Among the most useful tools to come along recently for online marketers is URL shorteners.

There are actually sites in which you can paste a long, ugly URL in to a form, and also the site will give you a much shorter URL to use in your emails, newsletters and promotions.

Additionally there are scripts that you could install on your server, that allow you to generate your own shortened urls, which is what I prefer, as a result of the great control it gives you.

In-case you are not using the tiny urls, you’re probably losing a lot of sales and traffic. The advantages of using shortened urls typically include:

They enable you could try here to conserve space when posting to micro- blogging platforms such as Twitter, where each of your posts is limited by a mere 140 characters.

They look more professional than long, unwieldy affiliate urls (especially should they have your own domain name in them). Longer urls can wrap to 2 lines within your emails, forcing many readers to copy and paste the pieces of the link before also they can visit a recommended page. Many will not jump though that hoop!

They make it possible for you to log in to a control panel and change where a particular link sends traffic without you having to track down all of the places where you have placed that link and manually swapping them out. This comes in handy in case you are promoting a particular product, and because of whatever reason, you opt to promote a different product in the same category.

Additionally, there are occasions when affiliate programs change the software that power things, forcing you to change your affiliate links for a given product. If you use the right URL shortener, you would merely need to log in to your control panel, click an edit button, change the destination link, and all of your links scattered across cyberspace now STILL point to the place you want them to.

This really is important for ebooks, because once an eBook is in your customers’ hands you can not update those links in the majority of cases. Only ebooks that connect to the internet each time that they’re read (which most of MY customer do not like) allow you to change links in the eBook after it’s distributed.

You will discover literally lots of third-party link shortening services. I’ve used several of them and they work great except that they control YOUR links. Whenever they get any complaints, or simply opt to change their business model, they could kill off all your links instantly.

Premium, third-party URL shortening services also hold you hostage. They charge you a monthly fee for extras, or for the capability to have more than a handful of urls on their own platform. Some charge you extra if you generate more than several thousand clicks – they penalize you for being successful.

If you stop paying for these premium services, they often shut off all your links INSTANTLY. When you have all those links floating around cyberspace (in ebooks, articles, advertisements, press releases, ezine editorials, etc.) you do not want to just kill them off, so you’re STUCK often paying hefty fees, month after month.