AAWP vs. Lasso Plugin for Affiliate Marketing – Which One is Best?

UPDATE March 14, 2023: Straight to the point – I’m using Lasso as my affiliate plugin on several sites. This plugin offers so many terrific features for affiliates and content in general.  While affiliate promotions are not my main revenue source, it’s still something I do and Lasso makes it easier.

Decisions, decisions and more decisions.  There are so many affiliate plugins to choose from.

Nobody wants to buy more stuff than they need but all of us publishers want to squeeze out every dollar possible from our content.

That’s where AAWP plugin and the Lasso plugin come in to play.

I have both. I use both on different sites. I don’t use both on the same site.  As you’ll learn, there are nuanced differences between these two plugins.

The Short Version

For those of you who need the quick version, here it is.

If you solely promote Amazon, AAWP is best.  You get great looking product boxes and/or product tables for way less money than Lasso.

If you promote merchants other than Amazon, Lasso is your best bet.  The reason for this is you can link out to any merchant you want (including Amazon).  Lasso makes it possible to create custom product boxes that link out to any URL you insert.

Hence, I use Lasso on Fat Stacks and several other sites where I promote merchants other than Amazon.

For sites that promote only Amazon, AAWP is the plugin for me.

What do these plugins do? Why use them at all?

Truth is you don’t need either of these plugins.  You can easily promote Amazon and other merchants without them.

So why get them?

There are two main reasons to pony up bucks for these two plugins. They are:

More clicks:  Because they create pretty product boxes with buttons, they can get more visitors to click through to merchants maybe resulting in more affiliate revenue for you.

Amazon API: Amazon does not permit you to upload product images. You need to display product images via Amazon’s API, which both Lasso and AAWP does.

Save time:  This only applies to AAWP with respect to creating product tables.  You can crank out nice-looking product tables quickly.

Those are the key reasons to pay for either plugin.

What are the differences between these two plugins?

While nuanced, they do each have their different strengths.  Let’s dive in.

Lasso

As mentioned above, Lasso’s claim to fame, at least for me, is the ability to create great-looking product boxes that promote any URL I want.  I can send folks to another page on my site or any merchant I want with affiliate links.  It’s very flexibile.

Lasso product box design

There are several templates to choose from, but they’re all pretty similar. You can see them in my Lasso review.  Here’s one example (Cactus template which is my fave):

AAWP

AAWP’s strengths compared to Lasso are twofold:

Product Tables: Lasso does not create product tables while AAWP can (in addition to snazzy-looking Amazon product boxes).  The tables can be huge earners, so it’s a big win.

Price:  AAWP costs far, far less than Lasso.  Lasso charges the same monthly fee for every site you activate the plugin on.  AAWP offers packages priced annually. It’s way, way better pricing.  Lasso’s pricing annoys me actually.  That’s why I use AAWP on sites where Lasso isn’t critically important.

AAWP designs

Via shortcodes, you can control what’s included in product boxes and tables to a high degree. I usually stick with basic content but you have a lot of customization options.  Here’s an example of a product box and table (note I’m using screenshots from my niche site because I’m not wasting a license for AAWP on Fat Stacks):

AAWP Product Box Example:

AAWP Product Comparison Table Example:

As you can see the designs are very different.

Which one should you use?

First of all, only buy either of these plugins if you have traffic.  Otherwise, you’re wasting your money.  If you don’t have traffic, wait until you do. You can easily add these product boxes to existing content down the road.

If you have traffic, the only real question to answer is whether you promote non-Amazon merchants. If so, and you do so successfully, Lasso is the right plugin for you (despite its horrendous price).

If you only promote Amazon, AAWP is for you.

I recommend AAWP.  Since this comparison was published I removed Lasso from every site including Fat Stacks because it was causing 521 errors.  I’m sure Lasso support could have fixed it but I really don’t have time to deal with plugins that cause these issues.

I hope I made this seemingly difficult decision easy for you.

=> buy AAWP here

Jon Dykstra

Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.