Q: What are the top WordPress plugins that an affiliate needs?
A: It really varies, depending on the type of affiliate you are, as some networks have plugins, but if you’re not promoting those networks, it doesn’t really matter.
There are also WordPress plugins that accomplish tasks that not every affiliate needs.
In the latest Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, affiliates were asked, “Which affiliate marketing related plugins and widgets are you currently using?”
The results were somewhat skewed towards affiliates promoting products, as 20.7% stated they used the Amazon Reloaded for WordPress plugin.
This was followed by the ShareASale Make a Widget plugin at 14.1%, the WP-Marketer plugin at 9.8%, and LinkShare accounts for 26.1% across their three plugins.
Also, there was the DataFeedFile.com Featured Product Plugin with 5.4% and the DataFeedr plugin with 2.2%.
And there is the Avantlink Widget plugin and the Simple Link Cloaker plugin. I use the Pretty Link plugin to shorten my affiliate URLs.
My suggestion would be to check the blogs of the networks you promote, because there aren’t really top plugins for all affiliates.
{ 15 comments }
Thank you for the information about the plugins available for the ad networks. I found you while looking for a Share a Sale plugin.
i like the all in one seo pack myself.It seems to be doing well…
Thanks allot for making this list, currently testing them on my WP blogs. I have never known Linkshare to have a working plugin or any of the large Networks. They need updating those affiliates who were surveyed were drunk lmao… nice post by the way.
Highly recommend 123linkit.com…great product and equally great team behind the scenes running it.
Hi Shawn,
Thanks for the post. What software or plug ins would you recommend for someone wanting to offer a product to affiliates to promote? What is the best Affiliate Tracking Software or plug in for wordpress?
Thanks,
Drew
http://HandcraftedCoops.com
Hi Drew -
Tracking an affiliate program isn’t something a plugin can handle – it’s way more elaborate than that – see http://blog.affiliatetip.com/tracking-your-affiliate-program/
Hey Shawn,
Just wanted to jump in and let you know – we just released a WordPress Plugin too!
The Skimlinks plugin automatically monetizes links out to more than 12,000 advertisers on a publisher’s Wordpress site, and can also monetize the RSS feed, with an optional disclosure statement for each post.
It’s available in the Plugin Directory now, love to know what you think of it! (Just search for Skimlinks!)
Hannah
Thanks Hannah – I did know about your plugin – see http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/wordpress-plugin-from-skimlinks/ – but we’d already conducted the AffStat survey when it was released.
I haven’t had a chance to play with it, yet.
Hey Shawn!
Didn’t know about most of these. Really cool, and thanks for the great post on them. I just got the Amazon one installed… it seems that keyword searches for more than one word don’t work that well (if at all), but one word searches work great.
I’ve pretty much stopped using LinkShare altogether as I just find their interface difficult. To be fair I haven’t used it in some time, but the most recent time I tried (like a week ago) it gave me an error message about cookies… which no one else has a problem with. Makes me think that maybe my affiliate links won’t track through them either as the people I send through won’t understand an error message about cookies when they just want to buy some airline tix.
Probably just skepticism on my part, but there’s so much competition in the space and with as much as we’re moving around right now, I just have to have things work when I go to use them…
Anyway shouldn’t turn this into a rant about LinkShare.
Is the ShareASale plugin available anywhere still? All the links for it that I’ve found end up redirecting to datafeedr.
Thanks again for this post Shawn!
Jonathan
Glad it was helpful – I don’t remember a ShareASale plugin. What did it do?
I think “All In One SEO Pack” is a great plugin as well. It really makes SEO easy.
Thank you for sharing!
I used to use All in One SEO Pack, but now I’m on the Thesis theme, and it enables me to take care of the SEO without an extra plugin.
Shawn, there is a reason why Amazon Reloaded is way up there.. I’ve never had a problem with it. Thanks for sharing the others though.
Didn’t realize LinkShare was that popular. I am going to have to take a look at their plugins. I don’t use them much cause their interface stinks when you have more than one website registered with them. Why can’t I combine the stats for all of them?
Not sure – maybe LinkShare will pop in to help you out.
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 10 trackbacks }