Referral Extension Suggestion

Hey guys. If I am out of my mind, don´t hold it against me, but if this bothers and influences my choices when deciding what to or what not to click, it must do the same to others.

Whenever I see a link that ends, for example, with ref=name or number, the first thought that comes to mind is:

“oh, look at this *¨%#%# trying to make money with my click, I bet he only posted this because of the referral commission he is going to receive.”

And in most cases I really don´t click it. True story, I rather only copy & paste the actual site and then go my own way.

So, this is where the suggestion comes along. I know referrals are a big source of income, and it is becoming more and more popular everyday, so why not change the code to something more discrete? I don´t have a clue about programming, writing code and so on, but I´m sure you guys are very competent and talented in these sorts of things.

I don´t know, put something like graphicriver.net?news=8129734 (where numbers substitute the username) It gives more credibility and avoids those situations regarding “referral” links.

Does anybody believe they might be losing traffic because of this, or am I trying to find hair growing in an egg shell?

I agree with Dzinc. In most of the cases I ever know, people don’t seem to love the link which contains ”?ref=...” at the end of it. I don’t know exactly the reason why – ‘cos it depends on the behavior of each person, but maybe it could be better if there is another way of displaying it?

In some points I agree, though there are services/plugins to use for this. One of them is the Vanity URL from Epicera. Easy to use and the person who clicks it won’t see where it goes.

Just a tip

But, I do see your point and I agree. Just as I said above, there’s some solid points there. Some people might not know where to look for a plugin or URL redirector like the one above. Belive it or not but there’s actually a couple of free one’s to use as well, though they are far from as easy to use as the one Epicera has.

PS: I’m not using it just yet, I have it, though I haven’t installed it yet.

@greedybrown – Thanks for the feedback.

PatrikL said
Just a tip

Nice, thanks Patrik.