How to Mask Ad Links in a WordPress Blog
One way to monetize your WordPress blog is to include links to products for which you receive a commission. Depending upon the product, you may receive money each time someone clicks on your link or you may not be paid until the person purchases the product. Many cautious buyers will not click on a link that looks like it's an ad. By masking your ad links using one of these free WordPress plugins, you can fix this problem.
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Instructions
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Use GoCodes
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Log in to your WordPress blog. If you do not have a link to your login page on your blog, go to http://yourdomainname.com/wp-login.php.
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Select "Add New" from the "Plugins" menu. Enter "GoCodes" into the search box and click "Search Plugins."
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Click "Install Now" under the "GoCodes" heading. Click "Activate Plugin."
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Select "GoCodes" from the "Settings" menu if you wish to change the default directory "go" to something more meaningful like "recommendations" or "products." You can also check "nofollow" if you do not want your redirects to be indexed by the search engines.
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Select "GoCodes" from the "Tools" menu. Enter text you wish to use for the URL of the ad link into "Redirection Key," e.g., "greatproduct." Enter or copy and paste your ad link into the "Target URL" field. Select the checkbox for "Count hits?" if you wish the GoCodes plugin to keep track of the number of times the link is clicked. Click "Add Redirect."
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Copy the new URL created for you by GoCodes by highlighting it and selecting "Ctrl" plus "C" or by right-clicking and selecting "Copy." Go to your WordPress page or post and paste the copied URL directly onto the page or use it as the value for hyperlinked text.
Using Pretty Link Lite
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Log in to your WordPress blog. Select "Add New" from the "Plugins" menu. Enter "Pretty Link" and click "Search Plugins."
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Click "Install Now" under the "Pretty Link Lite" heading. Click "OK" to indicate you want to install the plugin. Click "Activate Plugin."
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Select "Permalinks" under the "Settings" menu. If "Default" is selected, you must select something else in order for Pretty Link to work. For example, you could use "/%category%/%postname%/" as a custom permalink structure if you use categories.
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Select "Add New Link" under the "Pretty Link" menu, expanding the menu by clicking on the arrow to the right of the category name, if necessary.
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Enter your affiliate ad link into "Target URL." You can enter the text you would like displayed for the URL or leave the autogenerated text for "Pretty Link." You can optionally enter a title and description for this link then click "Create."
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Right-click the URL in the "Links" column on the "Pretty Links" page and select "Copy." Go to the page or post you wish to mask the ad link and paste the copied URL directly onto the page or use as the target of hyperlinked text.
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Tips & Warnings
Masking your ad link displays the ad link to the user in a friendly manner and redirects the user to the target URL. Cloaking an ad link, on the other hand, displays the friendly URL from beginning to end. The user never sees the real target URL.
While masking your links will make them look less obviously like ad links, they will not hide your affiliate ID on the target URL. You will need to purchase a link cloaking plugin or write custom PHP code to hide your affiliate ID on the target URL.
References
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
