REVIEW: Pretty Link vs MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate
Let me tell you a story. This is a story of an affiliate marketer (me) who signed up for the Pretty Link Pro affiliate program. This was many months ago (nearly a year) and their sign-up process did not send me the verification email. I contacted their support and notified them that I did not have access. They set me up with a couple days, and emailed me the login.
The problem with their email was that they provided me access to the Pretty Link Pro service, when I have not purchased it yet. There was no formal talk about getting a free license, and the ethical thing for me to do was to let them know that they accidentally set me up with premium access on a product I did not yet upgrade to.
I am not one to just assume I can get free access to a product, but I do have a problem with how this played out when I let the cat out of the bag. I received a reply letting me know that my premium access was removed (or fixed, as they said).
Here is what should have happened:
- They should have realized an opportunity for positive press, and a rave review by allowing me premium access for free because I did the right thing in the first place. That story would have helped their sales a LOT.
- They should have realized that I was an affiliate marketer who teaches bloggers (their target market) how to make money blogging.
They did neither of these things. This was not enough to make me stop using Pretty Link at all. As a matter of fact, I continued to use it for a very long time, and still do. It did however, prevent me from reviewing their product in a passionate manner.
Enter an opportunity:
Less than a month ago, I was approached by MaxBlogPress to write a review about their product. They were kind enough to provide me with a free copy of Ninja Affiliate (as per my review requirements) so that I can test it out. I did not charge them my $500 paid review fee because these types of products are something I really love due to their functionality.
The difference between Ninja Affiliate and Pretty Link is that Ninja Affiliate owners saw an opportunity and jumped on it. Here I am raving about their product now that I have had a chance to use it. They have had killer support, and their product is 100% compatible with Hostgator.
The functionality of the two:
Both programs essentially do the same thing. They create shortened affiliate urls using your domain name. That’s pretty much the extent of the Pretty Link free version’s functionality. Both paid plugins offer extended features such as affiliate link cloaking, automatic keyword linking, and other cool things.
I have not yet found any bugs in the Ninja Affiliate software, but I have found some bugs with Pretty Link. At one point, you could add Pretty Links from the dashboard without issue, but when adding on the Pretty Link options page, it would not authorize access for some reason. This happened a few times, and it may have been the host I was with at the time. Who knows. But there was an issue that ticked me off at one time. That was when I linked to my friend Alex Whalley’s website and the link ended up being bad after I already sent out a newsletter. It wouldn’t allow me to fix the link because it claimed it was taken.
My conclusion:
Both Pretty Link Pro, and Ninja Affiliate have excellent functionality that every affiliate marketer needs. In this case, Ninja Affiliate gets my majority vote simply because their company is smart enough to see an opportunity rather than itching for a quick one-time sale. Pretty Link decided to remove my Pro access because they wanted me to pay for the upgrade when they could have easily turned it into a multiple sale situation instead.
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Tagged with: affiliate link cloaking • best wordpress plugin • cloak affiliate links • free wordpress plugins • ninja affiliate review • Pretty Link Pro Review • pretty link review
Filed under: REVIEWS
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Thanks for the reviews. Your insight can help all of us find the AM program!
Twitter: DennisEdell
says:
What I read was, bugs and none so bright customer service…I’ll stick with the ninja.
Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last [type] ..73 Posts Published – Have I Seen Your Smile On All Of Them
MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate plugin is more than your normal link cloaker, it is a complete solution for managing affiliate links on your WordPress blog. Thanks…
Twitter: Brandon_Connell
says:
So is Pretty Link Pro
Twitter: BlogStashDotCom
says:
That is very interesting Brandon. Yeah you would think PrettyLink guys would be smarter than that. i mean this was a perfect case for them to get the word out and in front of a very targeted audience of your. Its one of those situations that almost everybody reacts to the same way (allowing the person to keep the product/service for free).
Satrap@ Make Money Online´s last [type] ..Get Paid to Surf- SurfBountycom
Twitter: Brandon_Connell
says:
Right. It seems they have missed the entire wave of viral marketing via bloggers. They don’t seem to understand the concept or how to take advantage. I have since been switching over all of my Pretty Links to Ninja Affiliate. I just wish both of these plugins had a feature that allows importing of their rival’s links. That is something I am going to recommend to MaxBlogPress.
Hey Brandon,
This was a very compelling story. It definitely looks like Pretty Link missed out on nice opportunity to have an experienced affiliate marketer on their side.
Well, at the end of the day it looks like you chose the right product to promote in the Ninja Affiliate. I guess the idea of a one time sale was more appealing to Pretty Link. They definitely came out on the losing end of this situation.
John@Skin Mole Removal´s last [type] ..A Powerful Natural Method For Removing Skin Moles Fast and Easy
Twitter: lavenderuses
says:
Hi Brandon
Thanks for the heads up on both these products. I had Pretty Link recommended to me the other day for my affiliate marketing that I will be doing shortly. Haven’t done anything about it yet so great that you share about an alternative. Appreciated.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia@lavenderuses´s last [type] ..Create Impact- Not Traffic Spikes
What about other plugins like wp link engine?
Twitter: Brandon_Connell
says:
I have never used it. Honestly, there is no reason for me to when what I use works better than anything I can imagine.
Twitter: farbrornabil
says:
I don’t see why you guys keep using plugins that sometimes costs a lot of money.
Do what I do. Simply install GoCodes and cloak your links. Put a nofollow tag on them and block the URL out in your robots.txt. That way, Google will never find out about it. Saves you lots of time! And money
Kimmo@håravfall´s last [type] ..Dölj håravfall med Toppik
Twitter: jezza101
says:
I’m with you Kimmo. Well kinda. I actually ended up writing my own plugin about 5 years ago when I used to use the e107 CMS system. They had a “linkwords” plugin that automatically linked keywords built in and I coded up a “link manager”.
Since moving to WordPress I’ve ported the code over. I guess not everyone has the ability to do this though
!
Whatever plugin you use, definitely a great piece of functionality.
jezza101´s last [type] ..Simple WordPress Plugins
Twitter: kindahip
says:
Brad,
Nice read all along, but what really stuck out to me was the overall theme of your post.
That the world is full of short sighted short term sales people desperate to make a buck. And most customrs believe it or not, can tell if someone is in it for the long haul. This is clearly what you did and you made a choice because of it. I’ve seen and worked for companies with management that mandate this kind of behavior and its really stinks. They should know better. I knew better even before I went to college lol
Thanks for the great article and keep up the good work.
Mick´s last [type] ..After the Yawn…