Have you discovered the “magic” you can do in WordPress to shorten, track, and brand the links you share?
Short links make URLs easier to share and remember. They fit in tweets and share easily via email.
Short links take this:
http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=291674&u=468400&m=31479&urllink=&afftrack=
And turn it into this:
https://michelleshaeffer.com/go/premise
Isn’t that better? It’s easy to share and remember, it’s branded with my domain, and I can track it.
Using the right link shortener also gives you a way to protect your links and change them later. So you can cloak affiliate links and change what products you promote as needed without losing the work you’ve put into building links!
So here’s exactly how you can get started using this “link magic” from within your WordPress website:
If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIk1UDJLgmM
Now, go get that setup if you don’t have it yet! :)
Michelle,
Awesome post and VidTut! The tracking features are surely going to grab some attention. I get on average, 100 emails per day. They range from client base Q&A’s to product launches. The later, get disposed of very quickly without opening if they have standard URL’s that have been shortened.
My opinion, learn to program proper URL redirects by using this amazing WP plugin or do the same in HTML. It will make your pages look sooooo much more professional. It will make a big difference in how many people click through your links due to it being able to be read as simple text.
Now I have a question for you! The Membership WP theme “Premise” is it only compatible with an authorize dot net, API as a payment gateway.
Charlie
Hey Charles, yep it definitely helps to use a tool like this on those links. :)
Is the Premise plugin from Copyblogger Media the one you’re looking at? I’ve got that installed here to do sales/landing pages (not checkout because it doesn’t have an affiliate program yet, they’re working on that I’ve heard). But it’s a great plugin. It lets you connect to PayPal, Authorize.net, Braintree, 2Checkout, and Stripe.
Easy to follow video. Thanks Michelle, but I have a question.
Curious if, once you set up your link (let’s say http://makeyourblogfamous.com/rockyourtalk), if you then scheduled a tweet using Hootsuite and used their link shortener or used Stumble Upon’s link shortener (so the URL changes), would Pretty Link still be able to track the link?
~Debra
Yep, it’d still get tracked because it’s still going through that link at some point in the shortener craziness. ;)
Its often surprising how advanced software is, I was recently trying to do a work round for something I didn’t believe I could get the software to do yet it had already been hard coded into it.
Have to be thankful for the way a lot of this stuff is going to make life easier!
Michelle,
Pretty link is great! Love it!
Awesome, happy to hear that, Robert. Always good when a plugin has lots of positive votes!
Hi Michelle,
Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
Question: is this plugin mainly for affiliate links? If not, how is it different from the shortening we can do when we create a blog post?
You can use it for any link you want to shorten and track. The main difference for me between this and something like bit.ly or su.pr is that it’s branded to my domain and I can see stats from right within WordPress admin.
Much better than tinyurl and any other shortener, looks very profesional, I also like the idea of cloaking affiliate links and tracking the URL´s, perfect!!!
Hi Jose, thanks for reading and commenting. :)
Yeah..
That plugin I use for my blog..
Very helpful plugin to shorten URL..
Who play affiliate, this plugin very suitable.. :)