Website In A Weekend

(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

Does managing affiliate links feel like underwater barbecue? Like, no matter how much work you put into it, it’s just impossible?

Well, you’re now in luck: Managing affiliates links has never been easier, with the Thirsty Affiliates plugin for WordPress.

Introducing Josh Kohlbach’s Thirsty Affiliates

My biggest problem with affiliate marketing is keeping track of everything. For some reason, I’m not naturally inclined to maintain the business documentation allowing me to find out where all my affiliate links are stashed. It’s a real problem.

Josh had the same problem, and he did something about it. Something we can all benefit from. He wrote a WordPress plugin making affiliate management trivial.

With Thirsty Affiliates, that stress of “Where did I put that affiliate link?” is gone for good.

Thirsty Affiliates takes the stress out of affiliate link management

I’m reaping two main HUGE benefits using Thirsty Affiliates:

1. The link management system is five times easier to manage than raft of spreadsheets. All my affiliate links are right where I want them: in WordPress. Before, I was attempting to keep track using a variety of spreadsheet-based systems. Boring. Difficult. Not worth it. Very stressful.
2. Huge time savings: I log in to my WordPress, and all my affiliate links are right at my fingertips. Incredibly efficient compared to external tracking with spreadsheets or documents.

These two benefits alone repay the purchase price.

Let me be more clear: several months ago, as a pre-release reviewer of Thirsty Affiliates, I liked this plugin so much I sent Josh a few code modifications to make the plugin even better. Trust me, the purchase price of Thirsty Affiliates is far, far less than my hourly rate, and I don’t waste professional time mucking around in hideous code (unless handsomely compensated).

Features to make your affiliate management trivial

Check out how Josh made Thirsty Affiliates tame the affiliate linking beast:

• Add your link once, it’s handled forever via the magic of WordPress custom post types.
• Easy configuration using the standard WordPress settings interface.
• Links are automatically backed up. Just do your normal WordPress backup, it’s handled.
• Inserting a link into a blog post or page is really easy using the standard media library interface. It’s as easy as inserting an image.
• Links can be categorized for added power and flexibility.
• Import/export: enter your affiliate once, and only once, and you can export them to use on another WordPress site.

There’s more, and Josh is continually tweaking and adding handy little features to save you time and reduce your affiliate link management stress overload.

Other reasons I love Thirst Affiliates

Imagine that thing, that “thing” you have been meaning to get around to, for years. You know, that project where “If I only had the time, I could Rock The Casbah on this thing.” Everyone one has one of these “things,” and for blogging, that thing for me has always been…

…dealing with affiliate links.

I even went so far as to start writing a WordPress plugin for handling affiliate links.

But it’s a good thing I didn’t get very far with my plugin, because Josh Kohlbach and his Thirsty Affiliates plugin has Solved. That. Problem.

Because I’m a programmer, the first thing I look at is the source code. And with Thirsty Affiliates, it’s plain to see Josh’s 15 years experience as professional programmer. The code is well-organized and well-written. It’s all straightforward WordPress and PHP, coded up using best practices.

This means Thirsty Affiliates has some serious shelf life.

1. Well-written code, which means Thirsty Affiliates is easy to maintain and extend. This means it’s a good investment for you.
2. Leverages WordPress custom post types. This is the Right Way To Do It.
3. Link redirection and automatic nofollow attribute.

It’s these little touches which really matter.

What could use a little more polish

Ok, I have to be totally honest here: I’m not a big fan of the styling for the editing screen. But that’s really minor, and it is a branding thing, which is also important.

• Super easy: Add a field for each link to the actual account affiliate site on the affiliate site (versus the sales link). As mentioned above, keeping track of all the moving parts is tough, and one of those parts is the affiliate account itself. For example, as an affiliate of StudioPress, it would be incredibly convenient to have a link to my ShareASale.com account.
• Fields for setting the alt and title tags for links and images would be really nice.
• The most pressing feature would have to be getting a Quicktags button for the WordPress HTML editor. I never use the visual editor, and having to switch back and forth to drop in a link is annoying. However, since most people use the visual editor, Josh was right to have that working first.
• (Super technical) Automatic parsing when an affiliate delivers a cut-and-paste link.

But these are all really minor issues compared to the time I’m saving and the peace of mind resulting from integrating Thirsty Affiliates into blogging. Revenue generation must be considered as part of a viable content strategy, and it just got a lot easier.