Affiliate marketing is a big industry not only in the US but worldwide. With more number of marketers investing in affiliate marketing, it is promising higher returns to publishers through their affiliate associations.
Even, a survey by Inc. confirmed that affiliate marketing houses more than 20% of their yearly revenue. Also as per Statista, 15.7% of online users reported ads blocking. These percentages are high when you find that there are more than 4 billion users on the web for affiliate marketing across the world.
The high use of the ad-blocking tool reflects the increasing intolerance of consumers for ads, which is disrupting the entire digital experience. Experiencing a growing preference of consumers for ads-free experience, it has become mandatory for the publishers to identify ways to deliver as well as monetize content without troubling their readers.
This is what makes affiliate marketing highly significant!
The affiliate promotional measures are quite native, which implies the services and products promoted complement the content of publishers. It means by using affiliate links strategically on your website, it is possible to enhance the digital experience for online viewers rather than disrupting the same. If you are promoting services and products, which match the requirements of your audience, you can gain a visitor’s loyalty.
With content publishers honing their strategies for affiliate marketing to promote services and products, which match the requirements of their audience, they are witnessing higher conversion rates and click rates. Making 16% of the total eCommerce orders of the U.S., affiliate marketing drives numerous eCommerce orders.
So, if you wish to monetize your website using affiliate links in order to build trust among your audience, you must consider integrating a plugin for managing affiliate links. Such a tool can help you to maintain affiliate links as your website and scale up your promotional efforts.
Among the variety of tools available online, one such tool available in WordPress is Thirsty Affiliates. This is a free tool, which can precisely cater to your entire affiliate marketing requirements.
But before I share my review on ThirstyAffiliates, I would first like to tell you why you must use a plugin for affiliate link management.
Why You Must Use a Plugin for Affiliate Link Management?
For understanding the advantages of the affiliate link management plugin, you must understand more closely the affiliate marketing process.
You may first have to select an advertiser with whom you wish to partner and decide the services and products you wish to promote. This will provide you with exclusive affiliate links, which can be inserted into your blogs or online content. When readers click on such links, they are redirected to the website of advertisers. On the basis of your affiliate marketing model, you will be paid only for those clicks.
This may sound good, but in reality, it can lead to a few potential blunders, which can impact the overall experience of visitors and the website’s SEO. Using an affiliate link management plugin, it is possible to avoid such mistakes.
One major blunder you can make is inserting the affiliate links exactly the way you obtained from the advertisers. Usually, such links are unattractive and long, and hence, may stick on the page, which you have otherwise designed carefully. As a result, it disrupts the overall experience of visitors and your website’s credibility.
In order to be sure that such links are seamlessly integrated into the content, you may use a plugin to cloak such links, which disguises affiliate links from the front-end users.
Also, managing affiliate links help protect them from malware software and hackers, which are trying to replace the unique ID codes of your affiliates with their own and steal the commissions.
Hence, it becomes essential to use a reliable and efficient link cloaking plugin such as ThirstyAffiliates, which do not only serve this purpose but serve numerous useful features for link management.
What is ThirstyAffiliates?
Managed and developed by Rymera Web Co., Thirsty Affiliates is a reliable plugin for link cloaking. It is a team headquartered in Brisbane, Australia who built this plugin considering the WordPress bloggers.
ThirstAffiliates is an excellent solution for affiliate marketers who use WordPress to manage affiliate links.
Features of ThirstyAffiliates
There are numerous promising features offered by ThirstyAffiliates. So, let’s take a closer look!
1. Link Customization:
With this feature, you get complete control over the functionality and appearance of all your affiliate links. It comes with a settings page that lets you chose the link prefix, which is useful for creating the redirection URLs. Moreover, you can decide whether you wish to display your links category in the form or URL, or you want a new tab to open, and more other options.
It is also possible to attach an image to your link if you want to include a picture of your company’s logo or your product.
2. Link Cloaking:
Another great feature offered by ThirstyAffiliates is Link Cloaking which lets you cloak the affiliate links in just a few clicks. This implies you no more have to incorporate affiliate links in a raw or unorganized manner.
Rather, you can utilize the name of your own domain with a prefix of your choice and it will seamlessly redirect the users to affiliate links. For instance, it is possible to transform lengthy affiliate links above into an organized and seamless manner.
When you organize links in such a way, it is likely that readers will click on that link that points to another page on the same domain rather than on a link with a bunch of numbers and letters. It appears not more trustworthy and reliable, but also offers a clear indication of what they click on. You don’t have to expect the readers to click on the link with random numbers and letters, which appear non-meaningful to them. Moreover, you can offer links, which include the name of the product so that they are aware of what to expect. It improves the overall likelihood that you send only qualified and trusted visitors on the website of advertisers.
3. Link Management:
Being an affiliate marketer, you might have not hundreds but thousands of links. For this reason, organizing and managing such links is important.
Using ThirstyAffiliates, you can manage the affiliate links in a single dashboard as well as organize the same into distinct categories. For example, if you are writing a blog that offers tips for non-technical website owners, it may hold a hosting category as well as a plugin category for WordPress users. Segregating the affiliate links makes it simpler to search them and convenient to track the way each category is performing on your website.
Also, such categories ease the way you incorporate affiliate links into WordPress posts. You only have to choose some text and click on the option to add an affiliate link within the visual editor toolbar.
You can then enter the keyword and click on the right link as soon as it appears.
How to Use ThirstyAffiliates for Creating Customizable Links?
One of the best things about THirstyAffiliates is that it allows completely customizing the links on a per-link basis or global basis.
When you install and activate the plugin, you can also navigate to affiliate links and check the settings option to begin.
Under this option, you can choose the link prefix which is useful for creating the redirection URLs. Also, there are numerous other options for customizing links such as:
- Showcasing the link category in URL
- Using the redirect code like 302 or 301
- Categorize links as do-follow or no-follow
- Determine whether the links open in a novel tab or not, and more other options
In order to incorporate the first affiliate link, you have to navigate to the option for Affiliate Links and then click on Add New.
Within this setting, it is possible to name the link and attach a picture to the link like a call-to-action option, logo or product image.
Also, the links can be categorized as pages or posts and you can alter the redirect type of each link on an individual basis.
How ThirstyAffiliates Save You Time and Enhance Your Website?
ThirstyAffiliates is different from other plugins for affiliate links in a way that it is not loaded with unnecessary features. For this reason, it serves a major benefit of not slowing down the website’s speed.
It comes with all the features and options, which are required to efficiently manage the affiliate links and redirects.
Moreover, it supports backups and comes with the option of exporting and importing. It implies, you can create a new affiliate website or can simply export the links to the novel website rather than entering the entire details again and again.
ThirstyAffiliates Add-Ons and Advanced Features
In addition to the abovementioned features, ThirstyAffiliates offer numerous premium plugins, which offer advanced options. Such features also automate a few functions and let you save a lot of time.
Each additional plugin can be purchased separately. Hence, you have to pay only for those add-ons, which you want without incurring the additional cost of other add-ons.
Further, each individual plugin comes with a steep pricing plan. But if you combine them together it can save you a lot of money.
Some of the add-ons available are:
- AZON – It searches for Amazon affiliate links and can also import such links directly into your blog.
- Stats – This add-on keeps a track of all clicks on the affiliate links.
- Google Click Tracking – It automatically identifies affiliate links and integrates Google Analytics functionality for event tracking.
- Geo-locations – It detects the location of visitors and targets them on the basis of location or country-specific links.
- Auto-linker – Using this add-on it is possible to select keywords to automatically incorporate affiliate links to your blog.
- CSV Importer – This add-on lets you import as well as export the affiliate links to and from various websites.
ThirstyAffiliates Documentation and Support
ThirstyAffiliates comes with a vast knowledge base on their website with a couple of tutorials. It addresses the common issues that users have and offers troubleshooting guides for add-ons and plugin.
It is an excellent plugin for WordPress users and comes with WordPress.org directory. You can expect an instant response from developers for resolving the issue even when you are using the free version.
It comes with rich customer support available for premium plugins on their official site and they unfailingly revert to all inquiries in just 48 hours.
Pricing Plan for ThirstyAffiliates
There are three pricing plans available for ThirstyAffiliates.
- One-site license is available for $49
- 5-site license is available for $79
- An unlimited license is available for $149
No matter which plans you purchase, it comes with a 14-day refund guarantee. All these licenses come with 12 months of email support and plugin updates.
My Verdict on ThirstyAffiliates
Undoubtedly, I found ThirstyAffiliates a highly useful plugin for all WordPress websites using links for affiliate marketing. It offers a convenient way to manage the affiliate links in just a single place and utilizes redirection links rather than ugly default links that will scare away from the readers.
Also, it is a lightweight plugin that would not slow the website. It gives you accurately the options you require without excessive bloat.
It is free of cost of the plugin for WordPress websites, which can help you advance the affiliate marketing strategy for promoting services and products, which are customized to the requirements of the audience. When you use such affiliate links on your website it can help you earn a tremendous amount of revenue as well as also enhance the overall experience for your website visitors.
If you wish to deliver an ad-free experience to your consumers, ThirstyAffiliates serves as an excellent platform to serve customers eminently. You can also connect two platforms using this tool without dealing with codes. It is a reliable tool for those who lack technical expertise.
I suggest using ThirstyAffiliates for all your affiliate marketing requirements. It will not only make the tasks simpler and easier for you but will also serve your customers a great experience that will further help foster your relationship with your clients.