Cloaking your affiliate links has a number of benefits.
Not only it saves your hard-earned affiliate marketing commission, but it also makes your links pretty good-looking and branded.
From the last year, I have been seriously cloaking my affiliate links.
Doing so has saved me a lot of time and money. Every time I write a post, I don’t have to worry about adding my affiliate links to monetize my content. Neither I need to remember the links, nor I have to log in to my affiliate marketplace to copy and paste these links into my content.
In this post, I will show you 3 WordPress plugins, I tried and tested to cloak my affiliate links.
Pretty Links
Another simple plugin you can use to cloak links on your WordPress site is Pretty Links.
This plugin is much small when it comes to features, but for beginners, it’s super user-friendly.
Pretty Links shortens and makes your affiliate links look beautiful (as the name already says).
All you have to do is allot a keyword to a specific link, and the ThirstyAffiliates plugin will link that keyword to your affiliate link. It also helps you to attach affiliate links to images.
Let’s say I have a post on the best WordPress plugins for performance optimization, and in it, I have written about the WP Rocket plugin.
I have cloaked my affiliate link to WP rocket with PrettyLinks, and I have also assigned this plugin to add a link to this keyword. Now, every time I write the word WP Rocket anywhere on my blog, My affiliate link will be attached to it without any effort.
This is a plug and plays plugin, you don’t need to do anything after activating it on your WordPress blog. Simply enter your long, ugly link and give a name to it, and you are good to go.
Discover Pretty Links Plugin for WordPress
2. ThirstyAffiliates
From the last year, I have been using the ThristyAffiliates plugin to cloak and manage all of my affiliate and non-affiliate links on BforBloggers.
This plugin is actually the best in the market when it comes to features and performance. With ThirstyAffiliates, I don’t need to leave my WordPress editor to find my links. All I need to do is to click on the plugin icon in the editor itself, search for an affiliate link by entering the name and that’s it.
ThirstyAffiliate also has a pro version with which you can easily automate the whole process.
With the automation add-on for ThirstyAffiliates, you can assign a keyword for every affiliate link you create. It will then automatically link the keyword with your affiliate links across all your blog posts.
I’m genuinely impressed with this plugin. The best part of this plugin is it’s very beginner-friendly and easy to use. I have made a tutorial on how to cloak your links with ThirstyAffiliate Plugin, you should check that out if you choose this particular plugin.
Download ThirstyAffiliates Plugin
3. Easy Affiliate Links
If you keep adding features such as slug selection and smart management aside, The Easy Affiliate Links plugin is the best option.
Easy Affiliate Links is a simple plugin that lets you:-
- Create short links
- Leave specific links uncloaked for Amazon Associates
- Assign categories to your links
- Tracking of clicks
- Import & Export affiliate links from XML
The plugin is actively monitored, and if you are looking for any specific features, just ask the developer, and he might add it in the future!
Discover Easy Affiliate Links Plugin
Bonus (+1) Auto Affiliate Links
Although this list was about the 3 plugins, I couldn’t keep myself from adding this particular plugin that is Auto Affiliate Links.
Auto Affiliate Links, as the name suggests, is a straightforward plugin that automatically cloaks adds the affiliate links to your posts and pages without you doing anything. The best part, It’s free to use!
If you prefer to select your keywords and add your links manually, you can do this by going to the “Auto Affiliate Links” menu in your administration panel.
In General Settings, you can set if you want the links to be cloaked if you want them to be added into content your homepage or not and several other options as well.
If you use Clickbank, ShareASale, eBay associates, Amazon associates, Evanto Marketplace, Commission Junction, and Walmart to earn money from affiliate marketing, this plugin will become a boon for you.
If you use any or every given network, this plugin will automatically convert your keywords into affiliate hyperlinks. You don’t have to worry about anything once you finish the setup.
That’s it. These are the only WordPress plugins that make cloaking affiliate links easy. Other options are just too old and haven’t been updated. Once you’ve chosen a plugin, the next step is to learn how to use it.
Follow this step by step tutorial to learn how to cloak affiliate links.
There’s a new plugin launched called DAEXT autolinks manager. It allows you to enter a keyword and automatically link it to a specified URL everytime the keyword is mentioned across your blog post. Read about Autolinks Manager here.
If this guide has helped you, share it on Facebook and Twitter and if, you have any questions, ask them in the comments section below.
Santanu Debnath
Although I have never used anything beyond Thirsty Affiliate, but I would love to try the remaining 2 plugins for sure. Without these plugins, it is impossible to breathe for any affiliate marketers. Many thanks for sharing this wonderful information and helping others.
Aayush Bhaskar
Indeed Shantanu
chandra prakash
Same is with me. I have never ever heard the term of cloaking URL without thirsty affiliate. But this list has gave something new. I’m definitely gonna explore other 2 plugins.
Aayush Bhaskar
Pretty Links is worth a shot
Lucian
Thank you for mentioning Auto Affiliate Links in your article. If you have any suggestions to improve the plugin let me know.
Bobby
Those are really some of the best link cloaking plugins available for WordPress blog. Indeed the TA and EAL are the best ones which i have already tried and found very useful for an affiliate marketer.
Navin Rao
I have tried pretty links in the past, and it works great. But, I think I should give a try to thirsty affiliate this time for my new site.
But, was wondering despite thirsty affiliate being so popular why the downloads are lesser compared to pretty links. Thirsty with 20k and pretty links with 200,000. a huge gap. But still, I will give it a go. Any thoughts?
Aayush Bhaskar
Pretty Links is quite impressive. As an affiliate, it’s easier to market as well. But ThirstyAffiliates is way simpler to use without compromising important features.
Lalit Mittal
Hey! Thanks for this awesome article Aayush. Even I have earned a lot from Affiliate. Your suggestion will make it bigger.
Aayush Bhaskar
I’m so glad ????
Tony
Hey Bhaskar,
Is Pretty Link compatible with FlyingPress caching plugin?
Thanks