I am new also and am learning new stuff everyday. Anyhow I just wrote a lens on squidoo and was having the same issue. What you need to do is get your affiliate link and you can shrink it and hide it thru TinyURL, it is free. Then you can copy it into an "anchor text" by inserting it in
When you hide or cloak your link the new link goes where it says YOURLINKHERE after you do this it will make that blue link we all see and it will say Click here for more info or what ever you type in that last part of the anchor text