If I were you... and I was using Wordpress as my site's CMS... I would install the gocodes plugin to mask your affiliate link. Then go to clickbank... find the product you are wanting to promote from the marketplace... click the green promote button (if you are signed in it will already have your Aff id ready to go) then when the pop up comes up... put your Aff id and optional tracking id (numbers & letters only...) Hit Submit and you will have your raw affiliate link ready to put on your site. *Just an extra tip - If you go with the gocodes idea... not only can you generate a professional mask for your aff link but you can track how many times your link has been clicked. Anyways, Hope this helped! have a Great Day!
The first one is the Actual Affiliate link and the second one is HTML code... an Anchor Text or Hyperlink with your Aff link already embeded for you. It's up to you... how you want to place links on your site... You can do hyperlinks making text & images clickable.
You can use an anchor text to mask your link or go for a url shortening service which is free to shorten your affiliatel links.