Pretty Links!
I have, of course, heard about the "Pretty Link" plug in through Kyle's training and other posts. But until recently I hadn't actually installed and used the plug in. For those who are unfamiliar with "Pretty Link," the plug in will take a long winded affiliate link to a page, or any other long link and will transform it into a link at your site, and then give you the opportunity to name the link in any way that you want like this:
http://yoursite.com/anything-you-wish
Voila! I have found a miracle! I tried to post one of my affiliate links in a Facebook status and got three rows of incredibly complicated letters and characters. A friend asked "am I supposed to click on this link?"
Now I can easily share affiliate links without confusing people and the ink can be customized with a name that supports what I'm trying to communicate!
Many of you may have been using this plug in for a while, but some of us are a little slow, so bear with me.
To get the plug in:
Go to your dashboard
Click Plugins
Click Add New
Type Pretty Link into the search box and enter
Choose Pretty Link and click Install Now
Today, I am grateful for having discovered Pretty Link!
Recent Comments
47
Haven't used it yet, but it's nice to know that you like it. I always hesitate when it comes to plug ins. ~Debbi
I added it when I did that training but hadn't used it yet. I don't like to throw too much new info into my brain lol. I think I will take a deeper look at it tomorrow. :)
Honestly I only tried it out because I was trying to give friends my affiliate link to the Amazon home page, and ti was sooooo long it looked like a spam! So I remembered the plug in and it worked beautifully!
I've seen other people ask questions saying they have trouble shortening amazon links with pretty links but maybe they were only talking about product links. The home page is probably just a regular link. But for future reference I don't think you can use pretty links for product links. I didn't really understand why they wanted to since the actual long link is not displayed. Anyway, here I go rambling again :)
OK, I tried this an I am not able to put the long affiliate link into this message, it won't allow me to post, but it's three lines of code following the http://www.amazon.com. Anyway, I took that long link and put it into a pretty link below.
And here is the pretty link to the same page:
http://mydoggiedoodle.com/cadetduckjerkeytreats
If you follow that link then look at all the code in the search bar on the page, you can see "furmstor" which is part of my tracking code, I know it's going through my affiliate link.
I think people may be running into the same problem I had initially. When you generate a text link in the Amazon Associate Central page, it won't convert into a pretty link. You have to actually sign in through your affiliate account, then go to the page of the product, copy the link out of the search bar, and use that to convert to a pretty link. I see my tracking ID in the longer link, so I know it's going through my account Hopefully this helps!
I have never heard of this before, but I plan to check it out. Sounds like a great idea and simple.......... got to love something simple! :) Thank you! Michelle
Used it from the time Kyle mentioned it. It makes things a lot neater! Glad you found it and got it installed, Sandra!
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Haven't gotten there yet, but it's nice to know. Thanks Sandra.