You might remember that a couple of weeks ago I reviewed a premium WordPress plugin called WP Affiliate Pro. In the time since then, I came across a similar premium WordPress plugin called WP Ninja Affiliate, which I managed to pick up a copy of and have been playing around with ever since. What can I say? I’m a sucker for plugins that have the potential to make my online life easier!

At first glance, WP Ninja Affiliate might seem a lot like the WP Affiliate Pro plugin due to the many similarities, but in testing I’ve found that in many ways, it is a more advanced version of that plugin. It does the things you’ve come to expect from WP Affiliate Pro, such as managing your affiliate links, adding cloaked affiliate links to your existing blog posts, and even provide you with click statistics.

In addition to all that good stuff, you’ll also be able to:

1. Assign Multiple Keywords - If you want to use multiple anchor text for an individual affiliate link, you can do so with this plugin.
2. Group Affiliates - Group your affiliate links for easy management.
3. Enjoy Smart Caching - This plugin uses a smart caching feature to prevent your blog from slowing down.

I also found that many of the functions are easier to do than WP Affiliate Pro. Also, in the time that I’ve owned this plugin, it has already seen updates, leading me to believe it is very well supported by the author. If you aren’t happy with your purchase for some reason, you have an eight week money back guarantee!

Overall, I am very happy with my acquisition of this premium WordPress plugin I plan on using it on a few of my WordPress blogs. If you find you are managing a lot of affiliate links on your blogs, I recommend you check out the WP Ninja Affiliate splash page.

When I first ran across the WP SEO Sniper premium WordPress plugin, I wasn’t really sure what exactly to expect.   After all, there is a popular free SEO WordPress plugin called All-in-One SEO Pack that has really become popular within the WordPress community.

I immediately picked up a copy of the WordPress plugin and began to test it out to try to get an idea of how it compared to All-in-One SEO Pack.  After getting the plugin uploaded and activated, I jumped over to the plugin settings panel and began to dig through the available features.   I have to admit, I was instantly impressed!

From what I can tell, All-in-One SEO Pack is designed specifically for anyone to upload and activate for instant improved SEO, meaning it is designed for someone that doesn’t have any SEO knowledge.  SEO Sniper was created for those serious about SEO so that they can easily practice advanced SEO techniques on their WordPress blogs directly from the dashboard.  They even offer 3 user profiles, so you can set the plugin to Mild, Moderate, or Aggressive.

Although things are displayed a little differently, it appears that SEO Sniper includes everything that use get with All-in-One SEO Pack, but it takes your control over your blogs SEO to a whole new level.

The plugin was based upon Dan Thies’ SEO Fast Start manual, allowing you to easily implement Dan’s strategies on your WordPress blog. Based upon Dan’s suggestions, you should be:

• Prevent paged indexes and archives from being indexed by the search engines.
• Selectively nofollow links to the main index page from anywhere on your blog.
• Craft a custom page title, meta keywords, and meta description for the blog home page.
• Nofollow category links on the category pages.
• Nofollow category links on the individual posts.
• Nofollow category links on the individual pages.
• Noindex all tag archives.
• Nofollow all internal tag links.
• Automatically build a footer page menu.
• Insert Google Analytics code and Google site verification code.
• Specify if and where you want to nofollow links to the page.
• Specify if you want to prevent the page from being indexed by the spiders.
• Craft a custom page title, meta keywords, and meta description.
• Prevent the page from being included in the WordPress list of pages.
• Specify a custom CSS file to be applied.
• Perform a 301 redirection on the page.  (This is great for those wanting to cloak affiliate links)
• Link the page or post to other pages and posts with custom anchor text.

With SEO Sniper, you can do the following:

• Give your important content more PageRank by cutting out redundant pages.
• Preserves more PageRank to be shared amongst your lower level content pages.
• Make your entry in the search engines stand out and entice more clicks.
• Push more PageRank down to your individual posts.
• Preserve more PageRank to be shared amongst your posts.
• Preserve more PageRank to be shared amongst your pages.
• Since tags are mostly for human benefit, the value of having tag archives in the search engine index is debatable.
• Preserve more PageRank to go to your valuable content.
• Give your blog a fully SEO’d footer menu with selective nofollows on the links.
• Include your Google code without having to edit your theme files.
• Precisely control how PageRank flows to a page.
• Keep unimportant content out of the search engine index completely.
• Make your entry in the search engines stand out and entice more clicks.
• Keep unimportant pages out of the list of pages. Many themes use the page list to build a main top menu. Control which pages appear in that important menu.
• Individually style a particular post or page if you wish to do so.
• Send request for, and the original PageRank, from a redundant post or page to a new post or page.
• Implement SEO Fast Start Tiered Pairing or Circular Navigation techniques on your posts and pages to give each post or page as much PageRank as possible.

Like All-in-One SEO Pack, you get an actual menu in your Write panel that gives you full control over that particular post, even going as far as to give you things like the ability to do a 301 redirect for that particular post (pictures above).

Overall I am very impressed with this plugin, though you should already be comfortable with basic SEO techniques before upgrading to this WordPress plugin.

If you decide to give SEO Sniper a try, remember that you have a 56-day money back guarantee, so it is essentially risk free.  The author also promises regular plugin updates as WordPress changes, so you know it will be supported over time, unlike many free plugins.

You may also want to try it in conjunction with WP Affiliate Pro, as I have personally found that the two premium plugins work really well together.

Yesterday I posted an extensive review of the OIO Publisher premium WordPress plugin. Since then, I’ve managed to set up with a new contest for Hack WordPress readers!

I have been in contact with Simon, the creator of OIO Publisher, and he has generously agreed to offer two copies of the OIO Publisher plugin to two of our readers. In order to be considered for one of the plugins, here are the two simple requirements you’ll need to follow to enter into this contest:

1. Review the blog demo, the admin demo, and then write a post on your blog explaining what you feel is the biggest strength of the plugin and what you feel is missing that you’d like to see added in a future update of the plugin.
2. Place a link to both this post (so I can track entries) and the OIO Publisher’s homepage somewhere in your post.

This way Simon can get feedback on what features you like and also find out what things he can do to improve the plugin. All posts must be published by June 5, 2008. We will then review the posts and announce the two plugin winners on June 7, 2008. Good luck!

Update: If your blog post is not in English, please send the translation to Kyle AT HackWordPress DOT com.

When most people start out blogging, it is usually because they love to blog. Remember those days? Over time, you either quit or continue to grow as a blogger, and it is almost inevitable that at some point you will start to look into monetizing your blog. Whether you use Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, or direct advertising sales, there is nothing wrong with getting paid for doing what you love to do.  In fact in many ways, getting paid can cause you to work harder and up both the quality and quantity of your work.

One of the many problems with selling direct advertising is that it can sometimes be a pain to manage, and it often takes you away from what you love to do, which is blogging. It is kind of like small business owners who love their job, but hate all the paperwork and accounting that is involved with running and managing their own business.

Fortunately as WordPress bloggers, there is a solution available to us in the form of a WordPress plugin called OIO Publisher. This is an incredible premium WordPress plugin that will completely automate the entire advertising process on your blog. In fact, chances are that you have seen people using it (including many high profile bloggers), but just not realized this plugin is what they were using to control the entire process from their WordPress dashboard.

When you download OIO Publisher, you’ll receive a WordPress plugin and be able to get an API key for each blog you want to use it on. The plugin will create an OIO Publisher tab in your dashboard where you can manage your blogs advertisements (designate how many links, paid reviews, inline ads, banners, or custom advertising your blog will have available), create and manage an affiliate program for products or services on your blog from your dashboard, and even see statistics regarding your advertisements!  Possibly my favorite feature of this plugin is that you can even set the plugin to send weekly reports to your advertisers or place your statistical information into their marketplace.

The best part about this premium plugin is that it will just about manage everything for you for a one-time fee of $37.00. Once purchased, you then have access to use the plugin on as many blogs as you would like, as well as get access to their downloadable sales platform, marketplace, and all of the other features mentioned above!  You also get free updates each time the plugin is updated.

In my opinion, the value of this plugin heavily outweighs the low price, but if you’d like to see for yourself the plugin in action, I recommend you check out a demo of OIOPublisher and purchase your copy today. The demonstation allows you to view how it will look on your blog and how you can manage everything from your WordPress dashboard.

Depending on how many blogs you run and how many much time you spend practicing affiliate marketing, you have probably found that managing and tracking all of your affiliate links can often be very overwhelming.   All sorts of different affiliate accounts means a large amount of affiliate codes to manage and a lot of manual work getting them all into their proper place on your blog(s). 

There are a few different strategies you can use to manage your affiliate profile, but as users of WordPress, we are at a significant advantage because we have access to some great WordPress plugins.   There are a few plugins available that are designed to do something with your affiliate links, but I had yet to find one that really worked well and the way I wanted it to.   One that I tried even caused me some significant problems, requiring me to use a database backup.  

After all of my testing, so far the clear leader and only one that really worked well was the premium WordPress plugin WP-Affiliate Pro.  This plugin has a fee associated with it, but in my opinion it is totally worth it because it allows you to manage everything within your WordPress dashboard.  If you can up your affiliate income quickly, it will quickly pay for itself.

Here are a summy list of features I’ve thrown together based upon my experiences with this plugin:

• Control Your Affiliate Links From the Dashboard - With this plugin, you can instantly add affiliate links to specific keywords on your blog.  The plugin will search through old posts and update them with your affiliate links.  If you only want to do 1-2 per post, you can set it to only do that as well.  It is fully customizable from the WordPress dashboard.
• Tracks Your Affiliate Traffic - Each time an affiliate link is clicked, it is counted and will be displayed in real time within your WordPress dashboard.   This way you can figure out what products are working and which ones aren’t.  
• Masks Affiliate Links - This software will mask your affiliate links and also make it so people can’t hover their mouse over a link to see the destination.   The only way to find out is to click on the link.
• Customize Affiliate LInks - With this plugin, you can customize the look and style of your affiliate links to match your specifications.  This way you can make them stand out, use different fonts, or whatever you want to try to see what works. 
• Compatible with Other Advertising Methods - Whether you monetize your blog with Google AdSense or other advertising methods, this plugin is fully compatible.

So, as you can see, it is much more than your standard WordPress plugin.   If you’d like to see a video demonstration of these features, the authors have provided these two quick videos: 

• Video #1
• Video #2

You can also see the plugin in action on several top blogs that use WordPress, including affiliate marketing pro Zac Johnson’s blog. 

If you’d like to read more, I recommend you check out the WP-Affiliate Pro WordPress plugin page.

Have you ever noticed those blogs that seem to automatically generate content? Typically they are done in good taste, maybe linking to a small portion of one of your posts and providing a link to the source. There are a few ways to accomplish this with WordPress, with one method being the free WP-o-Matic WordPress plugin.

This WordPress plugin allows you to add/import your feeds and sort them into campaigns and categories for easy management. You can then automatically generate posts from the feeds of your choice. Additional features include the ability to relink specific words as well as rewriting words within posts.

WP-o-Matic is actually a pretty well done plugin, but has the potential for abuse in the wrong hands. I recommend people that download this plugin use it responsibly and always only post excerpts of others works and provide a link to the source.

Edit: There is now a premium WordPress plugin available called Auto Blogged, which is a MUCH more advanced version of this plugin and is probably the one you see most people using.   It has a one time fee associated with it, but the plugin will quickly pay for itself in a short period of time!

If you don’t want to be limited to just using WordPress, you’ll want to check out Niche Dominator.   It allows you to have similar functionality within WordPress and is much easier.   Niche Dominator also gives you additional options that don’t require WordPress.    Click over to get all the details.