Earlier this month I was solicited to review a new premium plugin called Ninja Affiliate which has been released by the folks over at MaxBlogPress.
The plugin is $97 and allows you to automatically turn certain words into trackable affiliate links. For example, every time I typed the phrase “Thesis theme” (*Watch out Martha! That there’s one of those tricky affiliate links!*) I could have the plugin turn that into an affiliate link for me. Not only that, but it would be a cloaked link (sent through a redirect) and I would be able to track the number of clicks on that link.
Pretty cool right?
In fact, this method alone helped Jean-Baptiste over at Cats Who Blog increase his affiliate earnings by 30%!
Why Not Buy It?
So why am I telling you not to waste your money on this plugin? Because you can get the same functionality for free.
When you combine the two free plugins SEO Smart Links and GoCodes, you can automatically create the same type of cloaked affiliate links that Ninja Affiliate offers. In fact, that’s the very combination I used to create the affiliate link to Thesis earlier in this post.
Just like Ninja Affiliate, SEO Smart Links allows you to determine how many automatic links will be created per page. And just like Ninja Affiliate, GoCodes will let you track how many times that link is clicked.
Now, Ninja Affiliate does allow you to customize the look of your affiliate links with a little drop down menu, but personally, I’ve seen any reason to do this. Plus, it could fairly easily be achieved via some CSS.
And last but not least, Ninja Affiliate offers support. If that’s worth the $97 to you, by all means, pull the trigger. But I can tell you I’ve never once had a problem with either of the free plugins I mentioned in this post and they’re both incredibly easy to set up.
So do yourself a favor, download and install SEO Smart Links and GoCodes before plopping down 97 of your hard earned dollars. If you still think you need Ninja Affiliate after that, I’m sure they’ll still be happy to sell it to you.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the info Ben, like I’ve said on Twitter I never heard about GoCodes. I’m going to check it soon!
Of course you can always find equal things for free but I absolutely recommend it. I think that you might not be considering those that know nothing about CSS or don’t like to deal with extra plugins. I think it’s a great plugin and I waited for it to be on sale before I purchased. Well worth the money and the support is great because not only do can they help you with an issue (which I have never had) they help with little tips to do certain things that you might not have ever thought about.
I’m a big fan of yours (and will continue to be of course) but don’t agree with you on this;) Have a good’un!
@Lori, sorry, but consolidating from two plugins down to one when both work perfectly well is not work $97 to me.
As for people not knowing CSS, that’s only needed if you plan on altering the look of your links, which as I said, I don’t really see a reason to do.
Another major strike against the plugin, is the fact that when I asked someone from MaxBlogPress why I should promote it over the two free plugins, he listed a couple of features that SEO Smart Links and GoCodes offer, and said besides, you can make some affiliate money.
I’m sorry, but if they can’t tell me why it’s better than the free options, I’m not going to recommend my readers spend $97 just so I can earn an affiliate commission. MaxBlogPress recommending that I do that is at best tacky.
I haven’t used SEO smart links yet, but I use GoCodes and I’m very much satisfied with it. 🙂
Hey, thanks so much for this post!
I was looking at Ninja Affiliate but couldn’t justify spending that much money when I knew that there must be a way to be able to get the same functionality out of free or open source plugins somewhere else.
I’m trying the two plugins mentioned in this post now! Thanks a lot!
– Mitch
Well, it’s the first time I heard about GoCodes wordpress plugin, I’ll try it, hoped it’s better than Ninja affiliate plugin by Maxblogpress 🙂