Link Redirection and Count
Every book, eBook, blog and podcast I have read, mentions the same thing:
You got to be able to account for your incoming and outgoing traffic.
When setting up blog you must be able to track your statistics (not only the people coming in, but also which links within the site are more effective than others. This topic is also very much linked to affiliate marketing as most of the links that are used for that purpose are cumbersome and long… What I need is a URL shrinking or URL Shortener / manager within my WordPress blog. My requirements are simple:
- Easy to use with the management interface integrated into the administration site. (No external services needed at this time)
- Utilize the base blog URL without much more..
(i.e. yourblog.com/abcd123 or yourblog.com/new-york-times) - Ability to not only create generic “slugs” but also ability to create custom ones that are easy to modify.
- Potential Futures features: Enter the a set of keywords into the admin, and the link you want to direct them too. The plug-in will automatically highlight the keyword text and put the link there. ( I do need to think more about how annoying this *could* be!)
After some research on URL shrinking, masking affiliate marketing links and how was I going to handle this within the site, I decided to go with Pretty Link Lite for the moment. It has a Pro version, which is very tempting, but until I do not get some traffic rolling, I can use it to keep tracks of the click through rations on links.
This great plugin. which should be in the must have of every blogger, met my initial requirements and then some more… I encourage to trying the tool.
Update 1: After using it a bit more, I liked it so much, that I went ahead and purchase it for another site of mine, and became an affiliate 
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