Way back at the end of May 2007 I wrote an article Affiliate deep linking tools and the one click deep link creator from Paid On Results, which had been around a while even then, came out top of the pops.

Since then other networks have developed one click deeplinking too, Affiliate Window, Linkshare and just recently Buy.at, I love them all it makes my life as a affiliate much easier to just simply navigate to the merchant page, click a link on my toolbar and bingo a deep link.

The question is how do they all stack up?

Paid On Results

To set it up go to your POR account, follow the ‘Deep Link Generator’ link in the Tools menu and you will see full instructions.

Positive

Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer

Generates either the deeplink URL or full HTML code

Provision for a click ref

Negative

No facility to generate a short URL

Takes user away from merchant page to generate the deep link

Linkshare

You will find instructions to set up the Linkshare Bookmarklet in the BentoBox here.

Positive

Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer

Generates the deeplink URL

Creates short URL’s

One click posting to Facebook and Twitter

Negative

Doesn’t generate full HTML code

No provision for a click ref

Affiliate Window

To install go log into your Affiliate Window account and click the Plug-ins link in the menu under Web Services and Tools.

Positive

Works with Firefox

Generates either the deeplink URL or full HTML code

Provision for a click ref

Creates short URL’s

Negative

Does not work with Internet Explorer as its a Firefox Plugin.

Buy.at

To Install log into your Buy.at account, click Content & Creative > LinkEngine, then follow the instructions on the Firefox LinkEngine tab.

Positive

Generates the deeplink URL

Works with Firefox

Negative

Does not work with Internet Explorer as its a Firefox Plugin

Doesn’t generate full HTML code

No provision for a click ref

No facility to generate a short URL.

So which is best?

Basically I like each and everyone of them but because Paid On Results has been around so long without being upgraded it has stood the test of time plus the negative points are so minor I am going to award it 9/10.

Second place goes to Linkshare they have embraced social media with the Facebook and Twitter integration 8/10.

Affiliate Window is only let down by being tied to Firefox only, not a problem for me but I know others that wont use that browser 7.5/10.

I am very pleased that Buy.at have produced one click deep linking as it will get me using them more, this tool like I said is the new kid on the block and still very much in beta I’m sure we will see massive improvements in time 5/10.

I seem to be turning into an old cynic lately always having a moan about something, my previous posts  Merchant 404 Pages and Why I dislike graphical emails are a just couple of recent examples.

Anyway I don’t like being an old whinge bag and I usually leave the complaining to others so in order to start looking at the bright side of things again I need to get a couple of things off my chest.

Merchants changing the URL structure of their websites… why oh why (like the points of view style?) can’t they put in place some form of mod rewrite / .htaccess to redirect old urls to new ones, not only will this save affiliates having a load of broken links it will also help the merchants own seo as the search engines will not be finding a million 404′s.

Reversals of sales – any merchant that has had an internet presence for any length of time knows what percentage of reversals they are likely to have, why not reduce the commission by this factor and pay out on everything, result happy affiliates and less admin to do.

Deeplinking – there really is no excuse in this day and age for an affiliate network not to have simple deeplinking in place, I wrote about Affiliate deep linking tools some time back, and these are excellent however, deeplinking should be as simple as adding the target url to the end of the affiliate code, its not rocket science.

Finally more a niggle than a moan, when you sign up to RSS by Email please don’t use an email address that sends an out of office reply because usually these go out between midnight and 2am and I really do hope you are out of the office at that time.

Right rant over now I hopefully can get get back to the business of trying to scratch a living.

If you have an opinion on any of my whinges or if you have a  moan of your own please leave a comment below.