was what a bad idea it is to use Free URL shortening services when it comnes to your online business.

Thanks for the question Jack .

Regards Ron

[Jack]

I think Pretty Link has all the same but someone correct me if I'm wrong. I use Pretty Link but haven't used all the redirect options available. I know it has several.

One thing about Pretty Link is that the free version no longer has all those options. Like the cloaking option is now only available in the paid version. They had to do this to be able to stay on wordpress.org. I'm still using the old version and haven't updated yet because of that. At some point I will have to update though. I'm worried about something breaking if I don't. This means paying for it.

But Pretty Link is very nice for stats. It's one reason I really like it. And yes, since I only use Wordpress it's perfect for me.

Jack