Mistake: editing a live tracking link in place

Mistake: editing a live tracking link in place

Failure mode: a creator's offer changes, so you repoint their existing short link to the new destination. Their old posts now send traffic to the new offer with stale UTMs. Your data silently mixes two campaigns under one tag.

Fix: links are immutable. New offer means new link.

Phase 1 — Version: every link gets a version suffix (creatorHandle-v1, -v2).
Phase 2 — Freeze: once a link is in a published post, it is never re-pointed. Ever.
Phase 3 — Replace: a new offer gets -v2, briefed for new content only.

Decision rule: if you're tempted to edit a live link, stop. Create a new version and update the brief instead. The only thing you may change on a live link is killing it (404), never redirecting it.

Checklist:
— Every link carries a version tag
— Published links are write-locked in your tool
— Offer change triggers a new version, not an edit

Definition of done: any historical post's link still resolves to the offer that was live when it was posted, or to a dead end, never a different offer.

Mutable links corrupt your history retroactively.