Hide/Cloak Affiliate links in WordPress

Some times as an affiliate Publisher, we may need to hide or redirect the affiliate URL. It’s called link cloaking, link masking or link redirection.
Now one way of doing it easily is by using URL Shortening service like bit.ly or goo.gl . For example go to goo.gl Its Google’s URL shortening service . It asks you to paste your Long URL (The link which one wants to Hide) Click shorten and you are done. The long URL is now 6-7 letter URL Hiding the Affiliate info. Now not only URL Shortening helps hiding the original url and making it short but some URL Shortening websites also offers analytics on you link i.e. how many people clicked etc.
The other way of hiding affiliate link is by redirecting your own blog link to affiliate link. In Word press this can be done easily with the help of WordPress Redirection Plugin

1. Download, install and activate the WordPress Redirection Plugin
2. From your WordPress administrator dashboard, click “Tools” followed by the “Redirection” option on the left panel.
3. In the “Source URL” textbox add your masked URL. This page doesn’t have to be a valid page, for example, you can add http://www.yourdomain.com/AffiliateRedirector which does not exist in reality. In the “Target URL”, add your affiliate link (which you were suppose to hide and takes the visitor to Merchant’s website) and leave the other options as default. Click the “Add Redirection” button to save the changes.

4. Now place this masked URL in any of your blog posts/Banner etc. and the reader will be directed accordingly.