If you’re a WordPress user and make money, or would like to make money, from affiliate marketing, the choices of what plugins to use can get quite confusing. There are a number of requirements to look at before jumping right in and installing random plugins without understanding what each one of them does — or does not do.
In this short post, we’ll simply cover the top 5 WordPress affiliate plugins we feel are easy to setup and manage. The least amount of work for the greatest return is the goal, right? 😉
Our Top Picks of the 5 Best WordPress Affiliate Plugins:
1) Simple URLs
The Simple URLs WordPress plugin uses the URL management system that allows one to create, manage and track outbound links from a website through the use of 301 directs and custom post types. It is easy to use and it offers you with greater ways of directing a consumer to your affiliate link. This plugin is also good for SEO.
Simple URLs easily adds a new custom post type within your WordPress Admin menu. This new post type allows you to edit, create, delete, and manage affiliate URLs. Simple URLs even stores the affiliate link click counts in a format of a custom field on that custom post type. This makes this plugin scale pretty well.
Probably one of the best things about Simple URLs is that is helps to avoid WordPress page-based redirects, which seems to be the current trend in masking affiliate links. Aimple URLs also makes sure to avoid issues with permalink structures, making it easy on performance on a page level.
2) Pretty Link WordPress Plugin
Pretty Link Lite and Pro are both an exemplary WordPress plugins for those seeking to camouflage their affiliate links. These affiliate plugins also make it possible to track the number of hits on a link through email and increase the number of visitors to their website through posting links on social sites, forums or comments on other blogs… killing two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. 🙂
In a nutshell, the Pretty Link plugin gives you the ability to easily shorten links using your own domain name. The alternative is using web-based URL shorteners like tinyurl.com or bit.ly, etc).
In addition to Pretty Link creating cleaner links, the plugin goes more into tracking than other plugins by default. We found that this plugin tracks each hit on your URL and provides a detailed report of where the hit originated, the browser used, the Operating system used, and even the host. This makes the Pretty Link a top affiliate plugin for WordPress users who want to have a cleaner way to product and use affiliate link tracking. A few other benefits of Pretty Link is giving the ability for users to track clicks directly from emails, track links on Twitter from their own domain, or increase the overall reach of their affiliate or internal website links/pages by posting those links on third-party locations such as comments on other blogs or forums.
3) Thirsty Affiliates
This is a professional affiliate link management and link cloaking tool for affiliates. It allows one to administer affiliate links, assists in inserting them into your pages, posts and comments besides offering you with a central WordPress location through which you can manage all your links.
- Affiliate link shortening and link cloaking (e.g. websitename.com/recommends/affiliate-link-here)
- Commission protecting affiliate link 301 redirection
- Customizable prefixes for link URLs — loads to choose from or use your own custom prefix
- Hierarchical link categorization to easily segment links
- Handy affiliate link picker tool (with full instant search capabilities) makes it easy to insert affiliate links in posts, pages and comments!
- DoFollow/NoFollow options (global or per link)
- Open in new window options (global or per link)
- Full importing and exporting support via standard WordPress tools
- Full backup compatibility via standard WordPress backup solutions
- and much more…
4) Easy Affiliate Plugin
- Easy installation. Setting up only takes a few short minutes.
- Auto link conversion – post a standard link and the plugin makes it part of the network affiliate account.
- You can even earn from older posts, as this plugin turns old posts’ links into affiliate links.
- 24/7 affiliate dashboard at your fingertips. See how much money each of your posts is making (viewed on PalTip.com).
- You can have an unlimited amount of links
- Easy Affiliate boasts one of the largest affiliate networks with more than 3000 affiliate partners
5) GoCodes
GoCodes is a WordPress URL shortener and redirection plugin. It’s great for redirecting things like podcasting affiliate URL programs. GoCodes allows the website administrator to create shortcut URLs and direct them anywhere on the internet from the comfort of the WordPress Admin. It also allows one to mask affiliate program URLs.
Managing your redirects is easy! Just open your WordPress admin, and go to the Manage > GoCodes administration menu. There you can remove redirects by clicking on the “Delete” button next to those posts/entries. You you can add new ones using the form on the page. The “Key” field is where you enter the redirection string (e.g. “blue” in yourdomain.com/go/blue/). The URL field is where you enter the URL that users will be redirected to (“http://” is required). One note is that the Key can only contain alphanumeric characters.