A while back Josh Kahlbach got in touch to show me the ThirstyAffiliates WordPress plugin. I’m using it on one of my sites now so I sent Josh back some questions and here are his answers…

Tell us a bit about yourself?

Hi, I’m Josh Kohlbach, I’m a programmer from Brisbane, Australia. I’m the creator of ThirstyAffiliates affiliate link management plugin for WordPress as well as a handful of other non-premium plugins.

A bit about me?… Hrm, I’ve been into programming since I was about 13 years old (now 26), I have a degree in IT, and I’ve been studying business and marketing in my spare time for about the past 3 or 4 years.

What’s the idea behind this plugin?

The idea behind ThirstyAffiliates is quite simple and I’ve designed it to be a helpful and un-intrusive part of your affiliate marketing workflow.

I came up with the idea of an affiliate link manager after getting frustrated with having to create reviews for a computer hardware review site I was making and not being able to really track where my affiliate links were being used.

After a few times of needing to change one of my affiliate links and tracking down where I used that link in the past I finally did something about it.

Why your plugin and not others which have similar functions?

When I created ThirstyAffiliates I was actually looking for a plugin similar to mine to purchase. But everything in the industry was just so focused on cloaking and being deceptive by keyword link generation all over your blog. It just seemed like there was no tool that really focused on managing the links like assets.

My tool puts the focus on managing affiliate links in one place and providing a really great interface for getting those links into your posts and pages.

I’ve actually crafted a specialised link picker tool just for that. Most other plugins just give you a list of your links to insert or a nasty shortcode to remember which is absolutely useless once you have 100+ links. You really need a proper tool once you’re getting serious about affiliate marketing with more than the odd link here and there.

My plugin also does importing and exporting using the WordPress importer tool which means that you can setup your links once and import them to new websites you’re creating, saving hours of setup.

What other wordpress plugins do you recommend for affiliate marketing?

There are some really great review website plugins out there. If I was making a dedicated reviews website again I’d definitely look into purchasing a premium review plugin. Especially one that gets the social side of things going with user reviews.

Also, not really a plugin, but there’s heaps of great integrations with mailing list providers like MailChimp and Aweber. Drop in their plugin and activate a widget – building a mailing list doesn’t need to be difficult, but it’s something every affiliate should be doing as the engagement on that platform is a lot higher.

Thanks Josh

I haven’t yet bought a site from this list but often buying a site with some history behind it is a great starting point for better search engine rankings. Also if you can apply your own experience in a particular area to a site with a lot of exisiting traffic then you might be able to recoup your expenses just by making a few tweaks to the revenue streams.

Buying and then tweaking is the sort of thing that Scott at Self Made Minds often writes about so have a read there as well.

Good luck!

Let me know if you have tried any of these tools and have any feedback.

I’ve been watching Nooked for a while now and they have been releasing some really interesting widgets.

Firstly you can create a widget containing different products of your choice

I’ve gone for Skiing Holidays in this one. Then you can publish that widget to your blog/facebook/myspace page and start earning from it. It’s the type of thing that is definitely going to appeal to a blog owner who doesn’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of signing up with an affiliate network.

Once you publish the widget there is then an option to “Grab This” which would allow anyone to pick up your widget code and add it to their site but still earn you the cash.

Finally you can also earn for a year by referring people to Nooked. None of the links in this post are referral links as I want to make the point that I’m writing about them because it’s interesting and not because I’m being paid or trying to earn a bit of cash.

Overall I’m pretty impressed with what Nooked are doing. It’s a bit of a limited product set that they are working from at the moment but I understand that is to improve soon.

So what do you think? Is it the sort of thing that might work well on Keith Bond’s Fashion Style You or would it appeal more to the mainstream that doesn’t actually need to have heard of “affiliate marketing” to make some extra money?

Affiliate Speedpay is a free online instant account combined with a Visa debit card. The idea is that instead of an affiliate program or network posting out a cheque or sending a bank transfer they can just send the payment straight to your Affiliate Speedpay account and it arrives there the same day where you can then spend direct from the debit card or transer to a normal account.

I think it’s a good idea but will be most useful for the independant programs or networks & programs which are based abroad. Most of the main UK networks now have BACS in place and I don’t see too many advantages at the affiliate side although I know that a BACS run can be difficult for networks.

However it would definitely come into it’s own by making it simple for UK based affiliates to open up accounts in other currencies i.e. $ or euro and to get payments paid to their Speedpay account. I think it all hinges on actually getting the networks and merchants signed up and I know that is being worked on now.

Good luck to the guys behind this project. It’s nice to see a little innovation and know that companies are looking at new ways to solve problems.

I got this extension developed for my use but thought it might be useful for a few more affiliates out there. Basically it sits in the the status bar at the bottom of your Firefox browser window and checks your Commission Junction balance every 30 minutes. It has no official association with CJ and although I don’t expect there to be problems I can’t take any responsibility if it doesn’t play nicely with your other extensions.

This is how it looks in your status bar

and if you put your mouse over the balance it will show you the breakdown of confirmed and pending

Cost

The extension is free but I would appreciate a link back to this site from one of your sites if you are going to use it. It would be great if you could blog about the extension or tell someone else about this blog.

Installation

Install the Extension Now

There is a good chance you will get a yellow bar at the top of your browser when you first try this because affiliateblog.co.uk isn’t yet approved by you for installing extensions. If you get this click “Edit Options” then click “Allow”, click “Close” and now try and

Install Again

Once you have done this restart your browser and enter your user account details by right clicking on the statusbar view and selecting settings.

Future Upgrades?

I plan to get a few more similar extensions developed for other affiliate networks but it would be useful to know which networks people would be most interested in using an extension for.

Feedback & Support

It would also be good to get any feedback if it’s not working for you or if you have any suggestions for features in future versions. This post is open for feedback and comments on the CJ firefox tool.

Stick Around?

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Technorati Tags: Commission Junction, CJ

Basically you can take a list of keywords as below

and at a click turn it into

Which should save a lot of box ticking to enable matching options or messing around trying to get the right format of CSV.

Here’s the link MSN Keyword Prepare Tool