URL Shorteners
First let’s explain what a link shortener is and why you might need this.
Sometimes you would like to email a link to an article or web site to somebody but then the link is so long that it gets cut off in the email, or it just looks confusing. You can then use a link shortener web site to make the long link shorter. These web sites are very easy to use. Most of them has a field where you can enter the long URL, hit the “shorten” button and it will spit out a shortened version of your long URL.
Here are some uses for this great free service:
1. You can shorten a link:
Look at the link below as an example:
http://www.pietpetoors.com/blog/where-to-start-making-money-on-the-internet/
You can shorten that same URL for free to look like this:
You can click above links and see that both go to the same page.
2. You can also use it to hide an affiliate link:
Some affiliate links just looks ugly on your site.
Instead of using http://affiliates.trafficsynergy.com/z/1047451/CD3105/
you can be using http://tinyurl.com/2vszgxh
3. You can make sure the affiliate link works:
Many web site, especially Free Classified web site will strip the value in your affiliate link after the ?= . If you use a link like http://www.createyourownwebsite.co.za/?ref=Elmi the Free Classified web site might strip the values and only use http://www.createyourownwebsite.co.za/?ref=
This will result in loss of income because the affiliate software on the other end will not know who referred the client. By using URL shortening services you can change http://www.createyourownwebsite.co.za/?ref=Elmi to http://snipurl.com/vzlvm . Note that the shortened versions nether contain a ? or =
4. You can hide your email address from spammers
I am not sure if all URL shorteners offer this feature, but I see some of them claim that you can hide your email address from spammers to prevent spam.
Below is a list of some of the most popular URL shorteners.
You can use just about anyone. Try them and see which one works best for you.
- http://www.simurl.com/
- http://www.snipurl.com/
- http://www.u.nu/
- http://tinyurl.com/
- http://www.doiop.com/
- http://tiny.cc/
- http://www.myfasturl.com/
- http://www.alturl.com/
- http://www.tiddlyurl.com/
- http://www.ye-s.com/
- http://www.is.gd/
- http://w3tag.com/
- http://www.a.gd/
- http://www.ittly.com/
On your WordPress blog you can of course also use one of the following plugins which will automatically create a shortened link on your blog, suing your own domain:
