Is The Demise of Tr.im a Warning To Internet Marketers?
By Anna Johnson on August 12th, 2009Social media marketing maven Michelle MacPhearson recently published a great article highlighting the implications for Internet marketers of relying on third party providers for core business functions. The closure of URL shortening service Tr.im is a case in point…
Even if you don’t use Tr.im or any other URL shortening service, Michelle provides a timely warning about the dangers of depending on third parties for integral parts of your business.
As Michelle points out, it makes good business sense to use some kind of technique for shortening long, unwieldy links, masking affiliate links, and tracking clicks and other metrics.
As such, many marketers have taken to using tools such as TinyURL, Tr.im and Bit.ly (which is also the URL shortener favored for use on Twitter).
But while it may be somewhat low-risk to use, say, Bit.ly in your Twitter posts, if you’re promoting links that are supposed to last, you might want to think carefully before relying on a third party URL shortening service.
After all, what do you think has just happened to all those Tr.im links? Here’s a guess: they no longer work.
So… do you really want your links to stop working because someone else has gone out of business?
Your links are like the doors to your business and, as such, you do not want someone else controlling them, let alone closing them! By all means, mask affiliate links and implement tracking, but do so in such a way that you gain or retain control over your business – not in a way that lessens your control.
How do you do this? One, very simple way, is to use a simple redirect script on your site for any affiliate link you want to mask or link you want to shorten. You can do this with a PHP script or javascript – both freely available on the Internet (just do a search on “free redirect script”).
