Question: How do you manage your affiliate links on WordPress? I figured there is a plugin or combination of plugins that together allow you to manage all your links in one place, redirect to the local Amazon site (Amazon.co.uk, or whatever country the user is in), decloak redirects, etc.
Answer
There are a few plugins that allow you to manage your affiliate links. Pretty Links and Thirsty Affiliates are two of the most popular. I personally use the Thirsty Affiliates plugin.
The free version lets you do link cloaking, so for example; your link would be something like:
https://www.bloggingmechanic.com/go/wealthyaffiliate/
rather than:
https://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/a_aid/ce38d01c/data1/website
If you want to do Geo-mapping (redirecting to different websites or pages based on the visitor’s location), then you’d need to upgrade to the paid version of the plugin.
Geo-mapping redirects are particularly useful because some of the larger vendors have different online stores for specific countries and separate affiliate programs to match.
You mentioned Amazon, so it’s best to mention that they expressly forbid link cloaking. They want to see the raw URL used on the page, not hidden behind any redirects/cloaked URLs. I wouldn’t risk doing otherwise.
Amazon also provides a feature called OneLink that lets you link international affiliate accounts with the US-based program.
Unfortunately, this does not apply to all international accounts.
At the time of writing, Australian Amazon affiliate accounts (for example) cannot connect with OneLink, although I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before all international accounts can be tied together.
