It’s funny, but I’ve come across several affiliate programs recently that don’t allow deep linking unless it’s using the links provided by a merchant. In fact, I remember a case at least 10 years ago of EasyJet (I think) insisting that anyone linking to their website should only link to the homepage(!) – nothing to do with an affiliate program even.

What are they thinking?

Taking someone to the home page of a website just isn’t going to convert as well as taking them to the product that they want and dream of and some of the markets I’m serving have requirements that are so niche that these merchants don’t provide links that are any use to me as they don’t know these markets exist.

There are ways of getting around this, but why don’t they simply allow affiliates to deep link to what they like? It would make it easy for everyone, and get more sales in the process.

It’s not going to hurt their brand and might help effectively target a client base that they didn’t even know existed. Isn’t that one of the great advantages of affiliate marketing? Or am I missing something?