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? 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)
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
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Hi, so, when what would you recommend me to keep track of clicks?
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 🙁
Wow – I was just about ready to use bitly, but I think I’ll pass after reading this!
Yeah, I’ve started dodging them ever since. Better to be safe than sorry!
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?