3 Ways To Hide Your Affiliate Links For Better Sales
Written by Pradeep Kumar in Uncategorized - Print This Post
Hiding affiliate links helps you to make more sales in your affiliate program, which enables you to make more money. One of the most popular ways of monetizing is through affiliate marketing. When visitors click on the link, it will then redirect them through the affiliate URL, thus increasing your CTR.
We have to make those links look natural rather than affiliate links. Most of the visitors won’t click the affiliate links because they look so weird.
Below I mentioned three ways for changing or hiding your affiliate links. They will help you to rewrite the affiliate links and make them look more user friendly. You can choose any method. The choice is yours. It is largely a matter of preference.
1. GoCodes (WP Plugin) : GoCodes let’s you create short URLs to anywhere on the internet. You can do all this right from your WordPress admin panel. The plugin is also useful for masking affiliate program URLs. It will convert any URL into this format : domain.com/go/afflink/. Here ’afflink’ is the key and the keys should contain only alphanumeric characters. To mange the redirects, Go To Manage -> GoCodes menu. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
Here are some URLs I made using GoCodes WP plugin :
https://chitika.com/publishers/?refid=sam890060 – Original Affiliate URL
http://hellboundbloggers.com – Hidden Affiliate URL
The second one looks more professional than the first one.
2. Google Short Links : Google Short Links allows users to easily create descriptive shortcuts to web URLs. You can easily integrate this with Google Apps control panel. It makes users to easily remember the URLs. This is also useful for masking or hiding the affiliate program URLs.
I also made some URLs I made using Google Short Links :
go.hellboundbloggers.com/orkut – My Orkut Profile
3. Online URL Shorteners : This is not a famous and common one, but still it can be useful and comes handy. There are many URL short services out there, some of the common ones are u.nu, 2pl.us and so on. The main problem with URL shortening services is that, if they close their service in future, then all your links become broken and creates 404 errors. You can also try 301 URL redirection for affiliate links.
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Nice post Pradeep. I personally use GoCodes. It works very well up to now. Btw you have a nice blog here. Cheers.
Thanks for your compliment and first comment here Isaac !
I started using Google Short Links and GoCodes recently, letz see how it works !
HI Pradeep,
I’m using blogspot now. Anyway to hide the links in it, other than the online link shortners ??
Sorry buddy!
I think there is not any … !
You can easily hide affiliate links with JavaScript too. Here is how – http://www.net-entrepreneur.com/how-to-hiding-your-affiliate-links/
Hey that’s nice sharing man !
Will check it ! …
Hey,
@Arun Basil Lal: Thanks for the mention
Mastering link hiding is important for every affiliate marketer. Recently I stumbled on another cool wp plugin: Pretty Link
It’s free of course, has many cool features, and gives you great flexibility.
Google it for more details.
Cheers,
Alex
Yeah, Klaus mentioned about PrettyLink and I also tried it, quite good !
Thanks for your first comment here Alex !
This is very essential when dealing with affiliate marketing! People often tend to ignore or purposely avoid clicking on some of the affiliate URLs. For making them work, we must use this URL cloaking methods.
Good piece of work!
Yeah, it became common now-a-days !
Some of these methods also allow us to track the number of clicks !
Yeah, it kinda good! So that we know how many people exactly click on our Affiliate URLs.
Yup ! Even URL shorteners like U.NU give stats !
cool and nice articles @ right time. i was asking for ads, and here i get more tips about the affialte link. rocks
Yeah yeah.. nice coincidence buddy !
Lets be professional !
Nice share dude ..I gonna give it a try..
Thanks buddy ! Glad you found it useful !
GoCode plugin is really cool because life of that URL generated will be as long as life of your own blog. Other options mentioned in your post are also reliable. It is really important that URLs should look professional and secured.
I agree a ton with you buddy !
Life span of GoCodes plugin is the life time of the blog’s URL and it also looks pro !
I’m using GoCodes plugin and I like it although it would be nice to reset all the clicks with one button instead of going to each one individually.
Hmm ! You can also try PrettyLink, that is quite good !
It’s sad that we have to “cloak” our affiliate links this way just to make people feel comfortable when they decide to click on a link.
I’d also recommend PrettyLink, a pretty good WordPress plugin. There’s also a Pro version, which I find expensive but I’m sure it has a ton of great features. The free version is great though, track clicks etc.
Klaus, I think it is OK for us to cloak, because it makes the visitors think that it is a secure link and in one way, related to the site !
And thanks for sharing info about PrettyLink ! Will check it !
I am feeling shame..I was not aware of GoCode.Thanks for sharing.
Ruchi, two weeks before only I came to know about this plugin !
Brilliant and very creative idea never thought about it this way thanks brother and by the way brilliant interview
Thanks Lawmacs !
Glad to have you in my community !
I am using Go codes, its just awesome. With it you can track no of clicks also.
Yeah, I’m also using GoCodes and I can feel the difference !
I usuall upload the files to my server and link it to my blog(like ur 1st step).
Have you earned from it?
I’m bad with affiliate marketing !
But got some bucks through it .. though it was not through a professional method !
I think Google Short Links is the best of the three.
You can also prefer GoCodes and PrettyLinks buddy ! They are as trustworthy as Google Short Links !
Super information!
Thanks for your first comment here Uday !
Glad you are happy with the article !
GoCode sounds really nice. I'm wondering if it's as good as the premium plugin "ninja affiliate" can you track click with this plugin and automatize keyword into affiliate links?
Yes Benjamin, GoCodes tracks the number of clicks made on the link and it also allows to choose the keyword for the link !
Well, the plug-ins works quite well for shortening the affiliate link. Thanks
Glad it worked out for your dude !
Creating proper links for the right purpose help a lot in getting most of your efforts.The details lay down the above very clearly.Hopefully people will now understand how important and really how easy it is to optimize your marketing.Good one,I liked it.
Glad you liked this article Don, and you mentioned good points here. I love marketing and this helped me a lot !
hi kumar, hahaha i agree some visitors find it weird to click an expose affiliate url.. great tips you have here. thanks for sharing, will definitely try this one. =)
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Yup !
And also the masked affiliate link gives professional look !
Interesting thought. I never really look at the link I click on, as long as the anchor text is clear and concise. But other’s may be influenced, so I’ll consider it if I start with affiliate links.
I do look the links sometimes.. because of SPAM issues..
But, masking affiliate links can make the visitor feel secure…
Yes, it’s definitely worth doing this – particularly if you are promoting an affiliate link offline. When online, people can still click directly on the link, no matter how long and convoluted it is. But if they see it offline they have to type it in. With this method there will tend to be a lot more mistakes, meaning your chances of getting credited for any sales are considerably decreased.
I have used a free url snipping service for a local affiliate program that I’ve been promoting here in Australia. It works very well.
Exactly Matt, masking affiliate links will help a lot during offline promotion !
Thanks for the stuffs, but as I use BuySellAds, these won't be much helpful. Thanks anyways.
Thanks for your first comment Rahul…
I don’t have any idea why you mentioned BuySellAds Here… ! ?
I liked the first plug in! If I decided to be in affiliate marketing someday, I will definitely go back here. By the way, how do you earn from this blog? Google Adsense is not available in India?
Glad you found this article useful Tyrone..
And Adsense is available here.. but I was not lucky!
I make my wallet heavier by writing reviews and affiliate marketing!
gocodes s the best plugin to hide affiliate codes..
I also use Go Codes Rajesh!
the plugin to hide the affiliate url is cool, always wanted such a thing to hide the affiliate links, downloading it at the moment, will use it actively, thanks for sharing,
That’s great Sen.. glad you found it useful..kudos…
Hi Pradeep,
I haven’t started an affiliate marketing strategy yet – but when I do I’ll come to this (bookmarked) link and follow your tips.
Thanks a million
Will
Glad you found these tips worthy Will! Kudos…
And the one which I prefer the most is gocodes wordpress plugin
Ho really nice to see the ShoutMeLoud.com guy here. Nice to see his reply also. I am goin to try gocodes wordpress plugin by his reply
.-= jasir javaz’s last blog…History of the Internet =-.
Thanks for posting this !!! It would be very useful
thanks for this great list…bro!!
.-= Dev | Technshare's last blog…<a href="http://www.technshare.com/inspirational-social-bookmarking-sites/">30+ Inspirational Social Bookmarking Sites</a> =-.
I did try to use GoCodes plugin before but didn't know why it couldn't work. So right now I'm using the method which I create a folder with a redirect file with the referral link. That works as well.
Here is how I do it : http://myblog2day.com/how-to-hide-an-affiliate-link-and-make-it-more-professional.php
Of course, use GoCodes plugin would be much more easier.
Regards,
Lee
.-= Lee Ka Hoong's last blog…<a href="http://myblog2day.com/ranking-authority-sites-the-google-way.php">Ranking Authority Sites The Google Way</a> =-.
Using google Short links for quiet a time, but sometimes it feels annoying to go short link page and create a short link . Will give a try to Gocodes.
Many prefer to hide their affiliate links because they are aware that if they do that they will be able to earn a lot of money and benefits.
Redirection plugin also do the same work with better options….