Review: Affiliate Theme by Unique Blog Designs

Renee — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:18:53 +0000

Affiliate Theme is developed by the people at Unique Blog Designs (Nate Whitehill, Josh Mullineaux and Matthew Blancarte.) They are also the people behind Theme Wars, and Squeeze Theme.

The only reason I am including the links to the above sites, is to avoid confusion with other similarly named sites. There are a couple of other affiliate type themes for Word Press available on the internet.

What the Affiliate Theme is Supposed to Do

Make building and customizing affiliate sites using Word Press easy
6 unique layouts
Built in color picker
Lifetime access to Resource Center and Support
Optimized for PPC and SEO campaigns
Ability to build dynamic, high converting affiliate marketing web sites using a single theme

Where the Affiliate Theme Fails

The Affiliate Theme is buggy
Support is not handled in a timely manner
It is not easy and very time consuming if you have to deal with Affiliate Theme support and buggy issues
They do not post or offer any money back guarantee with their product on their sales page
It is over priced

My Experience with Affiliate Theme

I purchased the Affiliate Theme from Unique Blog Designs on September 29, 2009 for $124.95, but it was not until December 22, 2009 when I actually installed the theme. Major fail on my part, I admit, for not testing this sooner so my chances of getting a refund would be greater. Lesson learned

I assumed this would be a great product and didn’t think I would have issues since some big players in affiliate and internet marketing were singing the praises of this product, such as: John Chow, John Reese, Johnathan Volk, Yaro Starak, and Zac Johnson.

From the first installation of Affiliate Theme I was having problems. I joined the Affiliate Theme support forum and posted my first support issue on December 23, 2009. It took 7 days for a forum moderator to reply to my post. This should have been an immediate red flag. It was suggested that I submit a support ticket and I did so on January 3, 2010 and it was January 6, 2009 before anyone attempted to check out my support issues.

By that time I had uninstalled and reinstalled Word Press and uninstalled the affiliate theme as well. I reinstalled theme, placed another post on the support forum that support was not being handled in a timely manner. That post was deleted by the forum moderators.

On January 26, 2010 I was finally contacted by support about the issues I was having and on January 28, 2010 was advised the problem was corrected and the thread I had posted on the forum was closed.

On January 29, 2010 I emailed Nate Whitehill back that I was still having issues and the problem was not resolved. As of today I have not received a reply. *See update below*

On February 5, 2010 I sent a tweet to Nate Whitehill, a post on the forum, a support ticket and a screen shot of the formatting issues. The forum moderators have now set my comments up where that do not post immediately and have to be approved.

February 7, 2010 I removed the Affiliate Theme from my web site because I cannot afford to waste any more time on this theme. Time is money

I purchased this theme (developers option) because I owned several domains and I wanted to build affiliate sites using this theme. So far I have yet to build one site much less multiple sites.

I have been dealing with buggy issues with this theme since December 23, 2010 and as of February 7, 2010 it is still not working correctly.

Update

February 8, 2010 I was sent the following tweet from Nate Whitehill:

“Sorry for the delay – will have a response for you tonight.”

February 9, 2010 I received an email:

Hi Renee,

I understand by your tweet you are no longer using Affiliate Theme. I would be happy to give you a refund if that is the case. Let me know.

Thanks,

Nate

February 9, 2010: I sent an email to Nate that I would like a refund since I was unable to use this Wordpress Theme.

I received the following email from Nate Whitehill tonight at 7:08 PM:

Hi Renee,

Not a problem. I am sorry you had trouble using Affiliate Theme. We are almost finished with version 2.0 of the software which adds a lot of great new features and makes integrating affiliate offers even easier.

I just sent you the refund.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,

Nate Whitehill | Co-Founder | Unique Blog Designs, LLC

I am happy to report I have checked my PayPal account and I do have a refund

My Issues With the Affiliate Theme

Control panel was not showing up correctly as shown in their video tutorial (corrected)
At first offers were not appearing on the main page like they were supposed to (corrected)
The header and sub title are linked to the conversion URL instead of the post as checked on the settings (corrected)
Categories were not displaying correctly and the page was scrambled mess and not readable (semi-corrected) Appears correctly sometimes and other times the sidebar and the link post title is scrambled and not readable.
Control panel showing version 1.2 when I was using version 1.3 (corrected)
If visitors can not read the page, I’m not going to be able to sell affiliate products
Shady practice of deleting negative comments and issues on the support forum
This theme has not been completely developed and is not stable enough to use on multiple sites
In viewing the Support Forum post of other users, on some occasions it is 1-2 weeks before a post is answered by a moderator

While searching the web for Affiliate Theme reviews I stumbled across a review of Unique Blog Designs Squeeze Theme. This is an excellent in depth and honest review.

Had the Affiliate Theme lived up to my expectations, I would have purchased the Squeeze Theme and joined their affiliate program for both themes. I cannot in all honesty recommend nor promote their products via affiliate links.

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