How and why to hide affiliate links

As a blogger i’m sure you’re familliar with affiliate marketing. It’s the easiest way for a blogger to make money.

Why hide affiliate links?

• They are long and ugly, which can make them look suspicious. People tend to not trust long links. A nice short and clean link is more likely to be clicked.
• If you’re using a plugin you can change your affiliate links in just one place instead of all the pages where you use those links.
• Some people don’ t want to click on an affiliate link. If you hide it, they will be forced to click it.
• Better SEO.  The links don’t look like affiliate links, which means your blog will rank better on search engines.

How to hide affiliate links?

There are many ways to hide or cloak your affiliate links, but the easiest solution, in my opinion, is by using a plugin. Since i am a WordPress user this is, of course, a WordPress plugin. There are quite a few plugins that can do the job, but this one is my favorite.

I am using a plugin called GoCodes for hiding the affiliate links. With GoCodes plugin you can redirect/hide affiliate links very easy. It makes the long affiliate links look like this:

yourdomain.com/go/text

What i like at GoCodes plugin is that it not only hides affiliate links, but it can count click throughs as well. If affiliate partner changes your affiliate link, you can simply change it on one location, instead of changing all the links on all pages.

Download GoCodes plugin and follow the instalation instructions.

Do you hide your affiliate links and how?

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