How to Keep Affiliate Links Organized with Pretty Links

Pretty Links is a popular link shortener plugin for WordPress. It’s one of the first plugins I install on most of the websites I build, and I have been using it for years.

I highly recommend that you install it as soon as you start monetizing your blog through affiliate marketing so that you keep all of your affiliate links organized from day one.

Today, we’re taking a closer look at the plugin’s free version, as it’s what most of us use to begin with.

I will also share some other ways in which Pretty Links can be a helpful tool to use in your blogging business because – spoiler alert – you can use it for a lot more than just affiliates!

This post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a commission (at no extra cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking one of those. I only recommend resources I use and love! Read my full disclosure.

What does the Pretty Links plugin for WordPress do?

Essentially, Pretty Links transforms your long and ugly affiliate links into short URLs that are easy to remember and branded with your website’s name.

While you can use Pretty Links for more than just affiliate links, that’s the most common use case for most bloggers and content creators.

As you may well know, when you join an affiliate program, you’ll get a trackable link that is often long, complex, and difficult to remember.

It might look like this: https://companyname.com/affiliateID=?XYZ12345.

With the help of Pretty Links, you can grab that and create a cloaked link that looks like this instead: https://blogname.com/companyname.

It looks and sounds a lot better, doesn’t it?

Why do you need an affiliate link management plugin?

Affiliate Marketing is a great way to generate passive income from the content you produce and start monetizing your blog without too much effort.

You don’t need to create and sell your own products or worry about customer service and other admin tasks related to the products you promote.

One thing you do need is a strategic plan to promote and maintain your affiliate links. That’s where an affiliate link management plugin can help.

Pretty Links (or a similar alternative) will allow you to:

• keep track of all of your referral links,
• update them easily when needed, and
• track your performance as an affiliate marketer.

However, it won’t do the work for you…

To take the best of what Pretty Links helps you do and start monetizing your blog through affiliate marketing, you need to take action.

1. You need to insert affiliate links in the right places and show them to the right people

This means you should have a content strategy that is designed to help you increase affiliate sales and clicks.

Ideally, as an affiliate marketer, you also want to:

• monitor your click-through rate
• understand which links are most clicked on by your target audience
• compare those clicks with the actual conversions you get from each brand or product

This information will help you optimize your content, strategy, and link placements to increase conversions and make more money online.

Pretty Links helps because it shows you the click data for each of your links directly in the plugin’s dashboard.

While the free version’s stats are limited, they will still give you a general idea of where you stand with your affiliate marketing efforts.

2. You need an easy way to monitor and manage the affiliate URLs you get from each of your affiliate partners 

Over time, you’ll likely apply to be an affiliate of several different companies and promote dozens of products or services. More often than not, these companies will give you a new link for each of those.

If any of those affiliate URLs change, you’ll have to update them on your website, or else you’ll stop getting credit for your promotional efforts.

Without a link cloaking plugin (also known as an affiliate link management plugin), you’d need to scan your entire website and manually replace each expired link with a new affiliate link.

This is not only tedious but extremely time-consuming.

That’s another great reason to use an affiliate link management plugin such as Pretty Links from early on.

By doing so, you can quickly replace any old links with new ones without going through each piece of old content again.

Now, even if you start with the free plugin (which is what I recommend), I’d still advise you to look at the plugin’s advanced features and pricing on this page.

I always do this from the start because I want to know what to expect and how my user experience can be improved in the future if I decide to upgrade.

Why use Pretty Links?

Before we get started on a quick Pretty Links tutorial, in which I show you exactly how to keep affiliate links organized with this helpful WordPress plugin, I want to briefly discuss why you should consider using a link shortener plugin right now.

If you’re a new blogger, you might think you don’t need to add another plugin to your website just to keep a list of your affiliate URLs. You could simply copy and paste the link you got from the affiliated company into the blog post where it belongs.

I see you! I keep a separate affiliate tracker on a spreadsheet myself. But hear me out!

As your blog grows, so will the list of products, services, and companies you might want to promote.

In just a few months, you might find yourself with a long list of dozens (if not hundreds) of affiliate links to manage.

When that time comes, I am sure you’ll wish you had installed an affiliate link management tool on your website from day one…

Here’s why using Pretty Links from the very start of your blogging journey will save you time and energy down the line:

Affiliate links can change

As mentioned, companies will occasionally give you new links and ask you to update any instances of your old referral link.

This might be because they changed the software they were using to manage their affiliate program, for example.

A few years ago, I was promoting a printing company based in the US.

I used to sell editable invitations for weddings and other events, and I advised my US-based clients (who were my largest market for that project) to print their invitations with this online print shop once they were done editing.

I would offer them a 10% discount code and receive a 10% cut of the client’s spending. It was a win-win for both myself and the client, and the company was growing its audience, too.

But one day, I received an email with my new referral link, telling me to update it in all places.

I had the old link all over my website, my Etsy shop, my client instructions documentation, each product’s descriptions, and automated emails… It was the only affiliate program I was promoting in that business, and those links were EVERYWHERE!

It took me days to review everything I had written and designed to change that link.

If I were using Pretty Links at the time, the process would have taken less than a minute, and I’d be done.

You can share your Pretty Link even if you aren’t an affiliate yet

This has been huge for me too! 

Since that experience with the print shop, I have used Pretty Links for EVERYTHING.

If I mention a product, service, or brand in a blog post, it will be linked to a Pretty Link 99% of the time, even if I am not an affiliate. 

If I decide to apply for their affiliate program one day, once I am approved, I will only have to change my Pretty Link target URL. All the content that refers to that specific program will be instantly updated to use my commission tracking link instead of a regular one. It’s that simple!

Or it could be a company that I actually love and would recommend anyway, but that doesn’t run an affiliate program. 

Well, they might start one later on, right? You never know.

If you link all your blog posts to the products, services, or brands that you recommend using Pretty Links from the start, you don’t need to go back, read, and edit every published post after you’ve been approved into an affiliate program. 

Your Pretty Link will already be created, and you only need to get to one place to actually update the target URL at any point. 

Once you’ve done that, your readers will click on your affiliate link instead of the company’s main URL you originally linked to. 

Essentially, by following this advice, you have the potential to start making money from the traffic your website gets as soon as you’ve been approved for a new program.

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3 Smart ways to use Pretty Links other than just for affiliate links

Here are other ways in which Pretty Links can be helpful:

1. Linking to a podcast’s show notes or shortening any link that is too long to be shared on audio

If you are a podcast listener, you’ve probably noticed most people saying something like “find the show notes at www.mywebsite.com/185” (185 being the episode’s number in this case). Does this ring a bell?

Well, if it does, you might also have noticed that once you visit that link, it changes to something like www.mywebsite.com/seo-title.

That’s because those show notes are actually blog posts where the podcast host is repurposing the episode’s content into their blog. And, as a blogger, you know how important SEO is for website traffic.

A slug that reads “185” isn’t as good as a slug with the actual SEO title of that blog post. However, it would be challenging to share an entire URL on audio and actually get visitors to the website.

Sharing the short version of the URL is much simpler!

And, you guessed it, it’s all possible thanks to URL shorteners like Pretty Links. The process of creating those is the same as the process for creating pretty affiliate links.

The only change is that the target URL is within your website. Plus, of course, it wouldn’t have the “sponsored” rel-tag attached… don’t forget to play with those as needed! We’ll look at rel-tags further down in this post.

As a blogger, you might want to use Pretty Links to shorten the URL of other pages, too.

For example, if you have a freebie on a landing page with the slug www.website.com/the-lead-mangnets-name, you might want to make it available at www.website.com/freebie as well.

This is convenient for you and your readers, and, as you see, it’s easy to achieve!

2. Linking to brands, products, or services before you start applying to be an affiliate

As mentioned above, I do this frequently! 

It might be that the company doesn’t actually have an affiliate program or simply that I don’t have the time to fill out an application right away.

Or I may want to have some relevant content already published before applying. 

In some cases, it can be beneficial for whoever reviews an affiliate application to see that you’re already promoting their company. It makes it a no-brainer to get you in!

While I don’t think it is necessary to wait, and I actually encourage you to apply for affiliate programs as soon as your website is set up, on some occasions, this may be a strategic decision on your part.

What Pretty Links does for you is make your life easier once you’re ready to update those links!

If you’re new to affiliate marketing networks, read these helpful articles next:
– Make money with ShareASale (for all blogging niches)
– Make money with Travelpayouts (mostly for travel bloggers, but other niches can benefit too – I have included a special bonus of $25 for you ;))

3. Pretty Links makes it easy for you to remember your links and be able to share them on the go

Another benefit of using Pretty Links, whether for affiliate links, internal pages on your website, or other external URLs, is that it makes it easy to share them.

You might be on a phone call or out and about without access to your computer or WordPress site.

Using Pretty Links saves you the hassle of checking your notes or spreadsheets because you’ll be more likely to remember your Pretty Link off the top of your head.

Let’s take a look at how to use Pretty Links then, shall we?

Pretty Links Tutorial for WordPress website owners

Step 1: Installing Pretty Links

From your self-hosted WordPress dashboard, head over to “Plugins” and click “Add New Plugin”. From there, search for “Pretty Links”, click “Install Now” and “Activate” it.

Step 2: Plugin Configuration

Head to “Options” and then “Links”.

Here, you’ll want to update the redirection type to 301 (Permanent).

This will use 301 redirects as default for all the new Pretty Links that you create. 

I like to tweak these settings from the start, but you can also change the redirect type individually for each link when needed.

Additionally, in this section, I like to make sure that all links are marked as nofollow and sponsored. This essentially tells Google not to pass link-juice to those pages (nofollow rel-tag) and that you have partnered with the companies you’re referring to and will benefit from readers’ clicks (sponsored rel-tag).

Step 3: Tracking

Next up, “Reporting” (still under the “Options” settings).

From this section, you can select a tracking style for Pretty Links. This will give more or less stats, based on your choices.

Since I am still using the free version of Pretty Links, the “Reports” tab isn’t available for me. All I do is check the number of clicks from the main dashboard and, therefore, I keep the tracking style either at “Normal Tracking” or “Simple Click Count Tracking (less stats / faster performance)” and I also “Auto-Trim Clicks”.

Finally, I exclude my own IP address from the click count so that I can understand what’s working best. My clicks are not considered toward the total number of clicks shown on the dashboard.

Each of these options will have a tooltip that you can open for more information so you can easily decide how to set it all up for yourself.

As always, I am sharing what’s been working for me, and you’re free to tweak things to your liking. 

Step 4: Using Pretty Links

It’s time to create your first Pretty Link… woohoo!

Okay, the first thing is to head over to “Pretty Links” and from the main dashboard you’ll click on “Add New”.

From this point forward, you’ll mostly only work from the “Basic” sub-tab because we’ve already set it all up.

Here’s how you create links:

• Add a title (this is internal, for you to recognize and search for each link on your Pretty Links list)
• The redirection type, as explained above, will automatically be set to “301 (Permanent)” and you might occasionally change it to “307 (Temporary)” when you plan to update the target link regularly.
• Next to “Target URL” you’ll paste the entire link that has been given to you (that’s your unique affiliate link, which is normally long and ugly).
• And then you’ll choose the Pretty Link slug, which will look like the link of any other page on your website. Here, you’ll type the name of the company or product that you are promoting. That’s how you’ll get a new link that looks like this: https://blogname.com/companyname.
• Adding “Notes” is optional, but that’s where you can keep track of any additional information such as the commission you’ve negotiated or the URL for the affiliate program’s dashboard for instance, if you aren’t tracking those elsewhere. This section is only for you, and your readers will not see those details.

Step 5: Pretty Links Dashboard

We’re done, and you’re now ready to start tracking and managing your affiliate links!

However, I still wanted to share my own Pretty Links dashboard and tell you how you can keep it clean and organized.

By default, the Pretty Links table will show you a few PRO features: Categories, Tags, and Keywords. 

If you’re on the free version of Pretty Links and want to make your table look like mine, simply click on “Screen Options” in the top-right corner of your WordPress Dashboard and tweak the setting to adjust the way your Pretty Links are presented.

On my own Pretty Links table, as per the image above, I like to see the following:

• The link title I’ve chosen;
• The target URL so that I can quickly check if it’s still accurate;
• The “Clicks” column, which shows me the number of clicks and the number of unique users who clicked on each specific link for the last 90 days;
• The published date; and
• The actual Pretty Link slug, which also includes a button that you can use to copy the entire link to your clipboard.

Link Redirects Settings

You’ll normally want to set “301 (Permanent)” from the “Redirection” drop-down. This essentially means that the link you’re creating should always redirect to the “Target URL” and you don’t intend to change it. 

Using a 301 redirect will simply speed up things for your readers because, once they click your pretty link, the result will be cached in their browser caching.

I only recommend using a “307 (temporary)” redirect if you’ll be updating the target link sporadically, such as for a product that runs a lot of seasonal sales, or for an event or festival, for example. And, of course, if you aren’t an affiliate yet, this is the rel-tag you’ll use to start as well.

What’s the best Pretty Links alternative?

A popular Pretty Links alternative is the Thirsty Affiliates plugin, which also works great. 

I use Pretty Links on my business website and Thirsty Affiliates on my blog. I’ve decided to go this route because, among other features, the free version of Thirsty Affiliates gives me the ability to categorize each of the referral URLs I use.

Since on the blog, I create more affiliate content, this feature helps me sort through the list and grab the right links faster.

While both plugins are easy to set up and use, I believe that Pretty Links is a lot easier for beginners to configure and get started with. However, Thirsty Affiliates does allow for a little more customization.

Both plugins keep a record of link clicks, and their pricing plans are very similar should you want to take it a step further and upgrade to a paid plan in the future.

The paid plans do include a lot more features, making it easier to collect data and track affiliate links.

The features I’d be most interested in when the time comes are the detailed reports and the automatic keyword linking.

Keeping affiliate links organized with Pretty Links is easy!

This wraps up this Pretty Links article, and I hope it helps you keep your affiliate links organized from the very early days of your blogging journey and for years to come.

As you’ve seen above, the free version of the Pretty Links plugin has everything you need to start, but if you want to get fancy, you can explore all the features included in its premium packages here.

As I was saying, one of my favorite premium features is the auto-linking of keywords. With that, you won’t even need to think about adding affiliate links to your posts anymore since that process will be automated by the plugin. This feature alone can be a huge time saver if you’ve gotten serious about producing lots of affiliate marketing content for your blog. 

With a Pretty Links pro license, you can also tag each link with categories and tags, just like you do for blog posts. This can be helpful to keep things even more organized if you do intend to have a lot.

The best part is that the plugin will ultimately pay for itself by helping you generate and publish monetizable content faster.

Let me know in the comments section below if you’ll try Pretty Links or, if you’re using it already, share other ways in which you’re using it besides affiliate link management!

Important: keep your website legally compliant

​While this is a Pretty Links tutorial, I didn’t want to end this post without this important reminder. 

If you’re going to promote any affiliate products or services on your website or blog, keep it legal!

There are international rules that you need to follow to promote third-party companies and any affiliate partners.

Two crucial changes you need to implement on your website before promoting any sponsored or promotional content are:

1. Adding a disclosure statement to every page or post that has affiliate links. This must be easy to find and placed above any of your affiliate links.
2. Adding an Affiliate Disclosures page. I recommend purchasing a full legal bundle. But if you already have all other legal pages, you can purchase an Affiliate Disclosure template separately.

Here are my most trusted resources for bloggers: 

Blogging For New Bloggers

The legal shop by Lucrezia offers a standalone (and affordable) Affiliate Disclosures template.

This offer includes:

• the legal wording you need to use to be compliant when you earn from affiliate sales
• training on how to set up your sponsored and nofollow links correctly to avoid SEO penalties
• a useful Amazon Associates checklist
• access to Lucrezia and Marina’s active community on Facebook

The Legal Shop by A Self Guru

Besides the above, the legal shop by Amira, also offers plenty of standalone options, including a Disclaimers Template.

While this option has a higher price tag, it comes with several bonuses that you will need at one point or another:

• A specific disclaimer tailored to your blogging niche;
• Affiliate and third-party links disclosure to help you comply with the FTC’s requirements;
• Earning Disclaimer, which is important to have if you share blogging income reports with our readers;
• Testimonials Disclaimer, to use if you publish customer’s testimonials publicly;
• Product Reviews Disclaimer, in case you publish review-type posts on your blog;
• Sponsored Posts Disclaimer if you are getting paid to create sponsored articles on your blog;
• Fair Use Disclaimer to prevent copyright violations;
• Tons of limitations of legal liability language to protect and safeguard your blogging business from potential lawsuits.

I can’t stress enough the importance of complying with the law.

As a solopreneur or small business owner, the last thing you need is an expensive legal dispute.

So if you’re just getting started, try to cover yourself and consider all aspects of blogging. It’s so much more than just writing!

To learn more about affiliate marketing and get started with the right strategies, also go ahead and download this free e-book that my blogging friend Michelle has put together for us.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.