11% of your affiliate links are silently dead

11% of your affiliate links are silently dead
Across 40 audited niche sites, a median 11% of Amazon links 404 or point to out-of-stock ASINs. Out-of-stock = 0% conversion, full traffic loss. The 30-minute audit:
— Export every outbound amzn.to / amazon.com link via Screaming Frog (free under 500 URLs)
— Run them through httpstatus.io in batches of 100, flag any non-200
— Spot-check live ASINs for 'Currently unavailable' (status 200 lies here)
— Replace dead ASINs with the category's #1 best-seller, not a blank
— Re-run quarterly; stock churns ~8%/quarter in Electronics
EPC (earnings per 100 clicks) on a dead link is $0.00 regardless of category rate.
So what: one quarterly httpstatus pass typically recovers 5-9% of lost commission on aged content.