Cloaked links beside the ads you sell

What Pretty Links is and who it suits

Pretty Links turns a long URL into a short branded link on your own domain. Its wordpress.org listing describes a free plugin with 301, 302 and 307 redirects, click and unique-click tracking, bot filtering, privacy controls and CSV import and export. A paid Pro tier adds more.

Its own site is aimed at affiliate marketers, bloggers and podcasters who share links in many places. It talks about keeping the link in WordPress and using it on blogs, in emails, in podcasts and on social profiles.

We read its site and its listing before writing this page. Features below are the vendor’s own wording. Where something is not listed on those pages, we say it was not listed when we checked.

The real difference is where the link lives

A link shortener cares about the link wherever it travels. You might put a Pretty Link in an email, a show note or a bio. The tool is built around that, with QR codes, link-in-bio pages and checkout links listed on its site.

WB Ad Manager cares about the link inside your content and next to your ads. A cloaked link is a branded URL on your domain, and the plugin sits alongside banners, AdSense, scheduling and sponsor sales. If most of your links are affiliate links inside posts, you do not need the wider toolkit. If you share links in many other places, you may.

Think about your own mix before deciding. Count the links you share inside posts, then the links you share anywhere else. If the second number is larger, a shortener built for it will save you time. If the first is larger and you also run ads, one plugin is easier to keep healthy.

What we do not do

• No QR code generator and no link-in-bio pages.
• No rotation or split testing between destinations for a link.
• No referrer detail on clicks in the free plugin.
• No automatic nofollow sponsored, and no automatic disclosure.
• No importer built for Pretty Links, only a general CSV import in Pro.
• No product display boxes and no payment links.

Creating, cloaking and tracking a link, step by step

These steps use the free plugin. Links have their own top-level menu, with All Links, Categories and Partnerships.

1. Open Links, then Add New Link, and give the link a private name.
2. Paste the destination URL with your affiliate parameters. Visitors reach it only after the click.
3. Leave the slug empty to generate one, or write your own. The prefix before it is go by default, and you can change it in Settings.
4. Choose a category, or leave it blank.
5. Keep cloaking on, and tick sponsored. Nofollow is already ticked on new links.
6. Pick a redirect type (the default is a temporary 307, and 301 or 302 can be set per link), add an expiry date if the offer ends, then save.

Redirects and expiry in practice

Pretty Links lists expiring links as a Pro feature. Here an end date is free. When the date passes, the link returns a 404 by default. You can change that in Settings so visitors go to your home page, or to a fallback URL you write in. Nothing redirects them on its own.

An inactive link behaves the same way. It stops redirecting but keeps its click history, which is useful when you pause a programme and plan to switch it back on.

What is free and what is Pro for links

• Free: branded links, redirect choice, categories, expiry dates, inactive status, shortcodes and a click count per link.
• Free: a partnership inquiry form for sponsors who want to approach you.
• Pro: keyword auto-linking, which turns a chosen phrase into a cloaked link across your posts.
• Pro: a link scanner that finds raw affiliate URLs already sitting in your content.
• Pro: a broken-link checker that flags cloaked links whose destination has stopped working.
• Pro: advanced link analytics and a CSV import.

Placing links and counting clicks

Paste the cloaked URL anywhere a link works. A shortcode prints a link with your anchor text, another returns only the URL, and a third lists a whole category. The All Links screen has a sortable Clicks column showing a running count per link. In free, that count is all you get.

Ads, AdSense and selling space on the same site

This is where the two products part ways. Pretty Links, as far as we could see on its own pages, does not list ad placement or ad selling. WB Ad Manager does, and the free plugin has five ad types, including Google AdSense, with more than a dozen placement spots.

When AdSense and a direct sponsor are live in one slot, they share it. Each page view shows one, picked at random and weighted by a priority from 1 to 10, with 5 the default. A direct campaign does not override AdSense. A sponsor at 10 next to AdSense at 1 gets about 91 percent of views.

Scheduling decides whether an ad is in the pool. Before and after a sponsor’s dates, AdSense has the slot alone. The plugin has no fallback logic that swaps in a house ad when something fails.

Selling space directly

The free plugin has a partnership inquiry form so sponsors can approach you instead of using a mailto link. You review inquiries under Links, then Partnerships.

Pro adds the part that scales. Members use an advertiser portal to build campaigns and submit them. You approve or reject each one in a moderation queue before it goes live. Advertisers pay with prepaid credits, topped up through Stripe or PayPal directly, or through WooCommerce, Paid Memberships Pro or MemberPress if you already run one of those.

You still bring the advertisers. There are no insertion orders or invoices in either plugin. The direct sponsor ads use case shows how a small site runs this.

What you can measure

Free shows a click count for each link, Impressions and Clicks columns for ads, and a click-through comparison for ads in one slot. Impressions are counted when the server renders the ad, so fully cached pages undercount. There is no Reports screen in the free plugin.

Pro advanced link analytics records a hashed IP, device type, referring page and country for each click. That tells you which post sends the clicks. Pro also has an Ad Analytics screen with revenue by placement.

Keep the limits of any count in mind. It cannot tell a buyer from a curious reader, and it records bots like anyone else. Use it to compare links against each other, then read your merchant dashboard for what actually earned.

Pretty Links lists more at the free level, including referrer and browser detail, and its Pro tier lists conversion tracking. Be honest about what you need. If you only ever compare two posts, a count is enough. If you run campaigns outside your site, reporting depth matters more.

Disclosure and what you still have to do

Cloaking is not disclosure. A branded link is still an affiliate link, and your readers should be told.

The plugin does not add rel=“nofollow sponsored” automatically and has no global setting that makes it the default. Each link has two checkboxes. Nofollow is ticked for new links and sponsored is not. You write the disclosure line in your own posts. The ad label feature, which says “Advertisement” by default, applies to ads and not to links.

Cloaking also does not hide the destination after the click. It is a standard redirect, so the address bar shows the destination with its parameters. Read what link cloaking is for the limits.

What each costs to run, and where your data goes

Both plugins run on your own hosting, and every cloaked click is a request to your server. Pretty Links lists a turbo mode in Pro for answering link requests before the rest of WordPress loads. We have no equivalent, so a site with very heavy link traffic should test.

On upkeep, both need updates and a current licence for paid features. Our core is free and Pro is a paid yearly licence, shown on the pricing page. Check the vendor’s site for theirs.

Skill-wise, neither needs a developer for everyday use. Both have an admin screen for adding a link, and both expect you to know your way around a redirect type and a rel attribute. If you hire help, the cost is in moving links and checking them, not in the plugin.

On data, the free link counter stores a number and a link ID. Pro link analytics stores a hashed IP and may use an IP geolocation service for the country. Pretty Links lists IP anonymization and a retention window for click data. Decide how long you want any click data to live, whichever plugin you use.

Moving over from Pretty Links

There is no importer built for Pretty Links. Pro has a general CSV importer under Links, with a sample file to download. It needs a header row with name and destination_url columns, and it can also read slug, link type, nofollow, sponsored, description and keywords.

Export your links from Pretty Links, rename the headers to match, and import. There is no column-mapping screen. Duplicate destination URLs are skipped by default. Click totals and expiry dates do not come across.

What the importer does and does not read is worth knowing before you start:

• It reads name, destination URL, slug, link type, nofollow, sponsored, description and keywords columns.
• Missing nofollow means on, missing sponsored means off, and missing redirect type means 307.
• It does not read the other plugin’s database, so nothing moves unless it is in your file.
• It does not carry click totals or expiry dates, and a category only comes across as a numeric ID.

Set your prefix before importing so that branded URLs people already shared still work. Try it on a staging copy first, then check a few links by hand for redirect type and the sponsored box.

Launch checklist

1. Install the free plugin from the Wbcom Designs checkout.
2. Set the link prefix and the inactive-link action in Settings.
3. Create a test link, click it logged out, and check where it lands.
4. Tick sponsored on every affiliate link, and add a disclosure line to your post template.
5. If you are moving, export, rename the headers and import into staging.
6. Place one banner and one AdSense unit to confirm the slot behaves as you expect, and watch click counts for a week before you retire the old plugin.

The rest of the stack

WB Ad Manager is one of several separate plugins from the same team. They run on one WordPress site and one login, and you install, host and update each yourself.

The others are BuddyNext for community, Jetonomy for forums and Q&A, Learnomy for courses, Listora for a directory, WP Career Board for a job board, WP Sell Services for a services marketplace and WB Gamification for points and badges. BuddyX Pro and Reign are themes. For a link-heavy publisher the point is practical: a directory or a forum gives you pages worth selling a sponsor slot against.

We do not claim that any of these share data with the link cloaker. The connections we can state are these. Free ad placements include spots for BuddyPress, bbPress and Jetonomy pages. Pro has a BuddyPress integration that adds advertiser tabs to profiles, posts activity when an ad is approved and sends notifications.

The full stack use case describes how a publisher might combine them.

Other alternatives worth a look

• ThirstyAffiliates is the pick when Amazon tools and product displays matter most.
• Lasso wins when you want product boxes and link alerts, and are happy to connect an account.
• Advanced Ads is a dedicated WordPress ad plugin, and its page sets out when it is the better pick.
• AdRotate is a further ad plugin option with its own comparison page.
• Ad Inserter is compared separately for sites that care about exact code placement.
• All alternatives lists every comparison on this site.

Who should stay with Pretty Links

Stay if links outside your site are the point. Emails, podcast notes, video descriptions and social bios are where a shortener earns its keep, and its QR codes and bio pages are built for that.

Stay if you need referrer data, bot filtering and click retention controls without paying for a tier. Our free plugin keeps a count and nothing more.

Stay if you do not sell or show ads. Without banners, AdSense or sponsors, the ad side of our plugin is more than you need. The link cloaking page lists what the free cloaker covers.

Stay, too, if your library is large and mature. Years of click history and a tidy set of categories are hard to rebuild, and a CSV import will not carry them. A move that costs you that history needs a clear gain, such as retiring a second plugin for ads.