Over the past two months I have been using Bit.ly to shorten, cloak and track my links and have been very satisfied with their service. Bit.ly is a website that provides a free service that allows anyone to shorten their long URL’s and track the number of clicks and the origins (country) of the people clicking on your bitly links.
Here is why I am happy with their service and recommend you to give it a try:
It’s free
creates really short links
cloaks your affiliate and other private links
shows you the number of times your links have been clicked on and from where
shows you the origins of the visitor clicking on your links
shows you if other people have also cloaked the same URL
add the bookmarklet to your browser and easily shorten any page quickly
a few more goodies that you will notice when you give the service a try
I use Bit.ly several times a day to shorten and cloak my links to stuff I recommend on Twitter. The service creates really short links that is really helpful when using Twitter. I can also easily view the number of people clicking on my links to view the sites I recommend. Such information is important for me to know which ads and what topics are of interest to my readers. Knowing the amount of clicks I get on any particular ad or topic tells me how hot the topic is to my readers. I am surprised to find out that the top 3 countries of origins to my clicks are from the United States, Israel and Canada. Yup, Israel, figure that?
Alternatively, I am also still using my own url shrinker service Provideme.info, TinyUrl.com and ViralUrl.com. They are all excellent url shortening services and have their advantages. See what works best for you and use that.
I have just launched a new site that provides URL shrinking and cloaking service for free. The site is called ProvideMe.Info.
Just type in your long URL, type an extension you would like to use with the URL (optional) and press GO. The page will then automatically generate a new shorter link for you that will redirect to your original URL.
The site currently only has the script installed and there are no other links or advertisement displayed. It looks neat and clean and that is how I like it. I might be adding an advertisement or two in the future.
Another similar service that is very popular and has been online for a long time is TinyUrl.com.
Another advantage of using ProvideMe is that it is brand new and you can still get any URL extension as they are still available.
However, these two above mentioned services will not track the number of clicks your links get. Another service called ViralUrl provides URL shortening/cloaking service and also tracks the number of clicks your links receive. This is also a free service but they will put a small ad bar on every redirected pages.
Tracking the number of clicks your links get is a great way to test out ads and sites that have visitors interested in your offers. You can create a unique redirect extension for each site and track the number of clicks each link get to learn which sites are referring more traffic to your URLs.
Many auto responder services such as Aweber and Norabots also provide link cloaking, shortening and click tracking services without an ad bar but these services require monthly fees.
Similarly, you can use php or java scripts to do all these functions with your own domain. You can create redirect/cloaking pages for each link and upload them to your server. There are definitely more options and advantages to using this method such as full cloaking, customized page titles and much more. I will leave this topic for some other time.
URL shortening does have its benefits, no matter which service you choose to use. Leave a comment below and let me know if you are using any of the above methods to shorten, cloak or redirect your links and which ones are working for you.
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Over the past two months I have been using Bit.ly to shorten, cloak and track my links and have been very satisfied with their service. Bit.ly is a website that provides a free service that allows anyone to shorten their long URL’s and track the number of clicks and the origins (country) of the people clicking on your bitly links.![[blinklist]](http://onlinemarketinghub.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/blinklist.png)
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