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How to shorten affiliate links

If you’ve just signed up with your first affiliate network, you’ve probably just noticed the unimpressive, long and ugly URLS?  It’s likely you want to know if it’s OK to shorten affiliate links, specifically for use on social media, like Twitter or Facebook?

Can I shorten affiliate links with bit.ly?

Can I shorten affiliate links?  If so, how?

Yes, most* affiliate networks allow users to shorten their URLs.  *I would advise you email a representative at the network for confirmation first, if you cannot find any information in their help or FAQ section.

Affiliate Window, Webgains and ShareASale all have inbuilt link shorteners that you can use.

Commission Junction doesn’t have a URL shortener just yet, but a representitive from the company told me that using one should not affect tracking.

If you use RewardStyle, there’s an option to automatically shorten all your links with bit.ly  (visit My Account > Basic Information  to activate).

SkimLinks has a built in URL shortener too.  Access this in the toolbox menu (visit toolbox > tools > URL shortener )

Amazon confirm you can use any URL shortener of your choice, though they suggest using their amzn.to inbuilt shortener because they can verify it’ll track your clicks and sales correctly. Read more in their FAQ section.

List of commonly used URL shortening services

You may wish to shorten your affiliate links with one of the following tools –

Goo.gl (owned by Google, good stats)

Bit.ly (see below for why I don’t use Bit.ly)

Buffer *MY PICK (scheduling tool, automatically shortens, good stats)

Owl.ly

Tiny URL

WordPress users create your own shortened URLs with Pretty Links

Why I don’t recommend Bit.ly

Bitly’s URL shortener is a favourite with bloggers, due to the handy statistics it provides.  However, earlier this year, Bitly partnered up with Viglink and started appending affiliate cookies to links posted through the tool.  PracticalEcommerce.com explain why this could be problematic for bloggers –

Say a blogger, who is one of your approved affiliates, promotes your brand across her social media channels. To keep her posts short and pithy, the blogger uses Bitly to shorten the affiliate link. Now that Bitly is in partnership with Viglink, if the blogger’s post drives a sale, that sale is attributed to Viglink, not to the blogger.

Eeek!  This was only a test on a small subset of users, and according to the site’s knowledge base, the test is now over.  However, Bit.ly haven’t stated whether the test was successful and they intend to activate affiliate links to ALL of their free users in the future.

Further reading:

Can I share affiliate links on Facebook? – Lovely Blog Academy

How to shorten Amazon affiliate links – Bloggers Help

Bit.ly & Viglink quietly adding their own affiliate cookies on shortened links – The SEMpost

Bit.ly affiliate test – Bit.ly knowledge base

Bitly-Viglink affiliate deal raises concerns – Practical Ecommerce

Help other bloggers by sharing this post!

If you’d like to help other bloggers learn about shortening affiliate links for social media, pin the graphic below:

Can I shorten affiliate links for social media, using bitly, tinyurl etc? Answer to this and more at LovelyBlogAcademy.com

Or, tweet out the following:

Everything you ever need to know about shortening #affiliate links for social media Click To Tweet

29th November 2015 12:33 pm Carly 10 Comments Filed Under: Monetizing your blog, Social Media

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Comments

  1. 1

    Rodrigo NóbregA says

    26th August 2016 at 7:59 am

    Hi, so, when what would you recommend me to keep track of clicks?

    Reply
    • 2

      Carly says

      1st September 2016 at 11:03 am

      I must admit, I don’t keep track of my links. There are too many, I generate new ones every other day.

      I do try and go through all of my most trafficked content periodically, update any dead links etc.

      I don’t even keep a list of the common affiliate links I use over and over again. Most networks and monetizing platforms have browser extensions, so I just visit the merchant’s website and generate another link and use that.

      I can see which links are popular (getting clicks and converting sales) in my affiliate dashboard (e.g. when I log into [affwin] or [linkshare].)

      If you’re using WordPress, Pretty Link Lite is a free plugin I can recommend. You can use it to shorten your affiliate links, edit them at a later date and track clicks (but not commissions).

      You can always put that data into an excel spreadsheet with other data manually collected from the networks themselves. Not automated though 🙁

      Reply
  2. 3

    Derek @ MoneyAhoy says

    4th April 2017 at 3:58 pm

    Wow – I was just about ready to use bitly, but I think I’ll pass after reading this!

    Reply
    • 4

      Carly says

      19th May 2017 at 3:05 pm

      Yeah, I’ve started dodging them ever since. Better to be safe than sorry!

      Reply
  3. 5

    Luke Gibson says

    4th June 2017 at 6:03 am

    Cool little article, what I’m curious to know is how Google feels about the shortening of affiliate links, because it’s considered a big no no to cloak affiliate links, so how is using URL shorteners different in the eyes of Google, how can it tell the difference, or does it and are people who shorten affiliate links being penalised for it without knowing?

    Reply
  4. 6

    Chase says

    13th September 2017 at 5:30 am

    Is there a way to shorten links for Target’s deeplinks through Impact Radius?

    Reply
  5. 7

    Juan Lenon says

    30th October 2017 at 8:12 am

    I love and have used all of these shorteners, but my favorite by far is shortenurl.net.

    It’s completely free, easy to use, gives the user a bunch of data, you can create ‘bundles’ of links and combine them in one link, you can also create splash pages, overlays on any site, and much more.

    I feel like it’s undervalued, people need to know more about this website. It’d be awesome if you could add it to the list.

    Have a good one! 🙂

    Reply
  6. 8

    Lisa says

    31st January 2018 at 9:41 pm

    Thanks for the help Carly, I started to shorten links then I thought I should really double check this before I continue. I just used bit.ly before coming to your site and your specifying not to, what a coincidence! Anyways I’ll have to try the official amazon shortener for my amazon text links. I’m guessing that Amazon image links are not affected negatively by the amazon shortener as well?

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Pros and Cons of URL Shorteners - Top SEO Singapore Services. ISO Certified + Best SEO Awarded says:
    2nd July 2017 at 3:20 pm

    […] Affiliate codes cannot be removed from the link. This helps to ensure that you get your commission if someone clicks the link as they can’t remove the code from the link and deprive you of that rightful commission. […]

    Reply
  2. The Pros and Cons of URL Shorteners - Mediaone | Mediaone says:
    19th October 2017 at 7:09 am

    […] Affiliate codes cannot be removed from the link. This helps to ensure that you get your commission if someone clicks the link as they can’t remove the code from the link and deprive you of that rightful commission. […]

    Reply

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