Amalinks Pro is a WordPress plugin that is a blessing for Amazon affiliate marketers and in this post, I will be doing a detailed Amalinks Pro Review.
Most affiliate marketers start off with Amazon affiliate marketing.
While it is not something that I would recommend anybody to completely rely on, but still the Amazon associate program isn’t something you should completely ignore.You can read my post on the advantage and disadvantages of the Amazon affiliate program to know more.
But for everybody who is using the Amazon affiliate program or, are planning to use it, do you know that most of these affiliate marketers are violating the terms of Amazon in some way or, the other?
Yes, you heard that right. In fact, I too was doing it all wrong until one day I got a stinker from Amazon. But more on that and all the details about where you as an Amazon affiliate marketer could be going wrong, a little later in the post.
Amalinks Pro is all that you will need to ensure you are on the right side of Amazon’s affiliate policies. In fact, it is much more than that.
Amalinks Pro is also a savior if you are an amazon affiliate marketer and especially one who has no API access and has always thought that
Read on to know all about this plugin and its advantages and disadvantages in this Amalinks Pro Review.
What is Amalinks Pro?
Amalinks Pro is a WordPress plugin that helps display Amazon products on your WordPress based websites and blogs beautifully, all while staying compliant to the terms and policies of the Amazon associate program.
If you have been promoting Amazon products as an affiliate marketer, then you would have realized that adding a link to a product on Amazon that you want to promote, is pretty simple.
All you need to do is go to the product page, grab a link for the product and paste it wherever you are planning to add the link.
While that is the easiest way of promoting an Amazon affiliate product, that isn’t the best way of promoting it. In fact, that isn’t even the most powerful way of promoting a product from Amazon.
Powerful! What is that, you ask?
To understand that we need to understand how you generally promote affiliate products.
They are primarily 2 types.
The first one is where you are running a blog and you write informative articles and add relevant links to promote a related product.
In this method of promotion, an affiliate link is just another link with the only difference that anybody clicking over and buying the products earns the blogger a commission. I do this all the time in most of my posts.
The second way of promoting a product is by way of creating dedicated pages to a specific product. You can write reviews for products you use, create comparative product pages, demo pages, etc. and promote a product.
If you are a serious affiliate marketer and rely on affiliate marketer as your primary income source, then it is this second way of promoting products that you would want to follow.
Why?
Because of a couple of reasons –
- Firstly these dedicated pages are easy to optimize of the search engines and thereby get ranked on search engines. After all it is this organic traffic that is going to help you make money from these products.
- Secondly, these pages serve as a one stop resource for people who are looking for more information about a specific product before buying it. Keep in mind that these people are already primed for the purchase decision and are waiting for a push which is something these dedicated pages can do.
- Lastly, if you do it right, these pages can build confidence in the visitors and help in better ROI.
Now, if you are the first type who would just add links in their regular blog posts, then things are pretty easy for you and you wouldn’t need something like this plugin. So this Amalinks Pro review is not for you.
But if you are the 2nd type, then read on.
Coming to the 2nd peril that most Amazon affiliate marketers (the 2nd type) face.
The Amazon associate program offers an API that helps pull their product details which you can then display on your websites. This is one thing that makes affiliate marketing with Amazon extremely easy.
But then there is a catch.
You get access to the Amazon API only if you drive enough sales. If you are a new affiliate marketer, you will have the Amazon API access. But if you do not drive enough sales then they quickly revoke the API access and will reinstate it only once you have achieved the qualifying criteria.
Now the problem with most plugins is that, they work only if you have the API access. So, if for some reason you do not have the API access, then you have no option but to place links manually on your blog.
It is here that Amalinks Pro comes in handy and you will realize it once you start using amalinks.
Amalinks Pro Review – The Features
To sum up, here are the 3 most important benefits of Amalinks Pro WordPress plugin –
- You can create beautiful Amazon product pages even if you do not have the API access
- Display Amazon products in comparison tables, product showcases, product images etc. easily with a few clicks
- Never fear about violating any of the Amazon associate program policies
Amalinks Pro helps build your Amazon affiliate pages in multiple ways. Here’s a quick look at these features –
Insert Text Links on Buyer Keywords
You can insert amazon associate policy compliant text links on buyer-triggering keyword phrases, thus increasing your click-through-rates. This can be done in both API as well as Non-API cases.
Here’s how you can add a text link and how it looks on your page.
Beautiful and Compliant Image links
Inserting image links of Amazon products has a lot of problems because of the policy around usage of product images from Amazon.
Most people are in violation of these policies when they download images from Amazon and upload them to their sites.
Amalinks Pro addresses this issue by helping insert beautiful and compliant image links on your blogs.
Here’s how it looks on your blog.
Call-to-action buttons
Amalinks Pro helps create custom call-to-action buttons that will prompt visitors to click, thereby increasing your click-through-rates.
Here’s how these call-to-action buttons look.
Create attractive Product Showcases
This is one of my favorite features of the Amalinks Pro plugin.
You can create beautiful looking Product showcase sections on your posts. In fact, you can even create a whole page where you can showcase multiple products in these beautiful showcases like this one that I created on our Indian recipe blog.
This is how a product showcase looks.
Amalinks Pro gives you multiple options with these product showcases as well. You can create showcase sliders, single product showcase or, a showcase with multiple product images.
It also ensures that you are fully compliant with the Amazon policies by inserting necessary disclaimers and disclosures wherever required.
Product Table Builder
Another extremely good feature of the plugin is the table builder. It helps you build comparison tables of multiple products.
You can even create product comparisons and showcase them in a table.
Take a look at how the tables look.
Those were some of the features of the plugin.
Now let us get into the Amalinks Pro review and see how the plugin lives up to its promises.
Amalinks Pro Review
In this review, we will be looking at some of each of the below aspects in details and rating them basis my experience.
- Ease of use
- Features
- Support
- Development and Updates
- Pricing
Ease of use
Amalinks Pro isn’t very difficult to use but it is very simple as well. If you are using the API version, then it might be very simple for you but the Non-API users might find it a little difficult.
But to be frank, that effort is still worth it because it makes your mind free of the worry of violating Amazon’s policies.
Check out the below steps involved in putting together a example product showcase.
It starts from entering the ASIN of the product you wish to add the link for which will then open the product page on Amazon and you can choose the details you want to enter and start entering the details.
That’s almost an 8 step process excluding the step where you have to go to Amazon and copy your affiliate link to use in the affiliate link text box and the image link to use for the image box on the product showcase.
Why so many steps in case of Non-API?
The reason is simple. Because you do not have API access and without API access the plugin cannot automatically pull in all the required information from the Amazon website.
In spite of so many steps, I would still say that this is a very simple plugin to use in order to create the kind of showcase boxes and tables that it allows you to.
And I can also tell you that there isn’t an easier method of doing in, that you will be able to find online.
That aside, installing, activating and adding the license etc. is all pretty simple and is just like any other WordPress plugin.
Features
We already spoke about the many features that Amalinks Pro offers Amazon affiliates.
You can use the plugin in many ways – insert text links in your posts, build dedicated product pages, insert product showcases, insert comparison tables, create comparisons and display it in the a tabular form etc. You can use your own ideas to use this different ways on your website.
No other plugin gives you so many options and features especially if you do not have API access.
And you can see for yourself that each of these product showcases and comparison tables built with Amalinks Pro look very beautiful on the site and help you convert your visitors better, though the shortcodes look a little ugly in your content editor.
The one downside that I found is that once your shortcode is entered, you cannot change anything or, select a different product. You have to delete the entire thing and start over from getting all the required information again.
Support
I am somebody who is particularly interested in the kind of support that product creators offer.
I stay miles away from any product, company or, brand that treats me, the customer as filth because I believe that if they are unable to value a customer, irrespective of how small his purchase may be, they would never be able to understand the problems that a customer faces and develop or, update their products to solve these problems. (This is why I picked up some of the products like Crello, Thrive Themes, Designrr etc. as against some of their popular counterparts.)
Hence, the first thing that I check immediately after I bought a product is their customer support.
I did the same with the Amalinks Pro support as well. In fact, I went to them even asking some lame questions and they were quick to answer and they responded helpfully.
And I can say that I was super impressed with their support.
Amalinks Pro only has email support available. Yet their response was super quick. They were friendly, understanding and extremely helpful with their support.
Development and Update
This is something that I am usually pretty concerned with, whenever I buy a premium plugin.
To some extent this has been solved by the subscription based models that plugin developers have started following these days, yet there are developers who often sell and forget that their plugins need updates and constant developments.
With Amalinks Pro, you don’t need to worry about developments or, updates. Since this plugin was developed for personal use by Matthew and he still continues to use it for himself, the development never stops.
And I have proof on this. In the last 5 months of using the plugin I have seen at least 3 major updates to the plugin and these have introduced a lot of new features, simplified usage and streamlined the process.
Pricing
Most of us are usually concerned about this one and just like you, I am too.
And it is here that I felt that the pricing could have been a little more affordable.
The price for a single license is $67 for a year, renewed annually at the same price. And for a 3 site license it is at $127.00 per year and both of these includes the table builder as well.
There is a platinum option which costs $497 one time payment for lifetime use on unlimited websites, which is good if you want to pay once and forget.
Now if you are somebody who builds sites that are focused on selling amazon affiliate products, then you will have to go with a 3-site license or, more. And that means shelling out a few hundred dollars every year.
While the features of the plugin, the efforts put in by the team in its development etc. is enough to outweigh the price, it is still slightly on the higher side.
Matthew does promotions a few times in a year and most of these times the prices are reduced to 50%. And sometimes he just enrolls you at the same renewal charges as well.
And at 50%, the plugin is a steal.
But even if you have to buy it at the full price, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it just as I did it 5 months back because actually speaking, it is a steal even at that price.
Amalinks Pro – The Verdict
If you have even done some Amazon affiliate marketing, I am sure you would realize the pain involved in adding their products to your site while complying with their numerous policies.
Amalinks Pro is a blessing to resolve this pain.
And if you are struggling with non API access, then the Amalinks amazon plugin is a must have for you.
From an overall aspect, the plugin is feature rich, simple to use and extremely user-friendly although it can be said that it is priced a little high.
But if you compare it with some of its competitors, who gives less than half the features that Amalinks Pro offers, you will realize that the pricing isn’t that bad.
The final verdict of this Amalinks Pro review is that this plugin is a must buy and a must have for anybody seriously interested in Amazon affiliate marketing.
You can buy or, checkout the plugin here.
Amalinks Pro
$67.00
Pros
- Easy to use
- Works for Non-API access as well
- Multiple product display formats
- Excellent customer support
- Regular Development and Constant updates
Cons
- Slightly Priced high
- No option of editing the shortcode