As an affiliate marketer, usually we cloak our affiliate links, it called link re-direction. Why do we do this? First to avoid look “salesy” to our audience, 2nd is for shorter URL, easy to remember, insert into our blog articles when need and share in social media; some affiliate marketer also leverage on affiliate tracking software to track their affiliate sales and such tracking software or tools is very expensive, and it is a monthly payment. The 3rd tools I going to introduce it to you is also links cloaking plugin and also an affiliate tracking software for WordPress.
I have tested a few famous link cloaking plugin for WordPress and made a testing for the top 3 I choose.
Top 3 Link Cloaking Plugin For WordPress
1st is Thirsty Affiliate. A plugin to cloak affiliate link in WordPress, when I try to search “affiliate link” in plugin suggestion, it shows the first. This affiliate link cloaking plugin have approximate 30K+ active install, and I am using this at this moment.
2nd is Pretty Link, A link tracking plugin which have 6x more than Thirsty affiliate active install, 200K+ active install. I am using it for my secondary WordPress site just to experience it.
3rd is ClickerVolt, a plugin that not that famous but the best performance I ever test. As you can see, there is only 900+ Active Install and they have only 5 rated. ClickerVolt previously is a paid affiliate tracking plugin for WordPress and thanks to JackySan for open it to the public for FREE since March 23, 2019.
Test Result from GTMetrix
I am using a site name Gtmetrix.com to load 3 cloaking link from Thirsty Affiliate, Pretty Links and ClickerVolt from one of my secondary WordPress sites to Facebook.com. Basically, I just activated 3 different link cloaking plugin for WordPress, put the same destination link (I use facebook.com as testing)
Below is the test result when I use Thirsty Affiliate, it took approximately 1619.8ms to reach Facebook.com
Whereas when I use Pretty Links, it took approximately 1383.6ms to reach Facebook.com
Final test on ClickerVolt, it took only 905.4ms to reach Facebook.com
Who the winner?
I trust your mathematic score; you know who is the winner! Who is the Best link cloaking plugin for WordPress?
Meanwhile, there is another feature in ClickerVolt which offers you faster loading speeds. It’s called “Use Faster Redirect URL” instead of “Use Pretty URL”
Pretty URL will look something like https://www.calvyn.com/keywords (is also easy to remember)
Faster URL will look something like https://www.calvym.com/wp-content/plugins/clickervolt/go.php?s=keywords (You may remember if you want to, but not for me)
When come to test the loading speed for faster URL. it took only 350.2ms to reach Facebook.com
The result was amazing, right?
Apart from being a cloaking link feature, ClickerVolt also serves as a very good affiliate tracking software. If you know some big company such as ClickMagick, Bemob, Volumm, a link tracking or so-called sales conversion tracking features, the charges is monthly basic, and it is not cheap.
A short video for you to get more understand on ClickerVolt. I highly recommend this link cloaking plugin for affiliate marketer who use WordPress to build a funnel page.
