Another reason for using short / tiny URLs is so that you can change the target at some point in the future.

Let's say that you've put out hundreds of links pointing to affiliate product A. For some reason, you no longer want to promote affiliate product A; instead, you want to promote affiliate product B.

Without using redirects that you control, you suddenly either have hundreds of links that point to nowhere (if the product is no longer available) or hundreds of links that send traffic to a site you don't want to promote.

If you use somebody else's service (let's pick on TinyURL for a moment!), you're still out of luck because you can't change the destination (not to mention that people can use their "reveal URL" function to see where you're sending them).

But if you control the redirects, all you have to do is change the URL in your redirect -- and you're done.

In fact, I'll be doing this for a product that I was promoting because the site owner put up some terms of service that basically take away all rights from their customers, hence I'll no longer promote it.

Of course, that's not the only reason for hosting your own redirects:

* You can send traffic to a different website from articles you distribute.

* You can even turn a redirect page into a landing page, content page, or anything else you want.

There are lots of other reasons for doing it.

I recommend that you ALWAYS host redirects on your own domain.

And yes, Secret Affiliate Code does contain instructions on how to do it.

HTH,
Tom