Linkshiftr – Like Bit.ly With Brains

URL Shorteners have become ubiquitous in today’s social-media-crazed internet world. Marketers have even begun using services such as bit.ly to cloak their affiliate links and make them more attractive. I recently discovered a new service that is actually directed at marketers, it’s called Linkshiftr. It has a pretty cool set of tools that you can use to experiment with your links, almost like a Prosper202 lite. Here are some of the features:linkshiftr

  • Variable Passing – You can pass variables dynamically to your destination URLs. This will be just the ticket for marketers looking to add SubIDs or dynamic PHP variables (like keywords) onto their links. You can pass as many variables as you would like.
  • Weighted Link Rotator – This is something that PPV marketers especially will like. You can add multiple URLs, and then choose how you want to have them rotated. For example, if you want Offer A to be shown 70% of the time, Offer B to be shown 20% of the time, and Offer C to be shown 10% of the time, this can handle it for you in a breeze.
  • Conversion Tracking – Here is where Linkshiftr really sets itself apart from the competition. Services like bit.ly allow you to see how many clicks your links have gotten, but to my knowledge only Linkshiftr lets you place a pixel and do conversion tracking. This could be extremely useful for marketers that are just setting up a quick and dirty campaign to test an offer before going into Prosper202, creating a landing page and a full blown campaign.

You can try out Linkshiftr for free by signing up for an account here, but if you want to use the Conversion Tracking feature you will have to sign up for a Pro account for $9.99 per month. The free account has all the other features though, so it’s definitely still useful.

Has anybody else tried this out yet? What are your thoughts?