Why do my affiliate links stop working?

Four ways a working link stops paying

The first three look identical from the outside: the page opens, the buyer buys, and nobody gets credited. Amazon also does not allow anything that strips your tracking id, so a tool that eats it is a problem in two directions at once.

• A shortener or a rewrite that keeps the address and drops the query string, which is where the tag lives.
• A caption that hit its character limit and got cut from the end, which is exactly where links sit.
• A link retyped or read out loud, one character short.
• A link posted where it cannot be tapped, so the tap never happens and there is nothing to attribute.

How to check one in ten seconds

• Open your short link on your own phone and look at the address it lands on.
• Find your tag or your tracking parameters still there, after the question mark.
• If they are gone, the tool that shortened it is the problem, not the platform.

What we do about it

The links get their budget before the prose does. When a caption has to shrink to fit a platform, the links and the affiliate disclosure are untouchable and the words are what get shortened; if a cut would have taken a link, it goes back in underneath.

There is one short link per video and per place, which is what makes a click traceable without touching a single byte of your own address. A test watches that promise on every change.

What people actually ask

Can I use an ordinary link shortener instead?

You can, and then it has to carry your whole query string through to the destination. The failure people report is a shortener that keeps the path and quietly drops everything after the question mark.

Does a short link hide my affiliate tag?

The tag travels inside the redirect and arrives whole. What is not allowed is removing it, and wrapping a link is a different thing from removing what it carries.