Time-saving Affiliate Hack

No One Does This—But You Should!

As an influencer, you know how important affiliate links are. So here’s a time-saving tip that you’ve not heard of! And the best part? You’ll never have to update all your links across your blog, newsletters, or social media ever again.

First – is it worth it?

Why Make Your Affiliate Links Memorable?

The primary reason I do this and recommend you do it, is to Save Time. Every time an affiliate link changes (they switch affiliate partners or providers) you have to find every instance of that link to update your referral link. With this hack, you will never have to do that again! It will only take ONE update to update any affiliate at all.

The second reason is that the links are then Easy to Remember: Instead of complicated strings of characters, you can create short, memorable links with keywords. Convinced? Let’s get into it.

Supplies You’ll Need

What You’ll Need:

• Redirection plugin: There are plenty of options, but we use and recommend Redirection by Godley.
• Your affiliate links: Keep a list of the long urls handy
• A chosen ‘folder’ for your links: This is a personal preference, but I use “aff.” Other good options are “go” or “ref.”

How to Set Up Easy-Affiliate Links

We’re going to use the same process that happens when you update a blog post.

When that post is changed from last year to this year and the link is changed – there is a redirect that is created. This helps anyone with that post bookmarked (on Pinterest?) to find the new and updated post.

A redirection is a simple process where we enter the old link and the new link into the system. And then the user is forwarded from old link to the new link. Here’s a diagram to explain:

If you’ve ever used Yoast SEO Premium, you’ve probably seen that little popup asking if you want to redirect users when you change a post’s URL. All you do is click “OK,” and you’re good to go! Yoast SEO creates the redirect for you within the plugin.

Here’s how you can use this same feature for affiliate links.

Step-by-Step Tutorial for Redirection

Step 1: Naming Convention

Pick a memorable name for each affiliate product you’re promoting. For example, I’m an affiliate for ConvertKit, so I’ve chosen “convertkit” as my keyword. The link I share looks like this: `https://wpbarista.com/aff/convertkit`

Notice how I added `/aff/` into the URL? This does nothing at all except for keeping them organized but more than that, it is an obvious affiliate link and is easily searchable. I highly recommend choosing a /word/ that will work for you.

Note: remember to mark all affiliate links as no-follow for SEO purposes (it tells search engines not to follow the link).

This method doesn’t work for Amazon affiliate links. Also, with platforms like LTK (LIKEtoKNOW.it), this step isn’t necessary.

Step 2: Add a Redirection

Find the redirection plugin (after installation) in Tools > Redirection.

On the first screen, enter your Source URL (do not include yoursite.com/). In this example, I’ll use my easy-affiliate link for convertkit.

Source URL: /aff/convertkit

In the Target URL field, this is where you place the affiliate link that is impossible to remember.

Target URL: https://partners.convertkit.com/blahblahblah

It should look like this:

Voila!

Now you can share your short, memorable link everywhere—on your blog, in your newsletter, or even verbally at events:

“Hey, just go to wpbarista.com/aff/convertkit!”

Behind the scenes, your redirect is working its magic, and your visitors will be seamlessly taken to the affiliate’s site. The tracking works perfectly, so you’ll still get credit for any clicks and purchases.

Give it a try! With this simple trick, you’ll be the one influencer who’s not only using affiliate links but making them work harder for you. And the best part? No more digging through your site to update dozens of links when one changes!