For those of you who read FamousBloggers regularly, or even contribute to this great community, you might know about a plugin of mine that was reviewed a couple of months ago called ThirstyAffiliates.
ThirstyAffiliates is an affiliate link management plugin that helps affiliates cloak and redirect their affiliate links, easily drop their links into posts and keep track of all their clicks.
Today I’m super proud to announce to you that ThirstyAffiliates 2.0, the next generation of this popular plugin is available.
There’s some great updates and a number of cool new features that I want to tell you about. There’s also a little surprise at the end of this post too..
Some of the changes in version 2.0:
- New look, no more black interface
- Improved workflow and UI
- Added plugin updating with WordPress’s update dashboard
- Added a new statistics engine to allow you to better explore your statistics
- Robot and web crawler visits no longer count as clicks
- An option to stop logged in users counting as clicks
Updates now delivered via WordPress dashboard
First up, there was a huge pain point that I wanted to address going into version 2.0.
In the past, all plugin updates were delivered via email. The problem was that not all people were updating to the new version which could leave open bugs and things that were fixed in the update. These users were also missing out on new enhancements which was a bummer!
In the new version all plugin updates are now delivered via your WordPress dashboard which is the safest way to have a premium plugin deliver updates.
Hearing What You Have To Say
What I kept hearing at the start was that the black backgrounds and non-standard interface was distracting. It felt too weird and different from the other plugins they were using and the standard WordPress user interface.
So in version 2.0, all the black backgrounds are gone and loads of effort has gone into improving the user interface and workflow of ThirstyAffiliates.
Rebuilt Statistics Add-on for Premium edition owners
One of the coolest features we’ve had in comparison with competing plugins has always been our statistics.
Stats is an add-on for premium plugin owners and it adds the ability to track clicks on your affiliate links.
In the old version these statistics were limited to clicks over the last week, the previous week, the current month and the previous month, as well as clicks over all time.
In version 2.0 this has been beefed up significantly.
Statistics now gets it’s own area and is more like a dashboard experience similar to what you would find in any analytics package.
You can search over date periods, pull out individual links for analysis, examine clicks over categories or sub categories that you have setup and more.
This really enhances the functions of the core plugin, like having categories of links, and gives you a way to analyse the click patterns of your users.
Robot and web crawler blocking
ThirstyAffiliates now also blocks robots and web crawlers so they don’t mess up your statistics.
This means that the click statistics data you collect on your links is far more accurate.
Logged in users can now also be blocked from recording as clicks in your statistics with a simple flick of an option in the settings.
Check out the new video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahKNUkj7mcY]
As there was before, there are still two editions. The Standard edition is the core plugin only and the Premium edition comes with the statistics add-on plus some other goodies.
Birthday Bonus Discount!
My birthday is in April so I’ve decided that because I’m getting old and don’t really need anything I’d give something to you.
Plus (as if that wasn’t already a good enough reason to give you a discount) my birthday this month is shared with ThirstyAffiliates. This time last year was when I started writing the first lines of code.
So to wish myself and ThirstyAffiliates a happy birthday this month and to celebrate the debut of version 2.0, I’m giving a massive 30% discount to anyone who enters the code “BIRTHDAY” during checkout. You can use this discount code for either edition.
I hope you enjoy the new features of ThirstyAffiliates 2.0.
If you’re interested in picking up a copy, you can check out all the details on the website.