Free Services: Shrink URLs

One topic I haven´t discussed much here is affiliate marketing as a way to monetize a blog. As you know, top bloggers earn good paychecks trough affiliate marketing and selling advertising space in their blogs.
I think affiliate programs work best for those who have a big audience, and the capacity for recruiting many new members to sell a certain product. The possibility of earning a good amount of money trough this type of programs depends on two combined factors: The capacity for recruiting new members, and selling the product itself. There are many different types of affiliate schemes, a good criteria to choose could be:

~ Those who have products that people are looking to buy;
~ Those who pay a higher percentage and don´t require minimum or average sales ;
~ The programs that offer the possibility of earning residual income;

If you´re using URLs to promote or sell in your blog, a good way to protect your links is using a shrink url tool. There a few reasons why you should use a short link, some related to security, others related to sales and effective marketing practices.
There are are some free websites that provide this type of online services for free, one of them is: http://shmyl.com/
All you have to do is type the URL you want to shorten and hit OK. In this website you can also learn more reasons to use a shrink URL while promoting affiliate links.