How I gained tremendous clicks by using Thirsty Affiliates

March 7, 2021 Posted by scottkandh Affiliate Links, Blogging, How to Posts, Monetize your blog No Comments

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Last Updated on June 21, 2021 by scottkandh

You can increase your total clicks by using a program called Thirsty Affiliates. In this post, I’m going to show you the before and after statistics. In addition, I’ll provide you with instructions on how to use the program Thirsty Affiliates and why it’s important to use an Affiliate Link masking program. It’s my hope that after reading this post, you’ll be convinced to purchase this program and to use it on your blog to increase your clicks that will ultimately lead to generating sales. In writing this blog post, I’ve just realized that I didn’t even have an affiliate link set up for this phenomenal program. Please use the suggestions within this post so that your blog can see an improvement in “your” affiliate links.

Table of Contents

What is an Affiliate Link Masking program?

An Affiliate Link Masking program changes the description of your affiliate link from something that might look like this: (the first one is made up).

https://shareasale/xy34r5a/527890pinartwork

to this

https://pinartwork.com/recommends/try-thirsty-affiliates

When people look at a link they want to have an idea of where they are going before they click on a link that might lead them to something unexpected.
Another important reason to use ThirstyAffiliates is because of hackers that are seeking out links on the Internet that have not been masked. They’ll steal your affiliate link and have the links redirected to their site.
What this means is that for all of your hard and diligent work on your website and all of the toil that you did to make that landing page and everything else all look so well that the profits you might have made are going to them instead of you.
Your links should be something that are easy enough to remember. Look at the two examples above and ask yourself which are you more likely to remember? The proof lies in the numbers being provided below for the before and after side-by-side statistics.

Now I realize that clicks don’t result in sales, the profits are when people actually purchase something from one of your affiliate links. If your affiliate links aren’t getting clicks, your likelihood to turn clicks into purchases remains unlikely. On the other hand, by having more clicks you’re increasing the likelihood of turning a profit and you can realize where you need to put your focus (i.e. your affiliate link may not be attracting because of the image, the landing page, your lack of enthusiasm, etc.).

However, your primary goal as a blogger is:

To get them to the site in the first place.
Explain why they need to go there.
Why it’ll be advantageous for the viewer to purchase the affiliate link that you are recommending
Show your enthusiasm for the affiliate link

Before and after statistics from using ThirstyAffiliates

These are the stats from my monthly blogging Self-Reflection posts that I write at the end of every month. I’ve updated the numbers as to how they pertain to the date of this post. The actual results from this post will be updated to the expected results in my next monthly self-reflection (mo. #9). From there, I’ll look at the expected results to see what needs improvement and set new expected results. I suggest that you might want to do the same for your blog so that you can continually track your progress and grow your blog. In addition, to make it easier to track your affiliate links, I’d suggest that you place them in alphabetical order (like I have just done). Another reason to put your list in alphabetical order is for you to see if you’re missing any of your affiliate links so that you can keep dibs on them. For example, when I rearranged my list I had left off Social Warfare, one of my favorite plug-ins that I highly recommend.

Monthly Goals – March 2021

Goals	Expected Results	Actual Results	Made it!
Affiliate Links (Total)	30	155	x
Bluehost	NA	13	x
Try Bluehost	0	1	x
Buycoolshirts clicks *	2	2	x
Canva *	1	5	x
Try Canva	0	4	x
Checks Unlimited	2	0
Grammarly *	1	0
Try Grammarly	0	0
Hollywood Memorabilia	1	0
Monster Insights	2	13	x
Try Monster Insights	0	11	x
Optin Monster *	2	0
Try Optin Monster	0	0
ShareASale	1	0
SiteGround	NA	13	x
Try SiteGround	0	1	x
Social Warfare	0	12	x
Try Social Warfare	0	11	x
Tailwind	15	26	x
Try Tailwind	0	14	x
Tailwind Create	0	10	x
Try Tailwind Create	0	14	x
ThirstyAffiliates *	0	0
Try ThirstyAffiliates	0	0
TV Store Online clicks	2	3	x
WPONline Support clicks	1	0

An ” * ” next to the name above means that’s where you might want to consider putting your focus on improving the landing page for your affiliate link.

You might have already noticed that above I’ve put Try xyz into some of the columns. These are the affiliate links that I use for my text Affiliate links. For Affiliate links where I want to use a picture, I don’t include the word try. The reason for doing this is that there’s a standard setup that affiliate link mask programs use which is generally: (your domain/recommends/affiliate link).

I had put NA next to Bluehost and SiteGround. Because I went to the site itself and checked I had no way of knowing the total number of clicks. With ThirstyAffiliates, the guesswork and the need to go to multiple sites to check your stats isn’t necessary. With one-stop shopping, you can see all of the Affiliate links that you’ve posted and their stats (see below for a sample).

Tailwind: Total clicks: 26
Last 7 days: 23
Last 30 days: 26

ThirstyAffiliates Pro Features

Advanced Link Insertion Types
Advanced Statistics Reports
Affiliate Link Picker Tool
Amazon API Importing
Automatic 404 Checker
Automatic Affiliate Disclosure – no longer worry about forgetting if you’ve added your affiliate disclosure.
Automatic Keyword Linking
Basic Statistics Reports
Choose Your Redirect Type (Enhanced JS Redirect or Server-Side)
Control Plugin Visibility For Multi-Author Blogs
CSV Import / Export Tool
Exclude Known Bots From Statistics
Export Statistics Reports as CSV
Geolocation Link Redirects
Google Analytics Click Event Pushing
Google Tag Manager Compatibility
High Speed HTAccess Redirect
Link Categorization
Link Event Notification Emails
Link Scheduling
No Follow & Open In New Tab Options
REST API Compatibility
See Which Pages/Posts Affiliate Links Are Inserted
Shortening / Destination Cloaking
Smart Uncloaking (for Amazon Associates compatibility)
URL Shortening (with bit.ly & goo.gl)
Uses Custom Post Types
WooCommerce External Product Integration
WPML & Polylang Translation Plugin Integrations

I’ve highlighted the features that I really like in purple.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time discussing the benefits of why you should be using ThirstyAffiliates. So now it’s time to start looking at how you can use this program on your blog.

Download the plug-in
Install the plug-in
Activate the plug-in
Setup the license key

NOTE: They don’t have a free trial. However, they do have a 14-day refund policy if the plugin doesn’t suit your purposes.

Download the plug-in from ThirstyAffiliates. Once you’ve downloaded the plug-in it’s like installing any other plug-in that’s a two-step process.

Install the plug-in. Go to WordPress > Plug-ins > Add New. Browse to where you placed the file on your computer. After it’s been installed it won’t work until you’ve activated it.
Activate it – Simply press the Activate button.
Copy and paste the key that was e-mailed to you and that will finish most of the setup features.

Now you’re ready to use ThirstyAffiliates. In WordPress go to >
TA ThirstyAffiliates.

At the top, click on New Affiliate Link. There are only three fields that are of primary concern.

Add Title
URL’s
Attach Images

Adding your Title

As I suggested earlier, I use Try xyx for my text affiliate links and all other links that have images do not contain the word Try in the title. This is not a standard that you need to follow, it’s only a recommendation from me so that you can easily distinguish the difference between your text affiliate links and one’s with an image.

Adding the URL

Copy and paste the URL that you would like to use. ThirstyAffiliates will make the changes to the new affiliate link.

Attach Images

At the present time, I just use the one on the left to upload my image.

Be sure to press Save. To add any new links repeat the process. Keep going until you’ve added the affiliate links that you like to use the most.

Adding an Affiliate Link with an image in WordPress

In your Guttenberg editor,click on the + sign and you should see a button for ThirstyAffiliates Image. This only works with your Affiliate links that have an image.

Type in the name of your Affiliate Link. For example, in this example I’ll add one of my images for Canva. So you simply type in the name – i.e. Canva.

You’ll notice that it loads a thumbnail of your Affiliate link. If you don’t click on the image, it won’t be visible to your users. Be sure to click on the image that you want to use, you can upload more than one image (see below as you can see how the size changes to the larger image).

Adding an Affiliate Link with no image in WordPress (text link).

Type out the text that you plan to use (including your affiliate link). To continue with the example above I’m using Canva.

Highlight the word that you want to use for your affiliate link. In this case, I’ve highlighted Canva. To the right of link, there’s a drop-down arrow. TA ThirstyAffiliates should be at the top of the row (or close to the top).

Notice that when I type “Try” all of my Try Affiliate links will appear and you can select the one that you want to use.