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
https: – 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.
Redirection plugin also do the same work with better options….
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.
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.
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
thanks for this great list…bro!!
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Thanks for posting this !!! It would be very useful
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
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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
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,
gocodes s the best plugin to hide affiliate codes..
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?
Thanks for the stuffs, but as I use BuySellAds, these won't be much helpful. Thanks anyways.
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.
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.
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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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.
Well, the plug-ins works quite well for shortening the affiliate link. Thanks
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?
Super information!
I think Google Short Links is the best of the three.
I usuall upload the files to my server and link it to my blog(like ur 1st step).
Have you earned from it?
I am using Go codes, its just awesome. With it you can track no of clicks also.
Brilliant and very creative idea never thought about it this way thanks brother and by the way brilliant interview
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.
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.
I am feeling shame..I was not aware of GoCode.Thanks for sharing.
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.
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!
You can easily hide affiliate links with JavaScript too. Here is how – http://www.net-entrepreneur.com/how-to-hiding-your-affiliate-links/
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
Nice post Pradeep. I personally use GoCodes. It works very well up to now. Btw you have a nice blog here. Cheers.
Nice share dude ..I gonna give it a try..
cool and nice articles @ right time. i was asking for ads, and here i get more tips about the affialte link. rocks 😆