614 – Convert Ugly into Pretty: Tom talks Pretty Links

Episode 614 – Pretty Links
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with Episode 614 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about Pretty Links. This is a free plugin that takes weird looking links, that typically aren't accepted in places you want them to be accepted, and it makes them pretty and gets them accepted where you want them to be accepted. All right. That's what we're going to talk about today. Hope you didn't miss Episode 613. That was a great lesson. On backing off on social media. You're probably wasting your time. Making loads of posts that nobody sees and you're going to learn the best method by if you listen to that episode. So like always, when you want to hear it back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number that was 613 for backing off on social media today is 614 pretty links. Now, it's 4th of July weekend. So this is going to be a quick one. But like many of my recent training episodes, they're extremely powerful if you implement them. But it doesn't take me long to tell you about them. And that's kind of my claim to fame in my mentor program is to simplify things for you, show you what's important, what isn't important, and then help you implement it.

[00:02:00] That's what I do. So make sure you really think about it. If you want independence, this is 4th of July weekend. You want independence like I have where I never had a job, never had to sit in traffic, making somebody else rich. That's what this whole podcast is about. This is what my whole mission on earth is, is to help you get that independence. And I've been doing it continuously selling online for 28 years. All right. Since the commercial Internet started in 1994. Hey, and by the way, if you hear some mournful howling, I also just have an animal lover and we have a rescue dog here. And she's she's trying to get acclimated and a little bit upset, but she'll be all right and I'll spend the rest of the day with her. All right, let's go. Let's go, let's go. Make sure you get a copy of my automation book, because I want you spending time doing stuff like this to automate yourself, sell more stuff, spend time with products and making products and and spending time with customers and prospects instead of fighting with your computer. So get a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:03:21] All right. Let's talk about the plug in. Pretty links. Now, this is for WordPress. Now, if you aren't using WordPress for your site. What's wrong with you? Did you did you get sucked into some of the overhyped national ads that are totally designed to suck in people that don't know any better? Well, I hope not. Wordpress is the gold standard, and the only people that dispute this are people selling other garbage to unknowing business people or wannabe business people. And that's an argument we can have for another day. Anyway, let's get back to pretty links. Well, what does Pretty Links actually do? Well, if you do any affiliate marketing or if you're shopping cart like mine does and like almost all shopping carts do spit out really long and funky looking purchase links. Well, the pretty, pretty links allows you to make them look. Quote, I put, quote, air quotes around it. Normal. Okay. Now, when would this be important to you? Well, in many cases, you would be selling directly from an email. Well, your purchase link is maybe 100 characters and really weird and funky looking. And yeah, you could simply use an HTML email and have an add to cart button or a text based hyperlink, something like Click here to purchase. And certainly I have done that and it works. The problem is when people mouse over or or hold their mouse over the add to cart button or to the text link. They can see a pop up with the 100 character actual link.

[00:05:12] And I got to tell you, that is scary. Looking for people that aren't tech savvy and which most people aren't. Now, if you had made a pretty link, the link would not look scary at all. It would be your website and then the slash symbol like screw the dot com slash and then a very short normal looking word. Now, for instance, I'm going to read out, all right, the crazy looking Amazon link that sends people to buy my audiobook on Audible. Imagine saying this link on a radio show or a podcast interview. All right. Here we go. Http, colon, slash, slash, WW Amazon.com slash capital. Oh, online dash capital JV dash capital P for prospects dash capital Y yourself capital V venturing slash small P slash capital b09 capital pkg for capital w h to slash r f equals t hmm underscore aew dx underscore cwa tc underscore zero. I've got to clear my throat after saying that. All right. See how ridiculous that is, folks. So here's the one you would actually see. Or I would say. Hey, folks, just go to screwthecommute.com/audible1. All right, that's that's what pretty links does. And, hey, I think you should, because you should buy that book. It's only today it was $3.46 for the audible version. I don't know what if they're on sale or what, but the title of the book is Online Joint Venturing How to Get In Front of a Million Warm Prospects in the next 90 days.

[00:07:16] You should go buy that now at guess where? Online JV project. No, no. Go to screw the dot com slash audible one OC. So instead of that scary looking long link, I just send people to the short, easy one. Now this is also important when you're doing a podcast or a radio and TV interviews or your own podcast, or even if you're writing a blog post or being interviewed for a print publication, you have a short and easy to say you URL that doesn't raise any red flags. And it's really hard to misspell. And and just as important, it doesn't keep you from getting accepted in places you want to be accepted, which is what I'm going to talk about now. All right. I'm going to take Facebook first. So Facebook does not like affiliate links or funky looking purchase links in your posts. If it recognizes a long, crazy looking link which most affiliate and buy links are, chances are it will not allow your post to show at all, or it won't let the link be clickable. I guess. I don't know. It depends on their mood that day or whatever, but you're not going to get that link through. So pretty lynx comes to the rescue. A normal looking Linc will have no trouble being accepted in a Facebook post.

[00:08:54] No, nothing. Nobody even won't even blink an eye anywhere. All right. Next is Amazon Kindle. You will not get a Kindle book accepted anymore. Back in the old days, it was crazy. Wild West. Any kind of crap would go on Kindle, but they cleaned up their act. And you're not going to get a Kindle book accepted with the funky looking links that I just mentioned. They could be a purchase link for your stuff or an affiliate link, but you're not going to get your Kindle ebook except it. And lots of people ask me why should they bother installing a plug in when they can just use something like bit.ly bit.ly as a link shorter? Well, here's the answer. These people know just enough to be dangerous. Please don't listen to your your cousin who's a microsoft certified person who's never made a nickel selling online. All right, please. I had one lady one time was going to join my mentor program and her dumb ass kid talked her out of it because he had this Microsoft certification. They're both still broke. All right. No, he's probably got a decent job somewhere, but. She didn't do her goals because she listened to her stupid son who didn't know what he was talking about, say so don't listen to these people. I mean bit dot l y also looks weird and is considered spammy by anyone or any entity like Google that knows what they're doing.

[00:10:29] I never use it anymore. Yeah, I used it years ago, but not anymore. Things change. And to regular consumers or subscribers. Guess what? Even bit.ly looks scary. In other words, they think, why are you hiding the actual destination? See pretty links doesn't evoke those scary feelings they don't think twice about. screwthecommute.com/audible1. That's Tom's audiobook. It's not like this weird long thing that's scary to click on. Like, it could be a virus or a Trojan horse or something. All right. Now, this is from the Pretty Links site. And I highly like I said, you can't go wrong by getting this. It's free. Pretty. This is directly from their site. Pretty links transforms those ugly long affiliate links into clean, memorable, speak able totally shareable links as a link closure. That's kind of what we're talking about here QR code generator which it does that and I didn't even talk about that and branded link creator that means your website is on it so it's branded to you. Pretty links. Turns your website into a powerful URL sharpener and money making machine. All right. So pretty links. We love it. It's it's pretty. It's pretty. It's pretty. Okay. And so is my mentor program, which you should get your butt into because I got this and a thousand other things I could teach you after doing this seven days a week for 28 years and making millions of bucks.

[00:12:14] All right. That's what cracks me up with these I.T. people. It never made a nickel or are arguing with me. That's why I won't even take a mentee. Who? Has a tech person that's know it all. Well, that's the first thing I say. If if you knew it all, why would you be working for this other guy or girl? Right. You'd be selling your own stuff, right? You know, so don't give me this crap like you know what you're doing. You might know how to install a hard drive, but you know this stuff. I know. I guarantee you. So, anyway, I want you to be independent. It's Friday before 4th of July weekend, and I'm really I love this country and I love the fact that we can do this kind of stuff and that people invent pretty links so that we can get rich with using these things. Okay. All right. Have a great weekend. I'm going to put out an email today, later today with a bunch of must listen podcasts from the past couple of weeks. Most of them are very short, but it's just like this one today. Extremely powerful. All right. That's my story. And I'm sticking to it. Happy 4th of July weekend and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.