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Welcome back to Podcast Answers, the show where I help you start and grow your podcast,

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answering any podcasting questions along the way. That's right. This is actually take two

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of this show. I started a little bit ago and got interrupted by a phone call and by some

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kids.

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So the kids are home, so things don't always go as planned. So I thought I'd start over

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and do this as a take two. So this is take two of this show. If you saw a live episode

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announcing of this going live, that's because this is the second time that I did it. So

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now welcome back, guys. I took the week off with us last week. We took a family trip out

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to DC by rail.

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I've never actually taken a rail that far before. And so I left from my house and rode

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the train, all the Amtrak train, all the way to DC and spent the week in DC. And that was

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a lot of fun. Used public transit all throughout the week. And it was just, it was a blast

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getting to spend some time with the kids, but I didn't get a chance to do the episode

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because I did not take my equipment with me to record well on the road.

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So I am back now for this week. And this week we are actually going to be talking about

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redirects and what redirects are and when you would use them and things like that. So

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a redirect is just that when I send you some place and you get redirected to another place.

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So let's think about it when you're on the road and you're going down to your local,

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local, local superstation, supermart, and you get to a place where they have the road

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closed because they're doing some road work or they want to send you a different way.

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They're going to redirect you, right? This in this case, that's called a detour. But

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in the world of the internet, this is a redirect. And what a redirect simply is, is you were

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going one place and I'm going to turn you and go to another place. So when we do use

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these, why would you use these? Well, it's really simple. Actually, we would use them

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at when I want to give you a link to my website, but I want to send you somewhere else.

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So for instance, in, in podcast answers, you can go to podcast answers.com/buymeacoffee.

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And that will redirect you out to our buy me a coffee site out to the place. It's a

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separate website from podcast answers, but it allows you to go out there and, and support

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our show. So if you've not done that, I would recommend doing that. If you've gotten any

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value out of our show, just consider giving some value back. I would really appreciate

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it. But the way that I do that, instead of saying, go to buy me a coffee.com/podcast

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answers, which you can do.

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I send you to a branded link podcast answers.com/buymeacoffee. And you with that branded link can go out to

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the other site, get redirected to the other site. And you do that for several different

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reasons. Because for one, it's easy to remember, because if I give out a couple of different

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links in the show, like, you know, if I want to send you to our, my favorite podcasting

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host podcast answers.com/captivate will take you there. So now I've given you two different

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links in this podcast episode.

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And it can be hard to, it can be hard to know what that's gonna, you know, as you're driving.

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I mean, yes, you can put those links in the show notes, and that's good practice, best

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practice, put that in the show notes. But if you're driving, you're not going to be

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looking at the show notes. And by the time they're to their destination, they're probably

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or maybe done with your episode, they may not be able to get back to it because your

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podcast app may say, "Hey, you've listened to this now." And they're going to forget

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about it because it's not front and center.

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And so what you can do is speak those URLs, they're going to be easy to remember, because

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they're all branded, they're all podcast answers.com/something. And that will take you, it will allow you to

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be able to speak it and they're gonna be more memorable. So in this case, you know, I was

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talking about Buy Me a Coffee. Buy Me a Coffee is the place where you can support us. So

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podcastanswers.com/buymeacoffee. And so it's going to be a lot easier to remember those

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URLs for people who are driving and not around where you're at.

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So what you can do, that's one of the good reasons to use branding. And it's best to

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use things that are kind of generic. So in this case, I did say podcastanswers.com/buymeacoffee,

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because that's the site that I use, which is Buy Me a Coffee. But what if I change?

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What if I'm no longer using Buy Me a Coffee? Now, yes, I can go ahead and keep that URL

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and just redirect it somewhere else. It won't make a whole lot of sense, but it's best to

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use something generic.

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So I really should be using podcastanswers.com/support. And that will either take you to a page on

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my website that has different support options, or it could take you to anything I want you

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to support the show. So I could take you to Buy Me a Coffee. So that's the better case

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to do this.

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But the nice thing is you can always, like I said, if you have both of them, so I have

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support, but I also have Buy Me a Coffee. And now in the future, let's say I don't want

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Buy Me a Coffee anymore. But I've spoken that URL so many times, you've heard it in all

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of the episodes. It's not only audio baked into my audio episodes, but it's also in the

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video that I produced for this show.

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Yes, we do a video for the show. And so it's baked in that video also. So what I can do,

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let's say I decided to go over to Patreon or send you to a PayPal link or whatever comes

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in the future. I can still have that Buy Me a Coffee link on my website, the podcastanswers.com/buy

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me a coffee. Hopefully you remember that and get that in your head. Now, Buy Me a Coffee

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podcastanswers.com/buy me a coffee.

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But I can take that and keep that same URL, but change it so that it actually now goes

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to whatever the other thing goes to. So that's one of the reasons that you would use that

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you would use a redirect because you are going to be able to change it out, go whatever.

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It's easy. It's speakable. It's concise because it's branded on yours.

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So there are a couple different things to remember when it comes to using a redirect

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service. So for me, I host all my websites on WordPress. And WordPress has plugins and

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some of the plugins, there's two different plugins I'll talk about today. And some of

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the plugins actually allow you to do redirection for WordPress.

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And I'll tell you my favorite one and another one that you can use. And but no matter what

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plugin you use, or site because there's other sites to like rebrandly or bit.ly.com or bit.ly.

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And so there's a couple of things you need to remember one being there's several different

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kinds of links that you can do types of links.

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So there's 301, 302, 307 and 308. There's more but those are the important ones. So 301 and

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308 are both going to be permanent redirects. And what that means is, if I create podcast

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answers.com slash buy me a coffee and created as a permanent redirect, and you visit it,

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your browser remembers where I sent you to.

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And next time you go to that same link, it's not even going to check with my website and

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to see if I changed it. So I may have changed it to be Patreon, even though it's still buy

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me a coffee. But your your browser is still going to send you to buy me a coffee because

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it's a permanent redirect. It's assuming this is permanent. So I don't need to even go out

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and check to see that the server is saying something different.

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And so that's 301 and 308 302 and 307 are temporary redirects. And what that means is every time

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I visit podcast answers.com slash buy me a coffee, it is going to check with my server

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and my server is going to say, Yep, go there to buy me a coffee. Or if I change it, it's

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going to say, Nope, go over to Patreon now.

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And so that's you're always in these in these these marketing URLs, there are times and

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places for permanent, permanent redirects. For instance, if you change podcast hosts,

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your feed URL is going to change. And so you want your old podcast host to use a 301 or

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30301 redirect. So that way it tells everything No, don't look at me anymore. Look at the

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new the new website.

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But in these cases where you're sending people off to other websites for marketing and branding

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and whatever, you're going to use a temporary redirect. So 302 or 307. There are some differences

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there, but not not anything that we need to be worried about. So 302 307 are what you're

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actually going to be looking for, to make sure that the browsers will get back and change

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if you change something.

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So I mentioned plugins. And again, I think for me, I like using plugins because it keeps

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it all on the same branding. So I use, you know, like I said, WordPress, I use a plugin

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called redirection. And redirection is great, because it has a management page, it also

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monitors 404 errors. So you can see when somebody has hit your website, and went to a page that

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no longer exists, and maybe you actually want to send them somewhere. So maybe you want

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to maybe they maybe it was a page that you had created at one point, but it no longer

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exists. But it's written out there somewhere on the web. And you say you can see that someone

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actually hit that you may not know what's out there, but somebody still hits it. And

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so because you can monitor the 404 errors 404 errors means that it's not found. And

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so a website when you hit the URL, and it's not there, it gives a 404 error.

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So with redirection plugin, you can see that you can see what people have been hitting.

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And then if you want to create a redirection for it, you can redirect them to somewhere

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else, maybe it's a new page, whatever, you can redirect them. You can also monitor hits.

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So you know exactly when someone hit what page they hit, what, what the browser they

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were using all of this other things. You can use it on your own domain, which is great.

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So the nice thing about about redirection and pretty links are the two WordPress plugins

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that I'm talking about today is you're using them on your own site. And so your branding

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is always going to be the same. It's going to be podcast answers.com slash something.

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It's free redirection is free. It's the great program and our plugin and it's free. It has

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an API. So if you want to do some fancy things, like I do every time I publish a new episode,

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I have my website automatically going out and updating a redirect.

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So podcast answers.com slash latest is always going to be my latest episode, it will always

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take you to my latest episode, no matter what. Which is great, because then you can create

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a QR code, and it's always going to take you to your latest episode. I love that. And so

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as an API, you can do regex things. And so regex is just a way to say, match this portion

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of it. And so I did that if you change, let's say, let's say for instance, you have a URL

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that is let's say podcast answers.com slash WP slash J dash Jason or something, you change

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that whole base of everything that comes after that to be podcast answers.com slash API.

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You can say you with regex anything no matter what, as long as it has the podcast answers.com

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slash WP Jason, for that onto something different and follow that same structure. It's great.

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I'm not going to get into that now. That's really geeky and really, really hard to do.

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So it's not something that I really want to get into on the podcast. But if you want to

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to figure out how to do that, definitely contact me, I can help you do that. And you can contact

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me at podcast answers.com slash contact. And so that's, that's redirection. That's the

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plugin I use. And I really enjoy it because it's, it's full featured in it's free. What

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better, right? So pretty links is another, another plugin that you can use. And pretty

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links is also a WordPress plugin. They have a free and a paid tier. The paid version allows

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you to easily create redirections from your post, which is nice because for instance,

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if you have your post named in one way, but you want to like something really long, that's,

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that's URL friendly or SEO friendly.

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So let's say it's, I, you can get to my episode at a podcast. Answers.com slash Andy dash

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interviews dash doc.rock dash from dash E cam. Like that's great for you for Google,

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right? Because it's going to know what I'm talking about because it's this whole URL,

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but that's not easy to speak. That's really not easy to speak. And so you want to create

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a redirection from podcast answers.com slash doc rock to that long one.

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And you can with, with pretty links, you can do that right from the post. So as you're

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creating the post, you can create the shorter, more friendly, speakable URL. And so then,

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so then also you have another good thing about this is, is you have your own domain again.

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So with pretty links or redirection, you use your own domain podcast answers.com, the same

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domain that you're already using.

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Now the next two services, and there are definitely more services out there that do this whole

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redirection type thing, but I'm just going to talk about a few of them. So I've talked

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about two WordPress plugins, and now I'm going to talk about two websites that allow you

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to do the same thing. So rebrandly that's hosted somewhere else. So the nice thing about

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that is if you're, if you want to say your website is down or whatever, you can still

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have your short links ready to go, your redirections ready to go.

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So it's hosted somewhere else, which is, it's just nice, but, and they have a free slash

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paid plan to the free gets 10 links a month. Pay paid paying gets a whole lot more depending

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on how much you pay paid also gets a custard brand, custom branded domain. Easy for me

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to say. And so what that allows you to do is again, have another domain, have a domain

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that's custom to you. So you could use podcast answers.com there.

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But since I'm already using that for my website, I wouldn't want to do that. So I could do

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something with a sub domain. So I could say go.podcastanswers.com or jump.podcastanswers.com

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or what I've also seen other people do is use something a shorter version of their website

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for their rebranded URLs. So you could do like P O D A N S R or P P D A N S R or something

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like that.com. You can use a different domain or a sub domain of the domain that you own,

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but you can't use the same domain you're using for a website.

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Like so for podcast answers, that's my website. That's where you can go to get all of my blogs

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and the episodes and things like that. But you can't have it also being used for your

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short domain when you do that. So what you can do is use a different, a different domain

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or a sub domain. So that's rebrandly. It's great. It works.

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Bitly. B I T dot L Y is the same thing. They have free and paid hosts, free and paid plans.

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The free gets 10 links a month, just like rebrandly. And they have some more things

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like that too. And so you, as you can see, there's using redirects are super helpful

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because again, it's just an easy way for people to remember you because it's branded as you,

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whether you're using a WordPress plugin and using your same domain that you use, WordPress.com

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or podcastanswers.com/whatever for your redirection, or you can use something like rebrandly or

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Bitly and those will both get you as separate site, a separate domain, a separate or sub

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domain from your thing.

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So there's many of different ways to do it, but I hope that you see, I hope that you see

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the value in having these rebranded links. Because again, it's just easy for people to

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remember when they're driving in their car or repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

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So if you're talking and talking and talking about podcastanswers.com/whatever, they're

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more likely to remember that domain.

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And then just remember, "Oh yeah, he was talking about support." Or he was talking about "Buy

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me a coffee" or "Captivate" or "Ecam" or whatever he was talking about. But the domain is always

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the same. So it's going to be easy to remember when you're driving, as opposed to sending

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them out to something other.

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Or let's say you do have an affiliate link like my Captivate and Buy Me a Coffee links

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are. Those are all going to be your affiliate links. And for me, I don't want to send them

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out to ecam.com/trackinglinks/blahblahblahblahblah. I want it to be branded for me. So podcastanswers.com/ecam

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will get you to that.

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So guys, I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions for me, I would

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love to answer them. You can reach me at podcastanswers.com/contact. I can answer your podcast questions on this show.

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Or if you want some one-on-one consulting, I also do one-on-one podcast consulting as

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well as Ecam consulting. So if you want to start a video podcast or a video show, podcastanswers.com/contact,

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I can do one-on-one contact with you guys. Hopefully, you have a great week and keep

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podcasting. Keep live streaming. Have a good week, guys.

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