Continuing on our affiliate parade, today we’ll learn how to redirect, manage, and cloak affiliate links using PrettyLink Lite.
I had a few people asking questions after our AffiliateWP tutorial about creating affiliate programs, on how someone can manage the links that they are using in their content. Luckily PrettyLink Lite makes that super-easy.
Let’s take a look.
Using PrettyLink Lite
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PrettyLink Lite is pretty darned good, for a free plugin.
Having just updated to version 2.0 of the software, there are two major enhancements that really make it a pleasure to use. I’ve been using the plugin to manage my affiliate links ever since I started this website, and one of the pain points was getting the links into the content. It’s easy when you remember the product’s URL, but once you start linking to many different programs, you get a bit overloaded.
Previously, I would start to draft a blog post with my post editor loaded on one tab, and my PrettyLink Lite dashboard on the other. There are “quick copy” links near each link, so I would hope from one tab to the other, copying the links then applying them to my blog post.
Thankfully, I don’t have to do that anymore!
Version 2.0 has an easy to use modal pop-up in your post editor, which allows you to create new redirect URL’s or search for previously created redirect’s, right within your post editor. This is a huge boon for affiliate marketers, and a welcomed update to the plugin. It’s made my life so much easier in the short time I’ve been using it.
Overall, PrettyLink is much faster and snappier than before. Under the hood the code received a fresh coat of paint (really?), shaving off seconds of load time that I encountered in the old interface. Especially when it came to pulling up the link click stats, which could tax the load time.
Should you upgrade to the Pro version?
There are two strong reasons why I’m upgrading to Pretty Link Pro: Keyword replacements & affiliate disclosures.
The former being a huge time-saving opportunity when writing content, by turning pre-defined keywords into an affiliate link. Couple that with a handy new feature which automatically discloses links as affiliate links, and I’ve got a better overall experience for my readers.
If it were me, I’d start with using PrettyLink Lite, until you start gathering up a larger amount of affiliate links to manage. As you start to create more content, that auto-linking is going to be real handy.
What do you think? What are you using for your affiliate links?