Affiliate links that lead to direct sales are often very long and ugly. Such as:
http://www.vendor.com/products/?product_id=111&affiliate=111
As a rule for affiliate sites, you should create a shorter and more user-friendly URL. Eg:
http://www.yoursite.com/refer/productname
Hiding affiliate links or creating short URL versions gives you many benefits.
- You can easily see how many clicks your link gets
- Increase click-through rate because the link looks friendly and trustworthy.
- Increase email delivery success rate if you use affiliate links in emails. Use a bare link that is vulnerable to spam filters for your email to go to the spam folder.
- Easily manage links. Imagine if you used native link marketing for countless articles. Then the marketing network changed affiliate or closed. What is your action? Try to edit the link in the other post. Sounds boring right? If you use a plugin that hides affiliate marketing, you only need to change it in one place.
- Force users to click on affiliate links. Some people don’t like buying through affiliate links. So they will fix the link to remove your id code. Once you have covered the link, they have no chance to do so.
Really, using a native affiliate link does not look professional at all. Let’s hide the affiliate link. So which WordPress plugin helps you to hide affiliate links?
There are quite a few WordPress plugins that help you mask your affiliate marketing using a shorter and easier to remember link.
Thirsty Affiliate , Pretty Link Lite are such plugins. These are the plugins I have used. But now I have switched to another plugin that is much more powerful and simple.
That is URL Shortener , a newly born plugin of MyThemeShop . Since it is a new plugin, it has its own advantages. The name of MyThemeShop alone has ensured the quality of the plugin.
In fact, I am very satisfied with the compactness and many useful features of the plugin. I am sure you will love this plugin when choosing an affiliate link masking solution in WordPress.
You can see detailed features and demos of this plugin on the about page of MyThemeShop.
Now let’s see how to use this plugin.
Contents
How to Hide Affiliate Links in WordPress
MyThemeShop has pushed this plugin to the WordPress.org plugin repository. So you do not need to go to MyThemeShop account to download the zip file of the plugin.
This means you install the plugin through the plugin search function instead of uploading the plugin. For details on installing WordPress plugin, you read this article .
Of course, if you use the Pro version, you must download the zip file from your MyThemeShop account and install it by uploading the plugin.
Immediately after installing and activating the plugin, you will see a new item called Short Links in the WordPress Admin menu.
Go to Short Links -> Settings, you set up the plugin as below:
URL Shortener settings screen
Link Defaults
Redirection Method : you keep the default as 302
New Window : you should choose to make it easy for users to return to your article
Nofollow Link : Choose this option for the best SEO value for your site.
Forward Parameters : If you don’t need this feature, don’t select it as default
Remote Referrer : If you do not need this feature, you do not choose as default
Link Preview : Select a default link preview style. This choice affects what form is displayed on the Short Links screen.
After you are done with the configuration, click the Save Changes button to save your settings.
General Settings
You click on the General Settings tab. Here you will have the following general plugin settings:
Add Category in Short URLs : If you want to add categories to your shortened URLs, select this option.
Override 404 : when you select a Javascript, or Meta, redirect method, you must choose an intermediate page to display during the redirect delay. If you do not select a 404 page will appear. If you choose redirect methods like head 3, no changes are needed.
Robots.txt: If you want stronger URL security against scripts of robot software, use this feature.
Replacement Settings
In this section you will set up filters for the plugin’s replacement functionality. This is a feature that will definitely save you a lot of effort.
Style Settings
This section helps you to edit the settings related to the display of the link. Instead of having to edit post editor. Now you can set a uniform style for all the links you like:
Import/Export
This section helps you to export the links you have created. So if you can easily use them for your other sites. Besides, if you are using Pretty Lite, the plugin also makes it easy to import all Pretty Lite links.
Create a shortened link with URL Shortener
Now we will create a shortened URL test.
First of all, you should group links by category like posts. Thus, you can easily manage links.
Creating Categories is like creating categories of articles. Nothing special.
To create a link, go to Short Links -> Add Link
Here you will see 3 tabs Redirection, Advanced and Styling
First, you need to enter the original URL at the Target URL. The Short Link plugin is already available, you can change it as you like.
Section Redirection Method , you choose 302 this is the most popular redirection method today. The Pro version gives you more options.
Cloak URL section : here you will enter the URL that desktop users will see when hovering the mouse.
Scroll down and you will see 2 alternative options. These are extremely useful features of the plugin.
Features that make it easy to replace an existing URL or keyword with a shortened URL session. However, I feel that the URL replacement part is still incorrect. If you have used it for yourself, add a comment for the feature in the comment section below
In the Advanced and Styling tabs, you can override the settings in the Settings section.
Finally, you click the Add Link button . You will then see the shortened link generated. Click the change Code button to form the link you want. You choose 3 styles: URL, html code and short code. Next, click on the Copy button. And now you are ready to use shortened URL for your article.
The newly released version 1.5 plugin also adds a button in the post editor screen. This button makes it easy to attach a shortened link in this article:
To see the list of shortened links you created, you need to go to Short Links. Here you can also easily copy the link you need to use. You can see the number of clicks for each link.
I hope this article helps you have one more option in covering affiliate links. Or simply have a short friendly URL in WordPress.
Finally, the plugin also provides a screen that helps you see an important statistic related to the link. You go to Short Links -> Stats to see details.
URL Shorten Pro plugin price
Currently, URL Shorter Pro Plugin is only $27.
Epilogue
MyThemeShop ‘s URL Shorten plugin is a must-have plugin for affiliate marketers.
It makes it easy to hide marketing links and shorten links. Your marketing link will look professional and attract clicks.
Clicking multiple leads has a high conversion potential. And finally increase income.
What do you think about this plugin? Please share your views in the comments section below.
