4 Ways to Shorten Links in Affiliate Marketing
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Affiliate marketing is a powerful tool for driving sales and generating revenue. However, lengthy URLs can look unprofessional and be challenging to share. Shortening your affiliate links makes them more user-friendly and easier to manage.
Here are 4 effective ways to shorten links in affiliate marketing.
1. Use URL Shortening Services
URL shortening services, such as Bitly and TinyURL, are popular tools for reducing long URLs. These services generate a short, unique link that redirects to your original URL.
Shortened URLs are easier to share on social media and in emails, and most services provide analytics, allowing you to track clicks and user engagement. Some services even offer branded short links, enhancing your brand visibility.
Example:
Original URL: https://www.example.com/products/category/item?affiliate=12345
Shortened URL: https://bit.ly/3aBcDeF2. Plugins for WordPress
For those using WordPress, several plugins can help shorten your URLs.
Plugins like Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates allow you to create short links from your WordPress dashboard easily.
These plugins enable centralized link management, link cloaking to hide your affiliate IDs and prevent commission theft, and automated reports to analyze link performance.
Example:
Original URL: https://www.example.com/product?affiliate=12345
Shortened URL: https://yourblog.com/recommend/product3. Social Media Tools
Social media platforms often provide their own link shortening tools.
For example, Twitter automatically shortens URLs using its t.co domain. Additionally, tools like Hootsuite and Buffer can help shorten and manage your links across multiple platforms.
These tools offer platform integration, where shortened URLs are automatically created and optimized for social media, allowing you to plan and schedule your posts with shortened URLs in advance.
They also provide analytics to track engagement and performance of your links across different social channels.
Example:
Original URL: https://www.example.com/long-affiliate-url
Shortened URL on Twitter: https://t.co/abc1234. Turn Referral URLs into Short URLs with Coupon Affiliates
Coupon Affiliates is a plugin designed for WooCommerce that helps affiliates create and manage coupon-based affiliate links, and much more.
This tool simplifies the process of shortening referral URLs and enhances user experience.
With Coupon Affiliates, you can create short, memorable URLs for your referral links, monitor the performance of each link directly from your WordPress dashboard, and boost click-through rates and conversions with short, branded links.
Generate & Track Referral URLs
First, you and your affiliates can generate as many referral URLs as they need. These are not only trackable affiliate links, but can also automatically apply the affiliates coupon code during the customers checkout.
Of course, raw referral URLs still show all of the parameters and details within them, necessary for some platform transparency, but are not user-friendly or social-media-ready. So you’ll want to shorten your referral URLs with the Short URL tool.
Shorten Affiliate Links Into Short URLs
Once you have created referral URLs, you will have the opportunity to generate Short URLs on the same dashboard page. Short URLs cloak the complex original affiliate URL in a smaller an easy to type or link URL format. It’s as easy as clicking a button and copying a new, much shorter, URL line of text.
Example:
Original URL: https://example.com/product/black-tshirt?coupon=affiliate12345
Shortened URL: https://example.com/link/vj01zTurn URLs Into QR Codes
But wait, there’s more. You can also transform your referral URL into a QR code, which leads directly to the affiliate link when scanned by a customer. QR codes engage both digital and real-world leads and are extremely versatile. They can be printed on event flyers, shared as part of a social media image, or even printed onto clothing and still provide a direct affiliate link.
Conclusion
Shortening your affiliate links is essential for maintaining a professional image and enhancing user experience.
Whether you use dedicated URL shortening services, leverage WordPress plugins like Coupon Affiliates, or invest in a custom domain, there are numerous ways to make your links more manageable and effective.
PS: Used by more than 4,700 websites, including eCommerce stores, e-learning sites, membership sites, etc., Coupon Affiliates is the perfect plugin to create an affiliate program that actually makes money. Check out the free version or get the premium version (with a 7-day free trial).
Elliot Sowersby is a WordPress developer from Yorkshire, United Kingdom. He is the founder and lead developer of Coupon Affiliates and RelyWP.
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