Recently, I was being introduced to test out Market Samurai for free. It is a keyword research and seo tool. I am not going to discuss about Market Samurai in this post. What I would like to share in this post is a very good WordPress plugin that I discovered from Market Samurai. It’s called Pretty Link.

Pretty Link is another free plugin for link cloaking. Unlike other link cloaking services like tinyURL or bit.ly, Pretty Link allows user to create URLs shortening from their own domain name. For instant, I will point my link cloaking to Pretty Link like this: http://www.homebusiness-master.com/Resources/PrettyLink

Pretty Link also comes with the ability to track each hit on your cloaked URLs. I have also recommended another WordPress plugin, GoCodes on my previous post. Both plugin are working quite similarly but I would prefer Pretty Link. For internet marketer or affiliate marketer, Pretty Link masked your affiliate links completely and the shorten URL looked like it’s from your own domain subdirectory.

Affiliate link cloaking is necessary task to protect your affiliate link for being bypassed or directed to the affiliate main site. Cloaking affiliate link is very important to protect your commission from being stolen by link hijacker. If you are serius about work at home business, do not overlooked the important of affiliate link cloaker.

Affiliate link cloaking will also increase CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and your success in work at home business. If people see a clickbank affiliate link, they’ll most properly do not click on it because it gives an impression that the internet marketer is hard selling. But it will be completely opposite with a cloaked affiliate link.

I am going to share a few free affiliate link cloaking methods below that I has been used for many years as an work at home moms.

1. URL Shortening

There are plenty of URL shortening service providers and they are free. Just to mention a few; TinyURL, urlPASS, bit.ly, EasyURL and lots more.

As the name mentioned, it will shorten whatever url that you input and it may even allow you to input a custom alias. Take TinyURL for example, let’s say your clickbank affiliate link is GoogleCash, you may input a custom alias as googlecash and your redirect url will look like this – http://tinyurl.com/googlecash

Disadvantage of using URL shortening service: Once you have created your affiliate link cloaking, some URL shortening service may not provide you with personal admin page  to manage all your cloaked affiliate links. You may have to record your shorten URL manually on a record sheet. Bit.ly is better in providing a personal admin page  for sign up member. Once you’ve signed up with bit.ly, and you can get a complete history, real-time stats, and saved preferences on all your shorten URL. But bit.ly doesn’t provide a custom alias fo your choice.

2. ViralURL

ViralURL provides both free and paid services. If your main purpose for using their service is to redirect your affiliate link, just sign up for their free service is more than enough. ViralURL provides custom alias with your choice of keyword, real-time stats and special note on each URL redirect. These give you a very good platform to check on your CTR and organizing all your cloaked affiliate links.

3. GoCodes WordPress Plugin

GoCodes is a WordPress Plugin for URL redirect and it’s FREE. GoCodes is my top recommendation for affiliate link cloaking. GoCodes allowed you to edit your URL redirect to anywhere on the internet right from the WordPress admin.

The cloaked affiliate link look nicer than the 2 methods I mentioned above. The GoCodes URL redirect will look something like this:

yourdomain.com/go/redirectionkey

To configure your affiliate link in GoCodes plugin, input your choice of redirection key, the target URL (your actual affiliate link), choose whether you want to track the number of times this redirect is used and hit Add Redirect button. You may manage the GoCodes URL and check each URL stats easily from the WordPress admin area.

Your cloaked affiliate link can be used anywhere on the world wide web. You can use GoCodes as your affiliate  link cloaking platform for your other website or forum posting.

Like this post? Subscribe to my newsletter or feeds, I will be posting my secret to hyperlink any keyword of your choice within your wordpress blog to your affiliate page automatically.

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