An Essential Tip for Affiliate Marketing Newbies
One of the most basic procedures in affiliate marketing is referring your visitors to a specific URL which is provided by the vendor you are affiliated with. Typically, this URL is long, ugly and hard to remember or say out loud. For example…this is my affiliate link for LeadPages…
http://link.leadpages.net/aff_c?offer_id=6&aff_id=20612
Hardly rolls off the tongue, does it. However it’s necessary as it identifies me as the referrer and earns me a commission if the visitor purchases via that link.
Sidebar: Yes, I am a proud Leadpages affiliate and user. You actually need to be a user before you can join their affiliate program. If you’d like to know more about Leadpages you can read my review here.
So…what can be done about these ugly URL’s? You could use a URL shortener such as Bitly…but I don’t recommend you do. You can see these types of links all over the Web and to me they look unprofessional. Also, some social media sites won’t let you use them. It is far, far better to redirect from a URL that is part of your own domain. For example…
If you follow that link you’ll see it takes you to exactly the same location as the one above.
How did I do that?
It is possible to create a redirect from within cPanel on your hosting account. For example, in A2 Hosting it looks like this…
However, for the purpose of this post I’ll assume you’ve built your site with WordPress…or intend to…in which case there is a much better method.
First, you’ll need to install a redirect plugin. There are lots to choose from, but my fave is called “Redirectify” by Philip Rabbett. Just click on Plugins/Add New and do a search. Once installed and activated you’ll see a new section under “Publish” which looks like this…
Next, create a page and name it using the product or service you are linking to. In this case, I named it “LeadPages”. Then, click on the “edit” link next to “Redirection:” and paste in your affiliate URL…
Click OK, and publish your page. And that’s it! Simple and effective. Test your link to make sure the redirect is working OK and then always use your redirect link instead of the long and ugly original.
Update – Aug 2017
The latest update of Redirectify created an issue for me…the edit link failed to respond in the expected manner. The links still worked, I just couldn’t edit them or create new ones. Rather than wait for the developer to fix it I have replaced it with a plugin called Simple Redirect by Get on Social. Does exactly the same thing but seems more stable and has better support.
