Some Questions Answered

I received a few questions via email that I thought I would answer here for the benefit of all:

Q1. Where do I create the goto.php file? Where should it be placed exactly?

A1. The goto.php file can be placed wherever you like on your website. I personally prefer the root folder of the web site because it makes the link urls smaller, but if you put it in a folder called "utils" off the root then your links would look like:

<a href="/utils/goto.php?target=Whatever">

If you put it in the root folder then it would just be:

<a href="/goto.php?target=Whatever">

Q2. Will this allow me to use 1 tracking code for each affiliate link so that if I have to update an affiliate link in the future, I would just change the affiliate link in the goto.php file?

That's exactly right and is one of the big advantages of handling your affiliate links this way (the other big advantage being hiding them from your customers).

Q3. Will this also track how many times a user clicks on the affiliate links?

If you are using Google Analytics as I described in a previous post then you can format your links as follows to track them. Normally this page wouldn't be tracked by Analytics because it is just a redirect page.

<a onclick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/goto.php?target=UltimateBet');"  target="_blank" href="/goto.php?target=UltimateBet">

The

onclick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/goto.php?target=UltimateBet');"

is the critical section that allows Google Analytics to track clicks on the affiliate link.