Posted by Do you want to turn your WordPress website into a money-making machine? In this article, I’m going to share my picks of the best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers that you can use to build a passive income stream.
Chances are, you follow the same successful formula as most of us. You create engaging content to attract visitors. Then, you turn those visitors into leads and send them down the sales journey. Finally, you make money from the customers who actually buy your products.
It’s a good system, and that’s why everyone uses it. But it’s not the only way to make money.
Let’s dive on in!
ThirstyAffiliates
ThirstyAffiliates is another powerful affiliate link management tool for WordPress. It allows you to manage your affiliate links within the WordPress admin dashboard easily.
You can quickly insert links into posts, cloak links, auto-insert affiliate links, and even see how each link is performing on your site. You can also sort your links into categories, which makes it easier to organize your affiliate partners.
The reason why the top two spots in our list are taken by link management plugins is because it’s that important. You need to choose either Pretty Links or Thirsty Affiliates.
URL Shortener
URL Shortener works in a similar way to Thirsty Affiliates, in that it allows easy link shortening for your affiliate links. You can create pretty short links that are easier for site visitors to memorise and they’ll fit perfectly into tweets and other social media posts.
Your links can be sorted by category, which means all your affiliate links are organised in one place, making it easy to find the one you need.
URL Shortener includes redirect headers, with an option to open links in a new tab or window. And bulk link replacing is an option editors will enjoy as it saves time having to edit links in posts one at a time.
These features and more are bundled in with the free option of this plugin, which is great if you’re on a budget. But more functionality is unlocked with the pro version.
AffiliateWP
Affiliate WP is the best affiliate management plugin for WordPress. It’s developed by the same folks behind the renowned Easy Digital Downloads plugin, which is listed as one of our best WordPress eCommerce plugins.
If you’re selling a product on your WordPress website and want to create a fully-fledged self-hosted affiliate program, then AffiliateWP is the best choice for you. AffiliateWP is easy to set up, offers seamless integration with your eCommerce product purchases, accurately tracks your affiliate sales, and more.
WP Notification Bars
WP Notification Bars gives you a simple, unobtrusive way to promote affiliate offers on your site. It adds a simple notification bar at the top of your posts or pages.
While you can use this notification bar for email opt-ins or social profile building, it’s also a good way to add a CTA to an affiliate offer that you’re promoting.
In the free version, you’ll be able to customize colors and positioning. And you’ll also be able to show your notification bar only to Google Visitors or Facebook visitors, which provides you with some helpful targeting options.
But the targeting options get really cool if you upgrade to the pro version of the plugin.
Pretty Links
It’s no surprise that the wildly popular Pretty Links made our list of the best WordPress affiliate plugins. It turns those long and ugly affiliate links into something much easier to remember, so your links can make bigger impressions on your visitors. It lets you add links to your posts in just minutes.
Amazon Auto Links
For those wanting to make additional income on their website with affiliate links, Amazon Auto Links is another possible option. This plugin can be used to automatically fill your content with affiliate links to Amazon products for sale.
Additionally, the great thing about this plugin is that it keeps your links up to date, including newly-available products.
Affiliates Pro
With the Affiliates Pro WordPress plugin, you can boost sales with affiliate marketing for your WordPress site. Start your own affiliate management system and let a horde of affiliates promote your product and brand to increase sales!
Affiliates Pro comes with a solid framework and lot of management tools available on the back end. Affiliates Pro includes everything you need to start an affiliate program. There is a free version available if you want to take it on a test run before jumping to the Pro version for more advanced features.
Post Affiliate Pro
If you offer an affiliate program yourself, avoid the hassle with Post Affiliate Pro. This free WordPress affiliate plugin will help you manage and maintain your growing affiliate network. There is not need to do it all on your own, marketing your website and products, let affiliates help you out. By driving traffic to your website, they will help you increase sales while earning a commission.
Thanks to Post Affiliate Pro, you can now create your own network in a little breeze. Your affiliates get a custom ID, which they get to share pretty much wherever they want. With the plugin, you get to track all the sales and process commissions much simpler.
Post Affiliate Pro also integrates with many other extensions for even smoother operation when in need of additional features. And if you ever want to unlock more goodies, you can always go pro.
Affiliate Royale
Affiliate Royale makes it easy to create affiliate programs and membership sites for your WordPress website. It provides a personalized affiliate dashboard that your affiliates can log in to. You can track affiliate’s performance and check clicks and sales.
The affiliate program integrates with your shopping cart and it doesn’t require monthly payments or a percentage of the affiliate transaction. It’s easy to set up and integrates with your website’s design.
Thrive Clever Widget
Relevant Ads convert better than General Ads.
That’s why you always see relevant ads on Google, Facebook or other sites. It is called “Exact Targeting”. The idea is to provide the right message to the right audience.
You can do the same on your blog. Showing web hosting affiliate banner ad on hosting related posts make more sense than showing it on SEO related posts.
Thrive Clever Widgets is the WordPress plugin that allows you to show relevant and targeted affiliate banners on sidebar/footer.
WP Review
While Thrive Architect does let you add a review box on your blog posts, that’s not enough to show star ratings in Google Search.
To show star ratings, you need to use a schema markup plugin like WP Review. It’s the best review plugin on the market right now.
With this plugin, you can review products, games, books, movies, and what not. There are a total of 14 rich snippets supported by this plugin.
It also comes with 16 predefined styles for review boxes which allows you to add beautiful review boxes in your posts. You can customize them according to your website’s style.
Conclusion
There are many great ways to make some extra money by being an affiliate marketer. For starters, using the right promotional techniques and tools can help you to be successful. The good news is that WordPress makes it easy to implement your strategies using affiliate marketing plugins.
Hope you enjoyed reading this article and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks, Ali, we have not seen or heard of any of these plug-ins that we can utilize for our website to make our affiliate links nice and oraginzed. We’re going to try thirsty affiliates plug-in this seems to be what we need to track our links and organize them the way we can see them.
The other plug-ins such as pretty links to make them long ugly URLs so long to short pretty links so that our audience will want to click on them.
Thanks again, for a wonderful read this caught our eye in our email, I know this can help us make more sales.
Cheers,
Mathew&Deloris
Hi guys, yes some of those plugins are new in the market. Glad to see that you’ve found them useful. ; )
Best,
Ali