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3 Ways To Hide Your Affiliate Links For Better Sales

Updated On 05/04/2017
Author : Pradeep Kumar
Topic : Blogging
Short URL : https://hellboundbloggers.com/?p=2529

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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://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.

By Pradeep Kumar

CEO and Founder of Slashsquare, Indian Blog Network and Web Consulting Media. HBB is a part of Slashsquare Network. I'm a Tech Blogger, Striving Entrepreneur, Atheist, and Proud Indian. Catch me on Facebook and Twitter.

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64 Comments
- esoftload
  
  Redirection plugin also do the same work with better options….
  
  08/12/2010 at 6:05 AM
  
- Maricel Ignacio
  
  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.
  
  12/10/2010 at 12:27 PM
  
- Arif Nezami
  
  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.
  
  19/08/2010 at 9:11 PM
  
- Lee Ka Hoong
  
  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
  
  09/04/2010 at 6:20 AM
  
- Dev | Technshare
  
  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> =-.
  
  29/03/2010 at 6:56 AM
  
- Sandeep Singh
  
  Thanks for posting this !!! It would be very useful
  
  19/03/2010 at 8:48 PM
  
- Harsh Agrawal
  
  And the one which I prefer the most is gocodes wordpress plugin 🙂
  
  04/01/2010 at 8:00 AM
  
- Will
  
  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
  
  13/12/2009 at 5:31 PM
  
- Uttoran Sen
  
  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,
  
  27/11/2009 at 7:48 PM
  
- Rajesh Kanuri
  
  gocodes s the best plugin to hide affiliate codes..
  
  20/11/2009 at 6:59 PM
  
- Millionaire Acts
  
  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?
  
  06/11/2009 at 8:36 PM
  
- Rahul Chowdhury
  
  Thanks for the stuffs, but as I use BuySellAds, these won't be much helpful. Thanks anyways.
  
  10/10/2009 at 3:31 PM
  
- Matt Hayden
  
  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.
  
  07/10/2009 at 5:07 PM
  
- Luc - Home Improvement
  
  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.
  
  01/10/2009 at 3:08 AM
  
- sheena@debt management
  
  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. =)
  
  debt management
  
  24/09/2009 at 1:04 PM
  
- Don
  
  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.
  
  18/09/2009 at 8:08 AM
  
- online surveys
  
  Well, the plug-ins works quite well for shortening the affiliate link. Thanks
  
  15/09/2009 at 6:25 PM
  
- Benjamin Cip
  
  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?
  
  12/09/2009 at 5:41 AM
  
- uday
  
  Super information!
  
  10/09/2009 at 9:02 AM
  
- Hakeem - technology and gadgets
  
  I think Google Short Links is the best of the three.
  
  10/09/2009 at 3:36 AM
  
- Ricky
  
  I usuall upload the files to my server and link it to my blog(like ur 1st step).
  Have you earned from it?
  
  08/09/2009 at 7:49 AM
  
- Dinesh
  
  I am using Go codes, its just awesome. With it you can track no of clicks also.
  
  07/09/2009 at 8:58 PM
  
- lawmacs
  
  Brilliant and very creative idea never thought about it this way thanks brother and by the way brilliant interview
  
  07/09/2009 at 6:04 PM
  
- Klaus @ TechPatio
  
  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.
  
  06/09/2009 at 7:43 PM
  
- George Serradinho
  
  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.
  
  07/09/2009 at 2:42 AM
  
- Ruchi
  
  I am feeling shame..I was not aware of GoCode.Thanks for sharing.
  
  07/09/2009 at 12:58 AM
  
- Blogging Tips
  
  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.
  
  06/09/2009 at 1:08 PM
  
- Tech-Freak Stuff
  
  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!
  
  06/09/2009 at 8:08 AM
  
- Arun Basil Lal
  
  You can easily hide affiliate links with JavaScript too. Here is how – http://www.net-entrepreneur.com/how-to-hiding-your-affiliate-links/
  
  06/09/2009 at 5:42 AM
  
- Isaac | GoBlogger
  
  Nice post Pradeep. I personally use GoCodes. It works very well up to now. Btw you have a nice blog here. Cheers.
  
  06/09/2009 at 4:21 AM
  
- sham
  
  Nice share dude ..I gonna give it a try..
  
  06/09/2009 at 2:30 AM
  
- sriganesh
  
  cool and nice articles @ right time. i was asking for ads, and here i get more tips about the affialte link. rocks 😆
  
  06/09/2009 at 2:12 AM
  
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64 Comments

Maricel Ignacio

Arif Nezami

Lee Ka Hoong

Sandeep Singh

jasir javaz

Rajesh Kanuri

Rahul Chowdhury

Luc - Home Improvement

sheena@debt management

online surveys

Benjamin Cip

uday

Hakeem - technology and gadgets

Ricky

Dinesh

lawmacs

George Serradinho

Ruchi

Alex at Net-Entrepreneur.com

Isaac | GoBlogger

sham

sriganesh