Are you an affiliate marketer looking to maximize revenue and streamline affiliate link management? This blog will explore the best affiliate link-cloaking plugins available. These plugins offer a range of features, including link cloaking, tracking, customization, and more. Discover the top affiliate plugins that can help you optimize your affiliate marketing strategy and boost your earnings.
What is link cloaking?
On this page:
Link cloaking, also called URL masking, involves redirecting a destination website’s URL to another page, effectively hiding the original URL. Affiliate marketing frequently uses this practice to track commissions and conceal the affiliate ID. Additionally, cloaking links allows you to create more credible and visually appealing links for visitors.
How does link cloaking work?
Link cloaking is disguising a URL by setting up a URL redirect. This shortens the URL’s length and rebrands it to make it easier to track and appear more trustworthy to the user who clicks on it.
Here’s how link cloaking works in a nutshell:
- You create a shortened or branded URL redirecting to the original affiliate link.
- When someone clicks on the cloaked link, they are redirected to the original affiliate link.
- The affiliate program still tracks the click, and you earn commission as usual.
Link cloaking, also called URL masking, involves redirecting a destination website’s URL to another page, effectively hiding the original URL. Affiliate marketing frequently uses this practice to track commissions and conceal the affiliate ID. Additionally, cloaking links allows you to create more credible and visually appealing links for visitors.
Link Cloaking vs Link Shortening
| Feature | Link Cloaking | Link Shortening |
| Purpose | To disguise a URL and make it more visually appealing or trackable. | To shorten a URL and make it easier to share. |
| Process | A URL redirect is set up that shortens the URL and rebrands it. | The original URL is shortened and the shortened URL is used in place of the original URL. |
| Benefits | Can increase click-through rate, improve tracking, and build trust. | Can make URLs easier to share and remember. |
| Drawbacks | Can be more difficult to set up and manage. | Can be less effective at increasing click-through rate. |
| Best use cases | When you want to make your affiliate links look more professional or trackable. | When you want to make your URLs easier to share and remember. |
List of Top Affiliate Link Cloaking Plugins
1. ThirstyAffiliates
Thirsty Affiliates stands out as one of the most popular WordPress plugins for link cloaking. Its primary function is to simplify adding, managing, and tracking affiliate links directly from your admin dashboard. By utilizing its diverse range of features, you can effortlessly create branded affiliate links for your products. This streamlined approach maximizes your potential to generate substantial affiliate income from your site visitors.
Key Features
1. Link Cloaking
With ThirstyAffiliates, you can easily shorten and cloak your affiliate links. Instead of displaying lengthy and complex URLs like “https://www.example.com/product?ref=affiliate123” you can create shorter, more user-friendly links like “https://www.yourwebsite.com/recommends/product” This makes the links appear more trustworthy and provides a more unambiguous indication of what users can expect when they click on them. ThirstyAffiliates seamlessly redirects users to the respective affiliate links while maintaining the necessary tracking and referral information by using your domain name with a customised prefix. This simplifies the link presentation and increases the likelihood of generating clicks from your audience.
2. Link Management
ThirstyAffiliates streamlines affiliate link management by providing a centralized dashboard to organize and categorize your numerous links. This functionality is essential for affiliate marketers handling hundreds or thousands of links. By categorizing your affiliate links within ThirstyAffiliates, you can quickly locate specific links and track the performance of each category on your website.
3. Link Customization
ThirstyAffiliates offers extensive customization options to give you complete control over the appearance and functionality of your affiliate links. You can choose the link prefix for your redirection URLs within the settings page. Additionally, you can decide whether to include the link category in the URL, specify whether the links should open in a new tab, and explore various other configuration choices. Furthermore, ThirstyAffiliates allows you to enhance your affiliate links by attaching images.
Pricing
| Plans | Advanced | Plus | Basic |
| Price | $199.50/year | $129.50/year | $79.50/year |
2. PrettyLinks
Pretty Links is a highly capable WordPress plugin for shortening and cloaking affiliate links. With its intuitive interface, you can effortlessly create more appealing and user-friendly links while managing your affiliate links.
Beyond its link-cloaking functionality, Pretty Links provides a range of powerful features. It enables tracking and redirecting links, ensuring accurate and efficient link management. Additionally, the plugin facilitates easy sharing of affiliate links across different platforms, including podcasts, videos, and email.
With Pretty Links, you gain enhanced control and organization over your affiliate marketing endeavours. The plugin simplifies creating and managing affiliate links, allowing you to present your audience with a more professional and engaging experience.
Key Features
1. URL Redirection
The plugin supports multiple redirection types, including 301 (permanent), 307 (temporary), and JavaScript redirection. This flexibility allows you to optimise your links for better click-through rates (CTR) and protects against link theft.
2. Link Management
Pretty Links provides affiliate link management capabilities, enabling you to organise your links into groups or categories. This organisation streamlines the tracking process, making analysing the performance of outbound, internal, and external links easier.
3. Link Tracking System
The plugin includes a robust link-tracking system that captures and measures the performance of your links. This feature lets you gain insights into click metrics, affiliate conversions, and other key performance indicators. Tracking link performance can refine your linking strategy and improve overall effectiveness.
4. Link Automation
Pretty Links offers a range of automation affiliate marketing tools to simplify link creation and management. You can automatically generate cloaked links for all your pages and posts, saving time and effort. Additionally, the plugin can convert keywords into links and facilitate easy sharing on social media platforms, enhancing link visibility and reach.
Pricing
| Plans | Super Affiliate | Marketer | Beginner |
| Price | $199.50/year | $149.50/year | $99.50/year |
3. Easy Affiliate Links
Easy Affiliate Links is an intuitive WordPress plugin created to simplify managing all of your affiliate links in one place. This plugin covers you whether you’re dealing with cloaked or regular links. It seamlessly integrates with popular WordPress editors such as the Classic Editor, Gutenberg Block Editor, and Elementor, ensuring compatibility and ease of use.
In addition to its user-friendly interface, Easy Affiliate Links offers valuable insights to help you track the performance of your links. You can access metrics such as monthly and lifetime click counts, allowing you to gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your affiliate links.
Key Features
1. A/B Testing
The plugin includes a split testing feature that allows you to compare variations of cloaked URLs. This A/B testing capability helps you determine the most effective cloaked URL that generates the highest click-through rates (CTR), enabling you to optimize your affiliate marketing efforts.
2. Shorten Link Service
Easy Affiliate Links provides a convenient option to create simple and concise tracking links for your destination URLs. This feature allows you to generate shortened links that are easier to share and remember, enhancing user experience and increasing the likelihood of clicks.
3. UGC and Sponsored Attribute Support
The plugin supports user-generated content (UGC) and sponsored attributes. This functionality enables you to accommodate paid links and properly tag user-generated links within your website content, such as those found in the comment section.
Pricing
Free
4. Lasso
Lasso is a highly regarded affiliate marketing plugin exclusively developed for WordPress users. It offers a comprehensive range of features that empower bloggers and website owners in their affiliate marketing efforts. With Lasso, users can easily search for affiliate products across various networks, create custom link displays that align with their website’s branding, and efficiently track clicks and conversions.
The plugin’s primary aim is to streamline the process of adding and managing affiliate links, allowing users to dedicate their time and energy to creating valuable content and expanding their audience. Lasso’s user-friendly interface and advanced functionality make it a go-to choice for WordPress users who seek to optimize their affiliate marketing strategies.
Key Features
1. Affiliate Product Search
Lasso provides an efficient product search tool that enables users to discover affiliate products across various networks. With this feature, users can easily find relevant products to promote on their websites from networks like Amazon Associates, ShareASale, Commission Junction, and more.
2. Custom Link Displays
Lasso offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that simplifies the creation of custom link displays, ensuring they seamlessly align with a user’s website branding. Users can choose from various display options, including buttons, text links, images, or product boxes. Furthermore, Lasso allows users to customize these displays’ colours, fonts, and sizes, enabling them to create a cohesive and visually appealing design that matches their website’s aesthetic.
3. Click Tracking and Analytics
Lasso offers detailed reporting and analytics for tracking clicks, conversions, and revenue from affiliate links. Users can view click and conversion rates by product, network, or website page. This data helps optimize affiliate marketing strategies and identify top-performing products.
4. Link Management
Lasso provides a user-friendly and efficient link management tool that enables users to organize and categorize their affiliate links. With the plugin’s intuitive dashboard, users can easily add, edit, and delete links, allowing for seamless management of their affiliate marketing efforts.
One notable feature of Lasso is the ability to update all links on a page or post with just one click. This time-saving functionality ensures that users can efficiently maintain and update their affiliate links across their websites.
Pricing
| Plans | Essential | Advanced | Portfolio |
| Price | $29/month | $74/month | $299/month |
5. EasyAzon
EasyAzon is a WordPress plugin designed to simplify the creation of Amazon affiliate links directly within the WordPress post editor. It eliminates the need for manual steps on the Amazon website and saves time for marketers and influencers. The plugin offers automated affiliate link cloaking, displays product information on hover, and provides an increased cookie length for potential commissions. Additionally, EasyAzon automatically localizes the links based on the visitor’s country, enhancing the user experience. Overall, EasyAzon is a valuable tool for WordPress users looking to streamline the integration of Amazon affiliate links into their websites.
Key Features
1. Amazon Associates Page
The Amazon Associates program allows marketers, web designers, and sellers to earn money by promoting products on Amazon’s e-commerce platform. The Associates’ page provides users with their unique tracking ID, which is essential for tracking commissions. EasyAzon’s pro version allows users to add multiple tracking IDs, enabling them to optimize revenue from Amazon affiliate marketing across different countries. Installing EasyAzon on all websites can help maximize returns from the program. By utilizing the Amazon Associates program and EasyAzon, marketers can generate revenue by advertising products from Amazon.
2. Multiple styles of Links
EasyAzon allows users to create Amazon affiliate links directly from the WordPress Dashboard, providing convenience and saving time. The plugin offers various linking options, including text links, call-to-action button links, and information block links. Users have the flexibility to customize and add new links as desired, tailoring them to individual reviews or setting defaults in the WordPress dashboard. With EasyAzon, users can optimize their affiliate marketing strategy and increase the chances of driving more affiliate traffic.
3. Add to Cart Function
EasyAzon allows you to convert affiliate links into “add to cart” functions, allowing customers to add items to their cart with a single click easily. This feature provides a three-month cookie duration, meaning that if the same visitor makes a purchase within the next 90 days, you will receive a commission. It’s important to note that the “add to cart” function only results in a commission if the purchase is completed within 24 hours. EasyAzon provides the flexibility to enable or disable this function for individual links or the entire site, optimizing your affiliate marketing strategy.
4. Pop-ups
EasyAzon includes a feature that enables pop-ups to appear when visitors hover over product or service links. This functionality helps grab attention, provide additional information, increase click-through rates, and potentially lead to higher commissions.
Pricing
Free
Must Check: As you’re currently exploring affiliate link clocking tools, I recommend checking out our recent blog. There, we’ve listed some of the top AI affiliate tools. Do have a look.
6. URL Shortener
URL Shortener is a marketer-oriented tool that helps create shareable links for social media, email, and word-of-mouth marketing. It offers fast and seamless redirection of shortened links, ensuring a smooth user experience. Additionally, the tool helps hide affiliate links, ensuring proper credit for purchases made through your website. URL Shortener is a valuable resource for marketers looking to optimize their link sharing and protect their affiliate credits.
Key Features
1. Create Short Links
URL Shortener enables the creation of short links that are easily memorable for visitors and can be shared on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
2. Fully Customizable
The tool offers full customization options, allowing you to customize your short links to align with your brand and make them memorable.
3. Track Clicks
Click tracking functionality allows you to monitor the number of clicks on each short link, helping you identify which links are generating more affiliate income.
4. Organize Short Links in Categories
Organizing short links into categories provides a convenient way to keep them organized and quickly locate the ones you need.
5. Redirect With 301/302/307 Headers
URL Shortener supports different redirect options, including 301, 302, and 307 headers, ensuring visitors are redirected effectively and maintaining visitor engagement.
6. Add Links Using Shortcodes
Using shortcodes, you can quickly add links anywhere on your site with just a small snippet of code, making URL Shortener a convenient and efficient tool.
Pricing
Free
Conclusion
When it comes to affiliate link cloaking, there are several excellent plugins available. ThirstyAffiliates and Pretty Links offer powerful features for managing and cloaking affiliate links, while Easy Affiliate Links provides a user-friendly experience. Lasso stands out with its advanced reporting and analytics capabilities. Choose the plugin that best suits your needs to enhance your affiliate marketing efforts and optimize your revenue.
FAQs
Affiliate link cloaking is the practice of disguising an affiliate link by redirecting it to a different URL. This can be done for a variety of reasons, such as to make the link more visually appealing, to track clicks more accurately, or to hide the affiliate ID.
Yes, you can cloak an affiliate link. Cloaking is the practice of disguising an affiliate link by redirecting it to a different URL. This can be done for a variety of reasons, such as to make the link more visually appealing, to track clicks more accurately, or to hide the affiliate ID.
Some of the best affiliate link-cloaking plugins are
1. ThirstyAffiliates
2. PrettyLinks
3. Easy Affiliate links
4. Lasso
5. EasyAzon
6. URL Shortener
Yes. Amazon does allow link cloaking.
