If your like me your a one-man band. You have to do it all. Write the posts, manage your ads, setup custom banners, landing pages, sales pages, and the list goes on and on. So when something comes along that will help me manage all of this I am all for it. Today I take a close look at CashDonator and put it through its paces. Read more for this WordPress plugin review for CashDonator.
What is CashDonator?
CashDonator is a premium plugin does 6 awesome things in one plugin. You can setup paypal donations, ads, banners, custom affiliate links to products you promote, adsense banner ads, email signup forms using today’s popular email services, custom sales boxes, and so much more. Pretty much the only limitations you will have when using this program?
Your Imagination.
God… I sound like salesman. Sorry – back to the review!
Installation
Installation is a breeze. You receive your zip file that includes the plugin and a killer eBook which provides some great tips on how you can use this plugin to generate income from your blog. You’ll also have a zip of the actual plugin itself.
After you take the cashdonator.zip from the original file you received. All you need to do is open up word press go to your Plugins screen -> Add New -> Upload -> Browse to cashdonator.zip and click on the Install Now button.
Once it’s been installed you access the plugin by clicking on Settings then CashDonator. You’ll be presented with a screen to enter your registration key. After that you are set to go! It took me less than a minute to install and I was ready to go.
Setup
All you need to do after you register? Input your Paypal settings and your ready to start! What is great is that it isn’t just setup for English. You also choose from French, German, Spanish, Australian, UK English, and Japanese.
Ease of Use
I love plugins that not only do multiple tasks if I have to use them but are easy to use. I am happy to say that CashDonator is VERY easy to setup and use. I was able to setup all of the examples in about an hour of futzing around with the settings.
The basic setup for creating a new box goes like this:
- Click on the Create Ad Box
- Create a name for the box in the ‘Ad Box Name’ field.
- Note: It will always add ‘cashdonator’ to the beginning of the name you choose.
- Click on the article(s) you wish to have the box appear on.
- Click on ‘Create Ad Box’
- Click on the ‘Manage Ad Box’ setting.
- Click on ‘edit’ for the box you wish to change/create.
Box Type
Enable – Check this box to enable the ad box you created.- Donations Box – To place a Paypal Donation button on a page.
- Direct Sales Box – To create a box for selling a product.
- Affiliate Box – To create a custom Affiliate banner box.
- Banner Box – To display Banners from ad networks or Affiliates
- Adsense Box – Place an adsense box anywhere in a post.
- Newsletter Box – Create a Newsletter sign up box.
General Settings
- Amount – Put in the amount you wish to setup for donations, or the price for selling products or services.
- Thank You Page – A link that will redirect visitors back to after they have completed their purchase.
- Your Affiliate Link – If you want to promote an affiliate product
- Product/Service Name – Fill this field out if you are going to be selling a product or Service.
Ad Box Types – Setup
- Banner Box Type – Use this for setting up your custom banner. Completely customizable settings.
- Adsense Box Type – Paste your Adsense code and easily set the alignment for how you wish to place it within your posts.
- Newsletter Box Type – Paste your form code you get from your favorite email service. This box supports all of the major ones: Aweber, MailChimp, GetResponse, and iContact. I tested it with MailChimp and it works great!
Banner Setup
Adsense Setup
Newsletter Setup
Box Settings
The last section is the Box Settings. This is where you will make necessary changes based on the box type you pick. This is mainly used for the Donation, Direct Sales, and Affiliate box types. Here you can quickly setup and customize the look of the box.- Item Title – This is the Title fo the box. Make sure to use a catchy title!
- Item Description – Use this field to outline the product/service you are trying to sell. This box supports basic HTML codes for bold, italics, underline etc.
- Thumbnail – You can use a custom thumbnail for the box if you wish. It also has settings to input the Height and Width
- Box Heigth and Width – Setup a custom size for the box or leave it blank and it will auto fill within the post.
- Box Background Color – You can choose just about any color in the rainbow for the background of your box.
- Box Background Image – If you wish you can choose a custom background instead.
- Box Position – It will list the name of the box to place in the post so you can place it where you want.
- Box Auto Placement – None, Top or Bottom (Place at the top, bottom, or automatically in your post)
- Box Alignment – Default, Left or Right
- Box Title Underline – Underline the Title of the box you created.
- Box Title Color – Change the color of the TITLE of the box you created.
- Box Description Color – Change the color of the text of the description.
- Button Text – This is used when you are selling a service or setting up an affiliate link. You can input text like BUY ME NOW etc.
Box Placement
Once you create the box and chose the article you wish to post it in. You can then create the post and input the cashdonator box easily by simply putting in the name of the box (i.e. cashdonator-example) anywhere in the post. Based on the setting of how you setup the box initially it will display on the page that way. After you hit publish the new box will be displayed in the post.
Oh, I almost forgot! You can setup a box to be placed on as many posts as you wish! Unfortunately there isn’t an options to just hit “all articles” – so you would have to manually click every article manually.
Examples
Now I tested this on a new install of WordPress using Thesis. It is my sandbox of this site. I use this one to play with plugins, design ideas etc. You know so I don’t take down the main site and lose traffic? 
These are just some very quick examples of what I was able to do with the plugin in a very short amount of time.
Donation Box
Below is an example donation box I setup:
Direct Sales Box
Below is an example Sales Box – Yes I know it’s ugly. I made it pretty quickly. If your half way decent at design you can improve on this greatly!
Affiliate Box
Below is an example of an affiliate box I setup using CommentLuv
Banner Box / Adsense Box
I mashed the two examples below in one post. The top shows a custom banner link I created (BlogEngage rocks btw!) and an Adsense box I use on this site currently. I have the Adsense box right aligned.
Newsletter Box
This is an example of the sign up box that I have setup below. It was a snap to setup a custom box that was already styled and ready to go! Remember though that I use Thesis and this is a customized form. Your results will vary depending on what mail service/theme/design you end up using.
What Doesn’t Work?
This plugin is only for your posts. It will not work anywhere outside of your posts. This isn’t the fault of the plugin though! It works exactly the way it was designed for so I’m not faulting it.
Otherwise – other than user error – the plugin works great. It seems lightweight and runs very fast. I was able to easily make changes, updates, fixes in no time. And when you are short on time like myself? You need it to be fast!
I would make sure you read the online documentation thoroughly though to prevent some initial snags you might run into with the program.
So How Much is This Going to Cost Me?
With a lot of these types of plugins they want to charge you up to $90.00 bucks!! But CashDonator is charging a phenomenally low price for this product. You only have to pay $27.00 for an unlimited license version or $17.00 for the single user license of this awesome plugin!
Go get CashDonator and save yourself time and money later by spending a little bit now!
Conclusion
At first I was skeptical about this plugin. So what? I can create boxes. But this plugin does so much more than that. It truly is a versatile plugin. And for me the less plugins I have to run the better. So couple the fact it handles multiple tasks easily and quickly and the price is so cheap? For me this is win/win all over the place. If you are looking for easy ways to add banners/ads, product/service boxes, newsletter signups with virtually no coding needed? Than this is the plugin for you.
I would like to see some changes/additions in a future version though:
- Add the ability to embed YouTube into the Description Box
- Make a Widget so I can add custom boxes to the Sidebars – or wherever I had custom Widgets created for WordPress themes that allow it.
- Add more functionality to the Description window so I can add things like custom bullets easily!
I’m going to have to bug the developer now!
Are you currently using CashDonator? What do you think of the plugin? Share your experience with CashDonator in the comments below. If you have any questions let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them too!
- $17.00
About the Author
