Recently I wrote an article about how to improve your bottom line as a blogger in 30 days. In that article I mentioned using Ninja Affiliate and have since had a few people ask me to explain in detail how to run the plugin once installed.
I am happy to help, so here is your Affiliate Ninja for Beginners tutorial. Feel free to ask questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer.
1) Purchase (my affiliate link if you want to support this site) and install.
2) Once installed, go to your Tools and there you will find your installation.
2) Once you click on it, you will be presented with these options on the top:
3) I am going to show you how to add a new link that will help you customize your affiliate links and track if your traffic clicks. Keep in mind this also helps you set up ads and even put on nonaffiliate links so you can see the ROI when you review blog, do giveaways for brands, and more. You do not have to be making money on a link to track if your blog visitors are clicking.
Click Add New Link and you get this screen:
Now the breakdown of what this all means:
Let me stop here and explain further.
I am going to use my Ninja Affliate link as an example. The actual affiliate link is http://www.maxblogpress.com/go.php?offer=momdot&pid=31
I want to convert that to a new link that can be tracked on my end, so I change it to http://www.momdot.com/loves/ninja or http://www.momdot.com/recommends/ninja etc.
The link itself is up to you.
You can type in http://www.momdot.com/hates/thedentist for all anyone cares. You are basically telling Ninja to convert one link to a new link.
It works the same way as tracking places like bit.ly or ow.ly.
You don’t have to use an affiliate either. You can use http://www.facebook.com/yourpersonal page and convert it to htp://www.momdot.com/loves/facebook and that will tell you how many go to your facebook page when you connect your new link.
Get it?
On with the show:
Now cloaking is for people that do now ant anyone to know there is an affiliate link involved, so you can check that if you want. I do not. The other part is adding keywords. If you add keywords here, what Ninja will do is find every word on your site that matches and converts it to your new link. Let’s say I want to change the word “Facebook” on my site to my facebook fan page. I can set up an affiliate ninja link and it will scour my site and insert it automatically on those words.
Staying with the same example, this is what it would look like on my end:
If I press “add link” it will now search my site and change all the words I listed to my fan page.
4) Now you ask…why go through all the trouble to change links? A few reasons.
One, if you have a large site and are just now starting to get involved into affiliates, you can take 20 minutes and set up keywords that will autoconnect in your past blog posts and start creating you some income. Don’t worry, you can go in to specific blog posts and turn OFF the ninja if its a competing link to an article you wrote, etc.
Two, you get to track how many people are laving your site and where they are going. This is especially good for marketing and showing an ROI on your site. You can connect the new link to pictures, graphics, ads you create, links on words, or even give to someone else so you can track a campaign from their site and how often you are being clicked.
This is one of the pages in my affiliate ninja tracking. It shows me how many unique and raw clicks and gives me options there on the right to edit keywords and more (off screen)
5) Once a link is set up, you can use it without connecting keywords. You can set it up and just connect it in a post. In a blog post, you have two options. You have a drop down right in your post that will allow you to add links that are already set up and change the keywords right there (note the drop down):
Or you can link the old fashioned way:
Last but not least, you can exclude links that are auto generated from specific blog posts if you like. Just open your post and scroll to the very bottom:
I think those are the basics of using the plugin. Feel free to ask questions!
~trisha
Thank you Trisha. I just now found this and bought the plug-in through your link.
Thanks for the great tutorial!
Like Mandy and Toni, I have had an amazon affiliate link for quite a while. I just didn’t know what to do with the code. I will look at the forum and see if I can find your answer. Thanks
I placed it as a page for now on blogger, but I am still learning how to create my website blog in WordPress. I need someone to go step by step while sitting next to me, slapping my wrists (like a piano teacher would for playing the wrong note or correct hand position). I cannot learn by watching a video. But it is on there. I will switch it when I am ready to publish the site (which at this point might happen when I am old a grey, LOL)
One day when I’m not fraid of another challenge, I will go to WordPress and then I can do these things, too. I wonder, can I try to learn WP while I operate my blog on blogger?
Barbara, I am brand new at blogging. I am learning WordPress, and it’s not so bad. I found a great book that you may want to check out called, “Teach Yourself Visually WordPress”. The book has lots of nice colorful pictures. So, if you are a visual learner, it may be a great tool for you!
You rock Trisha! Just set mine up now I’m just waiting for the big bucks to roll in..LOL
I just signed up for this last week and it took forever to find my way around. I even started a tutorial post on my blog to help others but I might just give up and link to yours. …if you don’t mind!
feel free! (you may also take a picture to use on your site if you like)
Thanks!
Also do you make your links no follow in the options?
i dont, but i suppose some might. Its up to your personal SEO
Very nice tutorial. When I downloaded it a while back I didn’t know what to do with it.
This is very helpful and I appreciate all you are doing to help us.
I am still having trouble finding what my Amazon affiliate link is. When I go in to find links to products, they are all in HTML code…and that doesn’t work in NA. Can you tell me how to find that? Thank you!
This is what I am confused about as well.
the html code holds two pices..one is the link and one is the picture of the product…its as simple as pulling the link itself and should have your amazon code in it. You can just cut and paste it out…then test it in an open screen and see if it takes you back to the product…but ill do my best to show you
ah…thats a whole other thing. I cant tell you as much as I can show you. Let me do some screen shots for the forum. Might not be till later tonight though
This is awesome – I have NA but never understood how to use it. Thank you!