01/Blog
Notes onaffiliate links.
Writing on broken links, creator income, and the occasional product update from the lab.
- Playbook
The creator's affiliate checklist: 7 things to audit quarterly.
Most creators check their affiliate dashboards and assume everything's fine when earnings look steady. Here's the quarterly audit that catches what dashboards hide.
5 min read·Read → - Deep dive
Why Amazon Associates links break more than any other. And what to do about it.
Amazon gives creators the biggest affiliate catalog in the world and the most unstable URLs. ASINs rotate, products migrate, regional stores diverge. Here's why Amazon links break faster than any other network. And how to survive it.
7 min read·Read → - Comparison
Affiliate link cloaking vs managed URLs: what's the difference?
"Cloaked" affiliate links have been WordPress lore since 2010. PrettyLinks, ThirstyAffiliates, the whole plugin shelf. The idea is sound: hide ugly URLs behind your own domain. But cloaking only solves half the problem. Here's what it misses.
5 min read·Read → - Data
How much money do creators lose to broken affiliate links? (with math)
"A few broken links, how bad can it be?" Let's actually calculate it. Using conservative estimates for affiliate link rot and EPC, we can project the monthly income leak for different creator sizes. The numbers are larger than most creators expect.
6 min read·Read → - Platform
YouTube description affiliate links: the complete guide.
YouTube descriptions are where most video affiliate links live. And also where they quietly rot for months. A complete guide to affiliate links on YouTube: platform rules, best practices, and keeping them working after upload.
8 min read·Read → - Platform
Instagram affiliate links: the complete guide.
Instagram was built to keep users in-app. Most places you'd put a link, you can't. Here's where affiliate links actually work on Instagram. Bio, Stories, Shop. And how to survive the platform's link-phobic design.
7 min read·Read → - Platform
Newsletter affiliate links: Substack, Beehiiv, ConvertKit compared.
Newsletters are uniquely unforgiving for affiliate links. Once an issue is sent, you can't edit it. Any broken link is locked in forever. Here's what works across Substack, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, and how to keep old issues earning.
6 min read·Read → - Comparison
Linktree vs your own affiliate landing page: which converts better?
Linktree is where most creators send their Instagram audience. Is it worth owning the real estate instead? The trade-offs between convenience, conversion, analytics, and control.
5 min read·Read → - Platform
TikTok affiliate links: what actually works.
TikTok is aggressively link-hostile by design. Three paths to affiliate monetization. Bio link, TikTok Shop, brand deals. Each with different rules and different failure modes.
5 min read·Read →